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ACC Live – Some 200 nations may sign a "modest" Kyoto II climate treaty, say December 2014 media reports from Lima, Peru. But will developing nations agree to stop using coal to generate electricity? No. Curtail economic growth? No. Cease emitting carbon dioxide (CO2)? Maybe, but only a little, sometime in the future, when it is more convenient to do so, without binding commitments. Then why would they sign a treaty?

Primarily because they expect to get free energy technology transfers and billions of dollars a year in climate "mitigation, adaptation and reparation" money from Western nations that they blame (and which blame themselves) for the "dangerous climate change," rising seas and "extreme weather" that they claim are "unprecedented" and due to CO2 emissions during the 150 years since the Industrial Revolution began.
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CNBC – With new environmental rules looming this week, coal-driven power plants are closing all over the United States, and jobs are going with them.

Utilities have been shuttering plants almost since regulatory changes were announced back in December 2011, but the number of closures has spiked recently, and several more plants are scheduled to close in the next few years. April 15 marks the deadline for power plants in the United States to adhere to the Environmental Protection Agency's standards on the amount of mercury and other toxins they emit.
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ACC Live – I was recently interviewed by CNS News and asked for comment on the joint Sierra Club, Bloomberg media event (held on April 8th). In this event former NY mayor Michael Bloomberg and senior Sierra Club staffers, like CEO Michael Brune, exulted in their ability to pour tens of millions of dollars into misleading pressure campaigns, aimed at putting coal industry workers into unemployment lines. The gist of their recently expanded campaign is to spend Mr. Bloomberg’s $80 million, along with tens of millions of matching donations, "to shutter 50 percent of (coal) plants by 2017."

As I noted in both a CNSNews.com article and blog post there must be a fundamental sickness lurking in any mind or heart that takes such joy in shutting down productive, beneficial businesses. Especially businesses that provide Americans with an essential service like abundant, affordable, reliable, and increasingly clean electricity.
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Mining.com – Years of declining efficiency in the coal industry may be finally coming to an end, especially in the U.S., where miners based in the country’s top producing regions have stabilized or even increased productivity at both surface and underground coal operations in the past two years, a study shows.

According to SNL Energy's latest report, coal mine productivity — a measure of the clean tons of coal a mine produces per employee hour — has increased even in regions where output has fallen, such as in Central Appalachia, where most of the U.S. coal is produced.
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ACC Live – This article from University of Guelph Professor of Economics, Ross McKitrick points out the flawed reasoning behind the concept of "Earth Hour," where people around the planet are supposed to turn out their lights and stop using energy and electricity for an hour at a specific time each year. Earth Hour organizers claim that having people stop using energy in this fashion will help "take a first step toward changing climate change." However, as Professor McKitrick quite rightly argues, Earth Hour celebrates an anti-human, backward, and regressive notion that humanity would be better off if it used less electricity. In reality, it is abundant and affordable electricity that has brought billions of people up and out of poverty, reduced sickness, and saved multiple billions of lives.
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ACC Live – You've got to admit, liberal are masters at describing every initiative they launch as "the moral thing to do." Their campaign for draconian energy regulations and a new global warming treaty is no exception. Protecting people, wildlife and ecosystems from climate catastrophes is the greatest moral cause of our time, alarmist scientists, activists, politicians, bureaucrats, clerics and journalists insist. Rubbish.

It has nothing to do with morality. It’s all about money, power and control. It narrowly defines "morality" to ignore the incredible benefits that fossil fuels and electricity bring to people everywhere – while dismissing the enormous harm their policies will wreak on families and ecological values that they profess to care so much about. And it makes no mention of the fact that they will rarely, if ever, be held accountable for their falsehoods and fraudulent science, or the damage and deaths they cause.
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ACC Live – Interesting discussion on FOX Business channel. Tom Borelli and John Pippy, CEO of the Pennsylvania Coal Alliance discuss the "fundamental transformation" of American energy production.
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This post is a little late, but it is still well worth sharing. Thanks to Dale Jr. and his sister Kelley for taking the time to recognize the important role that women play in America’s energy industry.
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ACC Live – China is the world’s largest producer and consumer of coal. However, there have been repeated predictions that China’s use of coal will substantially decline during the next decade due to environmental concerns. That China should be a prime target of these concerns should be no surprise since China produces and consumes almost as much coal as the rest of the world combined. A recent survey found that China accounts for 46 percent of the world’s coal production and 49 percent of consumption. To put this in context, China produces nearly four times as much coal as the second largest producer, the United States. Coal accounts for approximately 70 percent of Chinese energy consumption and this use has held steady, if not increased, during the last 30 years.
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Seeking Alpha - The U.S. Coal Industry has been on a bumpy ride in the recent past. Leading U.S. coal companies, including Peabody, Alpha Natural Resources, Arch Coal and Walter, have lost significant amounts of market capitalization. Lower natural gas prices, lower exports and strict environmental regulations have adversely affected U.S. coal companies. Despite the ongoing challenges in the coal market, I believe coal will remain an important component of the global energy portfolio in the long term, and coal market conditions will improve in the future, as oversupply will be removed from the market and due to the expected increase in natural gas prices. Below I will briefly discuss the recently released quarter coal report by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) and earnings outlook for U.S. coal companies; the U.S. coal companies are scheduled to report 1Q15 results later this month. U.S. coal companies, in the upcoming earnings season, are likely to update on the announced production cuts and on their cost-cut efforts.
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American Coal Council
1101 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W., Ste. 300, Washington, DC USA 20004
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