Coal company CEO: ‘Black is the new green.’
Coal company CEO: ‘Black is the new green.’
Speaking to USA Today, Gregory Boyce, CEO of Peabody, the world’s largest coal company, “shrugged off any worries” about coal’s enormous greenhouse gas emissions or moves to make energy more environmentally friendly, declaring the U.S. would never move away from coal:
“It’s a good time to be Peabody,” says Boyce, an affable man who speaks in a confident baritone. “There’s not enough natural gas. There’s not enough renewables (such as wind and solar energy) to go around. So I’m not concerned that coal is going to disappear. For us not to use that resource, we are just shooting ourselves in the foot.” [...]
“There’s a perception out there that coal is dirty, and we have to change that,” he adds, noting that coal plants already have cut emissions of some pollutants and boosted efficiency to slash CO2 discharges. “Black is the new green.“
Though Peabody is swimming in green — with profits soaring so far this year to $290 million — it’s a lie to suggest coal is somehow clean. Burning coal “adds a significant amount of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere per unit of heat energy, more than does the combustion of other fossil fuels.” What’s more, though Boyce boasts of a $9 million investment into “clean coal” technology, he fails to note that the coal industry’s largest front group has vowed to pour $40 million into efforts to block climate change and alternative energy legislation.
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Yep. Black skies, black lungs, black teeth… no thanks.
Ya know, let’s just elect a person of color to the Presidency. That will work for me. Luckily, I know just the guy…
August 19th, 2008 at 8:33 pmEat shit and die, Boyce.
August 19th, 2008 at 8:35 pmThey actually got it backward: “GREEN is the new black.”
August 19th, 2008 at 8:36 pmAnd the greenhouse gases emitted lead to more global warming, which in turn means we use more coal to run our AC ???
See – a stable, sustainable business model.
August 19th, 2008 at 8:43 pmI’m just waiting for my coal powered speeder bike.
August 19th, 2008 at 8:50 pmBoyce is pure SCUM!! Phuck you bastard!!!
August 19th, 2008 at 8:55 pmCoal company CEO: ‘Black is the new green.’
– - If this guy watched “SNL” he’d know that “black is the new b*tch.”
August 19th, 2008 at 9:09 pmCOAL will be the new buzzword of the McCain Campaign this week. All coal, all the time. Eventually, the GOP will run out of energy resources to exploit. Next week: Hydro Power!
August 19th, 2008 at 9:13 pmClean Coal
August 19th, 2008 at 9:21 pmMilitary Intelligence
Jumbo Shrimp
Junk Food
maverick mccain
“There’s a perception out there that coal is dirty, and we have to change that,”
Yeah, that’s all you need. After all, it’s a lot cheaper to change the perception than it is to actually address the problems of coal, acid rain and climate change.
August 19th, 2008 at 9:25 pm“So I’m not concerned that coal is going to disappear. For us not to use that resource, we are just shooting ourselves in the foot.”
May I suggest a few other places for you consider shooting?
PEACE
August 19th, 2008 at 9:30 pmBoyce is a prostitute for the coal industry, price for his services $7.78 million dollars which include stock options over a 5 year period.
August 19th, 2008 at 9:43 pmOh yeah….. I remember those commercials with the kids…… they wouldn’t use KIDS to mislead us about “clean coal” ……would they?
August 19th, 2008 at 9:58 pmI agree with ralph (#11, 9:25). The coal industry has determined that it would be more profitable to put money into misleading people into thinking that burning coal (and mining it, for that matter) is better than finding ways to make its recovery and use safer all around. Profit before humanity. I hate Capitalists.
August 19th, 2008 at 10:27 pmObama The Savior’s ethanol future is awash in Archer Daniels Midland/Chevron with Coal as the distiller.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0323/p01s01-sten.html
http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2008/06/23/obama-bad-for-the-environment-and-your-wallet/
August 19th, 2008 at 10:35 pmGregory Boyce, most likely a republican, will be able to afford high tech gas masks for his family. I don’t know how old he is but, unlike T. Boone Pickens, he’ll kick the bucket with out guilt of the damage he helped incur to the planet.
