More Mountaintop Removal? Say NO to the Governor’s Plans
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 |
| Pine Branch Coal Co. mountaintop removal mine ner the Hazard airport |
Did you catch the news earlier this week? Gov. Steve Beshear wants a new state energy plan and he wants more mountaintop removal, more coal burning and possibly even nuclear energy to be part of that plan!
The same day this announcement was released the City of Louisville issued an air quality alert. And — if the day was like any other average day in Kentucky — two Kentuckians died prematurely because of complications caused by air pollution from coal-fired power plants, and another coalfield family lost their water well as a result of mining.
While much of the rest of the world works to wean ourselves from the dirtiest of all fossil fuels, our officials in Frankfort are embracing coal — including mining it in the most destructive way possible. It is hard to believe that this is what Kentuckians want. In fact, we know it’s not. We need your help in convincing Gov. Beshear that this is the wrong path for Kentucky.
Starting last night in Pike County, Gov. Beshear began a series of town hall meetings throughout Kentucky. Over the next five weeks the governor will hold a dozen more such meetings. We hope that at every stop KFTC members will be there to challenge the governor on his misguided policies, that not only include his active promotion of mountaintop removal but also:
-- the horrible budget he proposed earlier this year that included massive cuts for education, human services and environmental protection;
-- his failure to support the restoration of voting rights for former felons legislation until it was too late in the session to do any good;
-- his administration’s blocking of efforts to expand the goals of Kentucky’s economic development programs to include reducing poverty and inequality, promoting innovation and entrepreneurship, and conserving the integrity of Kentucky's natural and cultural heritage.
ACTION:
Kentuckians want and expect better. We hope all KFTC members will make an effort to attend one of the town meetings below and speak out about these and other issues that concern you.
The “Beshear About Kentucky” tour includes:
- July 21 – Somerset: Somerset High School
- July 24 – Winchester: George Rogers Clark High School
- July 28 – Ashland
- July 31 – Madisonville
- August 5 – Shepherdsville
- August 6 – Bowling Green
- August 11 – Owensboro
- August 12 – Hazard
- August 13 – Northern Kentucky
- August 18 – Henderson
- August 19 – Murray
- August 20 – Paducah
All events will begin at 6:00 p.m. local time. However, the governor’s office is not releasing the location of each gathering until a few days prior. You can call the governor’s office at 502-564-2611, check his web site and we will put it on the KFTC calendar as soon as we know.
There are other actions you can take:
1) Call the governor’s office (502-564-2611) and leave a message that more mountaintop removal and more fossil fuel dependence is wrong for Kentucky. He should oppose these practices, not embrace them.
2) Write a letter to the editor about any of these issues that most concerns you — coal, energy, budget, voting rights, accountable economic development. Help create a public conversation that will move Kentucky forward by investing in a better future for all Kentuckians.
THANKS for taking action!
electricity
Posted by
mary dan
at
July-23-2008 11:50 AM
There are many ways to produce electricity without destroying the mountains of Kentucky.
I too
Posted by
John Doe
at
July-25-2008 10:46 AM
I too wish to see this list, you all are the reason gas prices and electricity bills are so high.
I too
Posted by
eric houtchen
at
August-01-2008 08:41 PM
We're not the reason gas prices are so high, but if having a scapegoat to rant at makes you feel better then so be it. Oil companies are making billions and they've done a good job of fooling you into thinking its someone else's fault.
Electric power and the way to use less of it...
Posted by
William Ray
at
July-29-2008 02:36 PM
There is a way to drastically reduce the amount of electric power we use, especially during the 4-5 hours a day that consumption peaks which results in the most amount of coal and natural gas being burned. As an electric utility executive for the last thirty years, I have been virtually begging TVA, and other similar utilities, to listen to reason on this matter. Here is a recent post from my blog that regularly discusses this issue (www.glasgowredbluegreen.blogspot.com):
This is Our Home . . . How are we going to power it?
Over the last few years the cost of electric power from TVA (via the Glasgow EPB) increased about 35%. Now it appears that, over the next six months, that cost will go up again by staggering amounts (as this is written TVA has not given us the final bad news, but it is likely that we will see an increase of something like 15% on October 1 and something very similar again on January 1, 2009) over the next six months. Add this to the stress we are already experiencing at the gas pumps and the crisis many of you will feel this winter as you see the unbelievable natural gas bills and the result is a gut-wrenching fear unlike anything we have ever seen before. In fact, it would not be going too far to say that it is now okay to go ahead and panic!
