Word: coal
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...every seat Take a Hike Destinations to restore your sense of wonder spent working with something as visceral as the blues has left him with no inclination to join the other immortals on music's Parnassus. Instead, he has chosen to remain right here with us, at the coal face of humanity, mining our rawest emotions to fuel a music that has the power to warm any heart...
...India needs the nuclear power desperately. It?s on track to become the world?s most populous nation and in need of power to fuel its surging economy. What?s more, the country?s own coal is particularly dirty and polluting and no one concerned about global warming wants to see India stay as reliant on fossil fuels. The U.S. is eager to cement its ties with India as well as reap the economic benefits of selling billions of dollars in nuclear equipment to India at a time when America?s nuclear power industry hasn?t built a new plant...
...coal can look and burn like regular coal. The IRS rule for transforming coal into synfuel--and getting the tax credit--requires only that the substance be chemically altered in some way. The alchemy that satisfies the IRS is a simple process: some plants spray newly mined coal with diesel fuel, pine-tar resin, limestone, acid or other substances--a practice that industry critics call "spray and pray." Other operators mix coal-mining waste with chemicals, coat it with latex and blend it with untreated coal to form briquettes. (For an earlier story on the scheme, see "The Great Energy...
Once a few pioneers started reaping the tax credits, it wasn't long before plants using various techniques sprouted next to coal-burning power plants, which buy the so-called synfuel and use it as they would any other coal. Those synfuel operations were a far cry from the state-of-the-art plants that Congress had envisioned as performing a more radical transformation. Instead, they were flimsy facilities that could be easily dismantled and moved to other locations...
Today about 55 such plants around the U.S. process 125 million tons of coal or, in many cases, coal waste from an earlier mining era. For owners and operators, the whole point isn't creating a profitable new energy resource for the U.S.; it's about collecting the tax subsidy. Progress Energy Inc. of Raleigh, N.C., which owns electric utilities that serve portions of the Carolinas and Florida, reported in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that in 2002-04 its synfuel-production losses added up to $400 million. No problem: the company claimed $852 million...