The republicans are against alternative energy and always will be:
Republicans Block Federal Aid to Wind and Solar
Tom Friedman of the New York Times reports:
Few Americans know it, but for almost a year now, Congress has been bickering over whether and how to renew the investment tax credit to stimulate investment in solar energy and the production tax credit to encourage investment in wind energy. The bickering has been so poisonous that when Congress passed the 2007 energy bill last December, it failed to extend any stimulus for wind and solar energy production. Oil and gas kept all their credits, but those for wind and solar have been left to expire this December. I am not making this up. At a time when we should be throwing everything into clean power innovation, we are squabbling over pennies.
These credits are critical because they ensure that if oil prices slip back down again — which often happens — investments in wind and solar would still be profitable. That’s how you launch a new energy technology and help it achieve scale, so it can compete without subsidies.
The Democrats wanted the wind and solar credits to be paid for by taking away tax credits from the oil industry. President Bush said he would veto that. Neither side would back down, and Mr. Bush — showing not one iota of leadership — refused to get all the adults together in a room and work out a compromise. Stalemate. Meanwhile, Germany has a 20-year solar incentive program; Japan 12 years. Ours, at best, run two years.
“It’s a disaster,” says Michael Polsky, founder of Invenergy, one of the biggest wind-power developers in America. “Wind is a very capital-intensive industry, and financial institutions are not ready to take ‘Congressional risk.’ They say if you don’t get the [production tax credit] we will not lend you the money to buy more turbines and build projects.”
If the wind and solar credits expire, said Rhone Resch, the president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, the impact in just 2009 would be more than 100,000 jobs either lost or not created in these industries, and $20 billion worth of investments that won’t be made.
While all the presidential candidates were railing about lost manufacturing jobs in Ohio, no one noticed that America’s premier solar company, First Solar, from Toledo, Ohio, was opening its newest factory in the former East Germany — 540 high-paying engineering jobs — because Germany has created a booming solar market and America has not.
August 19th, 2008 at 11:48 pmArtist: Prine John
Song: Paradise
Album: Great Days: The John Prine Anthology John Prine Sheet Music
John Prine CDs
When I was a child my family would travel
Down to Western Kentucky where my parents were born
And there’s a backwards old town that’s often remembered
So many times that my memories are worn.
Chorus:
And daddy won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I’m sorry my son, but you’re too late in asking
Mister Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away
Well, sometimes we’d travel right down the Green River
To the abandoned old prison down by Adrie Hill
Where the air smelled like snakes and we’d shoot with our pistols
But empty pop bottles was all we would kill.
Repeat Chorus:
Then the coal company came with the world’s largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man.
Repeat Chorus:
When I die let my ashes float down the Green River
Let my soul roll on up to the Rochester dam
I’ll be halfway to Heaven with Paradise waitin’
Just five miles away from wherever I am.
Repeat Chorus:
August 20th, 2008 at 12:07 amDigging tons of carbon out of the ground where it has laid for millions of years and then burn it and vent it into our air is just stupid.
August 20th, 2008 at 12:13 am.
Then let Gregory Boyce eat soot!
.
August 20th, 2008 at 12:36 amAnybody ever fly over West Virginia? Lots of mountains have been strip-mined bare. From 30,00 ft some of the Appalachians look like a green golf course with sand traps. None of this is visible from highways cuz we wouldn’t want people to think the beautiful scenery was being destroyed for coal.
August 20th, 2008 at 12:41 am“Black is the new green.“
A little Freudian slip there. Boyce meant green in environmental sense, but what he really meant was money.
http://progressiveworldreview.com
August 20th, 2008 at 12:44 amMeanwhile back in Centralia…
August 20th, 2008 at 1:17 amMeanwhile neither Loretta Lynn nor Sissy Spacek were available for comment…
August 20th, 2008 at 2:17 amMeanwhile many still don’t understand NOx and SOx…
August 20th, 2008 at 2:30 amClean coal will never work, even if they do figure out how to bury CO2. It will eventually escape.
