Time to admit it... Coal Power is not avoidable.

Ok… time for a little soap-box action…

I’m getting tired of all this anti-coal plant banter.

The unfortunate fact that society is faced with today is that we need coal power to satisfy our growing desire for power.

• There is not enough energy density to get the power from wind in the short term. Denmark has wind generators scattered all over the place and can only supply 20% of its energy requirements.
• Large dams are a thing of the past (or a thing of China, where the government is still not afraid to displace 1.9 million people in poor communities. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/5000198.stm )
• Nuclear fission still does not have a solution for nuclear waste. Heard of Peak Oil? How about Peak Uranium? There’s discussion about the potential that there may not be enough Uranium of sufficient quality to completely satiate our energy requirements. And man, do we really want more nuclear proliferation?! You know it will end up in weapons!
• Micro hydro will only be a micro supplier.
• Geothermal is great, but site specific and may not be completely renewable. A 100MW site might be developed in Meager creek, lobby for that! Still, the coal plants will have a 180MW capacity. http://bchydro.com/info/ipp/ipp47608.html , http://www.canren.gc.ca/tech_appl/index.asp?CaId=3&PgId=8
• Wave and tidal power cannot supply enough energy unless we have them littered all over the friggin place. They’re about 2MW per installation.

You’re living a pipe dream if you think people will decrease their energy needs globally.

If the government scraps these projects, they will just go back to purchasing energy from Alberta and Washington’s coal plants…

A better thing to lobby for would be:

· Clean Coal research and development (and selling the technology to the world!)

· Carbon tax. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_tax

· ****** Carbon sequestration methods such as http://www.eprida.com/eprida_flash.php4 (NOT storing it in the deep ocean or under ground! Yikes!)

· Bio-mass redirection for all municipalities (like Nanaimo does! http://www.rdn.bc.ca/cms.asp?wpID=942 )

So, don’t write anything to the gov’mnt saying “Coal sucks! You suck!”. Write something more meaningful with some actual solutions.

/End_Soap_Box_Rant