Last month I was alerted to an organization calling itself "Americans for Balanced Energy Choices" (ABEC)--a group that supposedly provides a voice to community leaders in the development of energy and environmental policies.

Folks, it's a $35 million spin job paid for by big coal.

Boasting on its homepage that coal is our most abundant fuel, it fails to mention that for the past five years, the U.S. was required to import record amounts of the stuff. In fact, in 2006, imports rose 19%, while exports actually declined.

But that's just the least of Big Coal's worries.

Renewables Take Over Where Big Coal Leaves Off

This past week, while the coal industry continued to saturate the media with its latest ad campaigns, trying to convince us that coal is the solution to our energy needs or that coal is now clean and green, the Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory released a report that's proving to be quite damaging to Big Coal-but quite beneficial for renewable energy investors.

According to the report, utilities have canceled or put on hold 45 coal plants that were in development last year.

Meanwhile, the Boulder-based energy information supplier, Global Energy Decisions, announced it had found that natural gas and renewable energy projects have now officially moved ahead of coal in the development pipeline.

While there are about 66,000 megawatts of coal in development, there are more than 70,000 megawatts of natural gas and renewables in development.

And to make matters worse (for coal, anyway), three of the world's biggest financial institutions, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, are now taking into consideration the cost of carbon emissions before approving any new power plant.

Of course, some will still play the broken record of "renewables can't meet our demand for power generation." But we counter that with a DOE report which stated that covering 9% of Nevada (a plot of land about 100 miles on each side) with concentrating solar farms can provide enough electric power for the entire U.S.

The DOE has also chimed in on offshore wind energy, indicating that there is enough potential off the coast of the U.S. to cover nearly all the current installed U.S. electrical capacity.

Or how about the M.I.T. report that indicated that there are about 14 million quads of recoverable geothermal energy beneath U.S. soil. That's about 140,000 times our current energy consumption!

Point is, while Big Coal continues to lie about coal reserves, continues to import the resource we supposedly have vast amounts of, and continues to watch its development pipeline shrink faster than the Dow...we're loading up on renewables, and profiting from the inevitable demise of coal-fired power plants.

Can't Clean Up on Clean Coal

Of course, there's also the issue of so-called "clean coal." But, as is no surprise, there hasn't been one single bit of evidence to prove that this is much more than wishful thinking.

In fact, just last month the President's clean coal project, FutureGen was shelved after project costs had risen to $1.8 billion. And that number doesn't even include the cost of coal, or the cost to transport the coal to the power plant.

Taking all those costs into consideration, it's actually cheaper to build up utility-scale solar projects, and actually get more megawatts. You can read the clean coal breakdown on that here.

So yes, my friends, Big Coal's struggling.

Heck, just last month it was revealed that Kansas power company, Sunflower Electric, offered Kansas State University $2.5 million for energy research--if the legislature would approve its bid for new coal-fired power plants first. According to the memorandum of understanding, if Sunflower Electric didn't get its permits to build by June 1, the deal with KSU would be off.

If coal truly is the solution to our energy needs, do they really need to revert to bribery?

Regardless, we continue to support and profit from the real solution to our energy needs--renewables.

In fact, our most recent wind play is up 9.74% in the past two weeks. That's right - 9.74% during two of the most brutal weeks Wall Street's seen in years.

You may still think coal's the answer. But we know renewable energy is where the money's at.

And we've got the numbers to prove it.

Join us today, and I'll give you the full story on that wind play I just told you about. It's up 9.74% in the past two weeks, but we're expecting to see nothing less than a 42% gain by summer.

To a new way of life, and a new generation of wealth...

Jeff

 

"Energy stocks... The only way a human is going to make any money."

-- Matt Simmons, Peak Oil's first and most vocal proponent,
and founder of the country's last pure play energy investment banking firm.

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Coal and renewables are both good investment topics but anybody who thinks either is the answer to future energy needs needs fire up a different bong. Coal adds too much carbon to the atmosphere and wind and solar aren t harvestable in the amounts needed to make a difference anytime soon. You should spend more time in your articles discussing nuclear options, as splitting water for fuel and uranium for electricity are more practical. Plus who cares if US uranium is past its peak production. Canada, Namibia, Australia, and Russia have enough uranium combined to power the planet for 1,000 years and beyond. Like I said, some of your contributers need to try a different drug

Don't bury coal just yet. We have a patented liquid sorption technology that captures 95% of the toxins, CO2 included, from coal fired power plants. We can also use the captured CO2 for the production of ethanol. Sorry but coal will be around longer than you think.

I keep scratching my head and wondering how solar will generate power at night or on a cloudy day.
There is no way to store BULK energy generated when its sunny to use later and no way to predict long term (or even short term) sustainable, continuous solar energy supply.
There is no question coal is a dead or dying duck but solar is not a direct replacement as you seem to imply.Base load replacement is what needs to be addressed and tidal power or geothermal power are your only real choices.

Respectfully Yours
Kim Lyle

You completely ignore nuclear power in this article. It currently provides some 20% of US electricity without any emissions with a 100% safety record (ie no deaths in 50 years), power 24x7x366* and at proven low cost.
The US contains enough uranium to power the plants and mining companies in the US can provide it without imports. *it's a leap year!

I find reading your articles interesting, but at times become vexed at your attempts to negate any contribution and/or progress that our energy sector is attempting to do for future energy supplies.

All the feel good ideas about wind, solar, and other alternates have merit, but are NOT the long term solution to energy requirements. It is the combination of ALL sources that will ultimately keep us warm, productive and safe.

Your articles are more and more about pushing this small sector or that and not about real solutions.

Dear Jeff,

Why would Sunflower Electric be bribing to specifically use coal? In Kansas! Natural gas, Solar, wind , Geothermal.

Thankyou

George Langevin

renewables are never going to be anything more than a small fractional part of our energy needs. To think otherwise is folly

Jeff--I suspect you've been drinking too much of that good old ethanol. Renewables will never generate more than about 10% of our energy needs. 100 square miles of solar cells--you've got to be kidding! Are these concentrator cells? There isn't that much refined silicon in the world. You better get up to speed on some of these technologies before you start to sound silly.