I can’t claim to know for sure, but my hunch is its all going to be mute anyway because of the Bussard Fusion Reactor. They’ve been working on it in the Department of Defense for 12 years where they kept it under the radar of the Energy Department by keeping the budget so low no one thought they could do anything, and by not publishing anything. Well by God, they did do something, they figured out the physics and over this past summer (2008) they built an advanced prototype, which, word has it, is running like a top. (That means it works!!!!!!!) Now they are about to publish something.
No meltdowns, unlimited fuel, no toxic waste, and very very inexpensive. It produces DC electricity directly from the reactor, without the turbines or generators that make up 80% of the cost of a fission nuclear plant. It just needs to be converted to AC. (why not just switch everything else to DC ?)
They are being real careful about making sure everything is peer reviewed, but they should come out with their report in the next couple months. Then they will need five years to work out the engineering for a full sized prototype, and then production will start.
I’m sure the oil people are aware of this, they are just trying to get one last splurg before this report comes out.
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/06/12/1136887.aspx
August 20th, 2008 at 6:08 amThe Holbrook power plant in Northern Arizona has been granted countless exemptions and extensions to meet compliance for emissions (thanks John!). They claim interruption of services, financial strain, lagging technology, blah blah blah.
Holbrook has constant winds that howl through the region and 360 days a year of sunshine. This would be fertile ground for alternative energy.
However….. The Navajo nation is constructing a coal burning power plant with the rationale that the economic benefits for the tribe outweigh the environmental impacts on the region.
This is an area of the United States that has atmospheric visibilities of over 100 miles (except around Holbrook)
If anyone on this board has ever been out on the reservation, they would understand that this is a slow death sentence for an area that is famous for its geographic beauty.
Coal is dirty, and the cost to keep it clean makes it a foolish waste of money.
August 20th, 2008 at 6:26 amrodeored Says:
(why not just switch everything else to DC ?)
Thomas (rat bastard) Edison tried this. Too much line loss and inefficient.
August 20th, 2008 at 6:51 amNikolai Tesla and his power transmission theories (which were blatantly stolen by Edison) had it figured out early in the game.
Converting DC to alternating current is not difficult or expensive.
Tesla was a genius, Edison was a thief.
All I can say is don’t trust powerhouse owners!
I recently worked on the new construction of a coal fired powerhouse in Wiconsin. Part of the agreement to allow it’s permitting was that a scrubber system as well as other enviromental updates to existing facilities was to be installed after completion of the new power generation system (boiler,turbine, etc.)
Well…here’s how it really went. We finished the construction new plant and of course were laid off. We expected to shortly be re-employed on the construction of the promised new scrubber and updates. Now we find out these projects aren’t going to happen. The company totally reneged on it’s agreement sighting that it was cheaper to pay the fines than to build the facilities!
It’s all about (obsene) profit folks. The coal and power generation industries will do all they can to protect their golden geese. Coal use is cheap and there is nothing complicated about power generation using coal. Coal fires a boiler producing steam which turns a turbine generator…that simple. I’d like to know the profit ratio per ton of coal to megawatts of electricity sold. I’ll bet it’s a number that would make any business person blush.
August 20th, 2008 at 7:52 amOops with the typo’s
Wiconsin = Wisconsin
August 20th, 2008 at 7:56 am“Clean Coal” is the new “Dry Water”
August 20th, 2008 at 8:13 amMy Pappy was a coal miner…he gave his soul to the company’s goal. He left mining after a mine collapse…later his lungs collapsed.
August 20th, 2008 at 8:52 amYeah, thank for making me go look it up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Currents
August 20th, 2008 at 12:44 pmin other news, ignorance is the new strength
http://barefootandprogressive.blogspot.com/2008/08/peabody-black-is-new-green.html
As Mark Twain said, “I want to be in Kentucky when the end of the world comes, because its always 20 years behind”
August 20th, 2008 at 6:45 pm