We have talked about the reasons for these dramatic increases several times before in this very blog. Drought in east Tennessee is drastically reducing the amount of cheap hydroelectric power TVA can produce. Increases in the cost of diesel fuel makes transporting coal from the mines to the coal-fired generation units much more expensive and that is driving up the cost of coal. China and India are using staggering amounts of coal and diesel fuel in their zeal to make cheap consumer goods for us to purchase at Wal Mart, and that is driving up the cost of both of those fuel sources. We hate to have this fact shoved in our faces, but the real culprit in these increases in the cost of all forms of energy is the way we live our lives. We use too much energy each and every day. In other words, we have found the enemy, and he is us.
As a Glasgow resident and a customer of the EPB you have something going for you that folks who buy their electric power elsewhere do not have . . . yet. For the last twenty years we have been developing a broadband network that touches each and every home and business in our community. For just as many years we have been planning to use that network to help our population use electricity in a totally different manner than the way we have taken for granted over the last eighty years. Even though our efforts have been discounted and ignored by TVA and the other elements of the electric power business in our country for most of those twenty years, it seems that the dawn is beginning to break over our landscape of ideas about infotricity.
Infotricity is a term we coined many years ago and it is meant to identify electric power, combined with a robust broadband network, as a totally different product. Electricity is something your home and business has been running on forever, but the decisions about how much and when it is used have been handed off to major appliances for the last several decades. Those appliances; air conditioners, water heaters, freezers, refrigerators, dishwashers, washing machines, clothes dryers, etc., have developed a very disturbing habit. They tend to wind up all running at the same time on hot afternoons like the ones outside right now. When they all get together and run at the same time it creates a demand for electricity that has a sharp spike (we call it a peak demand) that lasts from about 1:00 p.m. to about 7:00 p.m. on summer days. It is that peak demand that all power generation systems struggle to meet. Those peaks cause the most coal and natural gas to be burned. Those peak demands are the root cause for most of the large cost increases we are seeing for electricity.
By comparison, our plans for infotricity will chop the top off of those peak electricity power demands by using our broadband network to break up the habits of the appliances to work at the same time. Instead of the cheap thermostat that today controls your water heater, air conditioner, freezer, and refrigerator, we can use IP (Internet Protocol) commands to tame these appliances and turn their cacophony into a symphony!
Here is how it might work. Once our high speed network is connected to your home and when the home is retrofitted with new IP-based controls for the air conditioning, heating, water heating, etc., we could work with you to establish your temperature limits and living style and put all of that information into a server that is assigned the task of orchestrating the delivery of infotricity to your home. Then, every day as TVA determines what their mix of available generation is and what the likely temperature extremes for their service areas is going to be, their generation folks would transmit information to these “infotricity servers” which would, in turn, organize the temperature targets for your home and your appliances such that they do not contribute to TVA’s peak demand. The result might be that your home is “precooled” to a temperature cooler than normal in the morning while power demand is low so that your home can coast through the afternoon longer, and get a little warmer than you would normally like, in the pursuit of a flatter demand for power. As far as your other appliances go, well, so long as you have hot water when you want it and cold milk in your refrigerator, you really don’t care when the heating and cooling occurred, and infotricity would exploit that reality. In addition you would likely have additional reminders that you need to try to reduce your energy demand during peak periods. There will likely be a reminder in your email, information scrolling across your television screen, a red/green indicator near your washer and dryer, etc. All of this will be focused at reminding you that infotricity is far less expensive than electricity and that you need to participate by cutting back your consumption during the peak times.
Technology like this will allow TVA to offset the construction of new power plants made of concrete and steel and fueled with coal, natural gas, or enriched uranium with virtual power plants made of fiber optic cables and IP addressable appliances and fueled with a flow of bits, bytes, and intelligence. In effect, even though your home will not look any different, if you participate in this new world of infotricity, you will have a piece of a massive infotricity generator in your home. The technology, coupled with your willingness to respond to signals, will form the basis for the cleanest and most sustainable method ever devised for the generation of electric power. This is an earthshaking (maybe an earth-saving) idea and, the really cool thing is, it has been developed right here in Glasgow. We are optimistic that TVA is about to start working closely with us to further our development of this idea such that it begins to provide real power to their generation fleet within a couple of years.
These same ideas will work for businesses and industrial customers just as well as they will work at our homes. The secret to better living through infotricity is in learning how to use energy during the hours when it is abundant and less during the hours when it is in short supply. It is really just that simple. This is also the only way that electric cars will ever really fit into our total energy solution. Electric cars are a great idea so long as we can make sure that folks are not trying to charge them during the hours of peak demand. If plug-in cars arrive and if we are not prepared to charge them with infotricity, they will only compound our energy problem instead of improving it. But, once again, Glasgow is in a perfect position to take advantage of this technology when it is available.
In summary, things are bad, but not as bad here. We have ignored the simple fact that all energy resources are finite and we have been doing that for many years. While we have been ignoring facts, the population of the world has doubled and a lot of the new residents have decided they want to use their share of our energy resources as well. Now we have to pay more to keep them from using the energy we Americans had come to see as exclusively ours. Most communities find themselves virtually helpless to do anything about this situation, but Glasgow has been planning for this problem for twenty years. While we cannot tell you to relax and not worry about it, we can tell you that we have ideas and plans, and you are going to have options. These options will not be painless and they will not allow us to continue to be oblivious to reality, but they do give us hope for a sustainable energy future that is better than many of our neighbors can expect, at least for a while.
This is Our Home . . . How are we going to power it?
Over the last few years the cost of electric power from TVA (via the Glasgow EPB) increased about 35%. Now it appears that, over the next six months, that cost will go up again by staggering amounts (as this is written TVA has not given us the final bad news, but it is likely that we will see an increase of something like 15% on October 1 and something very similar again on January 1, 2009) over the next six months. Add this to the stress we are already experiencing at the gas pumps and the crisis many of you will feel this winter as you see the unbelievable natural gas bills and the result is a gut-wrenching fear unlike anything we have ever seen before. In fact, it would not be going too far to say that it is now okay to go ahead and panic!
We have talked about the reasons for these dramatic increases several times before in this very blog. Drought in east Tennessee is drastically reducing the amount of cheap hydroelectric power TVA can produce. Increases in the cost of diesel fuel makes transporting coal from the mines to the coal-fired generation units much more expensive and that is driving up the cost of coal. China and India are using staggering amounts of coal and diesel fuel in their zeal to make cheap consumer goods for us to purchase at Wal Mart, and that is driving up the cost of both of those fuel sources. We hate to have this fact shoved in our faces, but the real culprit in these increases in the cost of all forms of energy is the way we live our lives. We use too much energy each and every day. In other words, we have found the enemy, and he is us.
As a Glasgow resident and a customer of the EPB you have something going for you that folks who buy their electric power elsewhere do not have . . . yet. For the last twenty years we have been developing a broadband network that touches each and every home and business in our community. For just as many years we have been planning to use that network to help our population use electricity in a totally different manner than the way we have taken for granted over the last eighty years. Even though our efforts have been discounted and ignored by TVA and the other elements of the electric power business in our country for most of those twenty years, it seems that the dawn is beginning to break over our landscape of ideas about infotricity.
Infotricity is a term we coined many years ago and it is meant to identify electric power, combined with a robust broadband network, as a totally different product. Electricity is something your home and business has been running on forever, but the decisions about how much and when it is used have been handed off to major appliances for the last several decades. Those appliances; air conditioners, water heaters, freezers, refrigerators, dishwashers, washing machines, clothes dryers, etc., have developed a very disturbing habit. They tend to wind up all running at the same time on hot afternoons like the ones outside right now. When they all get together and run at the same time it creates a demand for electricity that has a sharp spike (we call it a peak demand) that lasts from about 1:00 p.m. to about 7:00 p.m. on summer days. It is that peak demand that all power generation systems struggle to meet. Those peaks cause the most coal and natural gas to be burned. Those peak demands are the root cause for most of the large cost increases we are seeing for electricity.
By comparison, our plans for infotricity will chop the top off of those peak electricity power demands by using our broadband network to break up the habits of the appliances to work at the same time. Instead of the cheap thermostat that today controls your water heater, air conditioner, freezer, and refrigerator, we can use IP (Internet Protocol) commands to tame these appliances and turn their cacophony into a symphony!
Here is how it might work. Once our high speed network is connected to your home and when the home is retrofitted with new IP-based controls for the air conditioning, heating, water heating, etc., we could work with you to establish your temperature limits and living style and put all of that information into a server that is assigned the task of orchestrating the delivery of infotricity to your home. Then, every day as TVA determines what their mix of available generation is and what the likely temperature extremes for their service areas is going to be, their generation folks would transmit information to these “infotricity servers” which would, in turn, organize the temperature targets for your home and your appliances such that they do not contribute to TVA’s peak demand. The result might be that your home is “precooled” to a temperature cooler than normal in the morning while power demand is low so that your home can coast through the afternoon longer, and get a little warmer than you would normally like, in the pursuit of a flatter demand for power. As far as your other appliances go, well, so long as you have hot water when you want it and cold milk in your refrigerator, you really don’t care when the heating and cooling occurred, and infotricity would exploit that reality. In addition you would likely have additional reminders that you need to try to reduce your energy demand during peak periods. There will likely be a reminder in your email, information scrolling across your television screen, a red/green indicator near your washer and dryer, etc. All of this will be focused at reminding you that infotricity is far less expensive than electricity and that you need to participate by cutting back your consumption during the peak times.
Technology like this will allow TVA to offset the construction of new power plants made of concrete and steel and fueled with coal, natural gas, or enriched uranium with virtual power plants made of fiber optic cables and IP addressable appliances and fueled with a flow of bits, bytes, and intelligence. In effect, even though your home will not look any different, if you participate in this new world of infotricity, you will have a piece of a massive infotricity generator in your home. The technology, coupled with your willingness to respond to signals, will form the basis for the cleanest and most sustainable method ever devised for the generation of electric power. This is an earthshaking (maybe an earth-saving) idea and, the really cool thing is, it has been developed right here in Glasgow. We are optimistic that TVA is about to start working closely with us to further our development of this idea such that it begins to provide real power to their generation fleet within a couple of years.
These same ideas will work for businesses and industrial customers just as well as they will work at our homes. The secret to better living through infotricity is in learning how to use energy during the hours when it is abundant and less during the hours when it is in short supply. It is really just that simple. This is also the only way that electric cars will ever really fit into our total energy solution. Electric cars are a great idea so long as we can make sure that folks are not trying to charge them during the hours of peak demand. If plug-in cars arrive and if we are not prepared to charge them with infotricity, they will only compound our energy problem instead of improving it. But, once again, Glasgow is in a perfect position to take advantage of this technology when it is available.
In summary, things are bad, but not as bad here. We have ignored the simple fact that all energy resources are finite and we have been doing that for many years. While we have been ignoring facts, the population of the world has doubled and a lot of the new residents have decided they want to use their share of our energy resources as well. Now we have to pay more to keep them from using the energy we Americans had come to see as exclusively ours. Most communities find themselves virtually helpless to do anything about this situation, but Glasgow has been planning for this problem for twenty years. While we cannot tell you to relax and not worry about it, we can tell you that we have ideas and plans, and you are going to have options. These options will not be painless and they will not allow us to continue to be oblivious to reality, but they do give us hope for a sustainable energy future that is better than many of our neighbors can expect, at least for a while.
infotricity
Posted by
Phil Mike Reavis
at
July-31-2008 06:55 AM
Wow, sounds like a good alternative if your rich.
infotricity
Posted by
William Ray
at
July-31-2008 10:35 AM
Hmmm. I must be a really terrible writer. The point I was trying to make is that providing infotricity will ultimately be cheaper than providing electricity. One will not need to be "rich" to enjoy the benefits of this technology. The utilities will be able to retrofit your home for infotricity at a lower cost than building new generation and burning more coal. Thus, upward pressure on rates to amortize those new investments will be gone. This is a unifying idea aimed at further democratizing a technology, not a method to further divide the haves and have-nots.
Gov's energy plan
Posted by
Joe Bauman
at
July-23-2008 12:52 PM
Why does the Joanie Mitchell song "You don't know what you got 'til it's gone", come to mind?
til its gone.
Posted by
Phil Mike Reavis
at
July-31-2008 06:52 AM
(Why does the Joanie Mitchell song "You don't know what you got 'til it's gone", come to mind?)
Because if you people keep protesting the only jobs we have in Eastern Kentucky "money" comes to my mind because we're all gonna be broke.
Because if you people keep protesting the only jobs we have in Eastern Kentucky "money" comes to my mind because we're all gonna be broke.
til it gone
Posted by
eric houtchen
at
August-01-2008 08:08 PM
I understand that you have to earn an income, but I shouldn't have to breath polluted air just so that you can work. It may be a hard fact to swallow, but coal will eventually become a thing of the past.
Yes we can.
Posted by
bottomline
at
July-25-2008 02:54 PM
Yes, we can generate 100% of our electricity from clean, renewable sources within 10 years.
Yes, we can significantly reduce the electricity we use without diminishing our quality of life.
No, environmental concerns have caused the price of coal to sky-rocket from $45 to $120 a ton in the last year. That has been caused by a supply and demand crunch that is only going to move in one direction: from bad to worse.
Bottom line - Coal never has been cheap when you take into account the costs to human health and the environment.It is now becoming increasingly expensive as a source of electricity. We will all be better off the sooner we take action to a) stop mountaintop removal and other forms of radical strip-mining, b) reduce our energy consumption, and c) shift to clean, renewable sources of electricity.
Yes, we can significantly reduce the electricity we use without diminishing our quality of life.
No, environmental concerns have caused the price of coal to sky-rocket from $45 to $120 a ton in the last year. That has been caused by a supply and demand crunch that is only going to move in one direction: from bad to worse.
Bottom line - Coal never has been cheap when you take into account the costs to human health and the environment.It is now becoming increasingly expensive as a source of electricity. We will all be better off the sooner we take action to a) stop mountaintop removal and other forms of radical strip-mining, b) reduce our energy consumption, and c) shift to clean, renewable sources of electricity.
We can?
Posted by
Harry
at
July-31-2008 06:47 AM
Within 10 years is the key words to your statement. Today, the day in which we are living we can't. The only feasible alternative to coal today is nuclear. Which one had you rather have in your community a hollow fill or Three Mile Island. Why don't you people just change your name to Kentuckians against the Economy and the Kentucky Anti-Economy Alliance? What you people do makes no sense. You make it cost more to mine coal and protest oil drilling which in turn makes gas prices and electricity prices higher. Come on don't be hypocrites have your electricity turned off and live without it or shut up. People are getting fed up with these idiocy.
We can?
Posted by
Eric
at
August-01-2008 09:02 PM
You pro coal people always seem so angry. It must be hard watching the world as it prepares to make the leap from fossil fuels to cleaner greener forms of energy, knowing that you'll be left behind like the old worn out plow mule staring angrily at the farmer's shiny new John Deere. Progress is a bitch, but It's just sad you don't have anything better to do than to point the finger at the people trying to be a part of the solution.
not angry
Posted by
F
at
August-02-2008 01:55 PM
we are not angry just standing up for what we believe like you all are.we are not BLIND to stuff like most of you all are.use show pics of MTR as it is now not the after effects.it like breast implants or plastic surgury.while its being done its a not a preety site and if people was showed that maybe they wouldnt get it done.after all the swelling and cuts heal what a site to see.
have a nice day
have a nice day
E C O N O M Y
Posted by
Phil Mike Reavis
at
July-31-2008 06:59 AM
Do you people see what you have done?
okay heres the deal
Posted by
F
at
July-31-2008 03:19 PM
i work on a surface job that does MTR.okay now the way i see it if i dont like something i can not have anything to do wth it or its by products.if you dont like what MTR leaves behind dont use the electricity,use several airports,shopping centers,jails just to name a few.dont drive cars because coal help makes the iron and metal i can go on and on.just like high gas prices we say we dont like them but still drive and go places we can do without doing.a lot of us dont like the ones trying to stop MTR and if we can get a list of the members we can not have anything to do with you.BTW in case you didnt realize the airport that the group landed at was an old MTR removal site
have a good day
have a good day
KFTC Headquarters
Posted by
LW
at
August-01-2008 07:07 AM
Does KFTC now their headquaters in London is located in an old surface mine this mine was done in the 1800's with mules and scrappers.
okay heres the deal
Posted by
ann t
at
November-11-2008 11:00 AM
I agree with much of what you say; but I think perhaps you miss the point -- MTR is a lot lot smoking. You do it because you want to, and can, even though it does harm to you and the environment.
We are all on this earth together, everything we do touches someone or something else. Look around, take time to really see what is going on. Just because you are on the up and up, and honest in what you stand for, does NOT mean the guy you are working for is the same way.
Have a good day
We are all on this earth together, everything we do touches someone or something else. Look around, take time to really see what is going on. Just because you are on the up and up, and honest in what you stand for, does NOT mean the guy you are working for is the same way.
Have a good day
Shale extraction
Posted by
Ann T
at
November-11-2008 10:54 AM
Where does Kentuckians for the Commonwealth stand on the extraction of fuel from shale rock? I understand this can be a clean way of extracting fuel. There are several companies just starting in KY, are you aware of them and their plans?
Put your convictions where your mouths are