Tag Archives: peabody

Our planet’s carbon dioxide levels are rising at “record-breaking speed.”

Sure, the Arizona facility has been a significant source of funding for schools, infrastructure, and other public services. But the Sierra Club estimates that it has contributed to 16 premature deaths, 25 heart attacks, 300 asthma attacks, and 15 asthma emergency room visits each year. That adds up to total annual health costs of more than $127 million.

Beyond that, after natural gas prices fell, the coal-fired plant became unprofitable. So the owners of the Navajo Generating Station decided to close the plant by year’s end. Still, the Interior Department, which owns a 24-percent stake in the facility, has worked to extend a lease agreement through 2019 as it searches for another entity to operate it.

The closure won’t just shutter the plant, but also likely will close a nearby mine. Peabody, the largest coal-mining company in the U.S., began operating on Navajo land in the 1960s. Its Kayenta Mine’s biggest customer is the Navajo Generating Station.

But the mine’s demise might not be a bad thing, as it has depleted billions of gallons of water in the Navajo Aquifer and has led to water shortages for residents of the Navajo Indian Reservation.

Original source:

Our planet’s carbon dioxide levels are rising at “record-breaking speed.”

Posted in alo, Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, LG, ONA, oven, PUR, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Our planet’s carbon dioxide levels are rising at “record-breaking speed.”

The farmers who voted for Trump may be in for disappointment.

On the campaign trail, President-elect Donald Trump vowed to make the industry great again. “If I win we’re going to bring those miners back,” he said to an audience in West Virginia before donning a miner’s hat and doing a little working-in-the-coal-mine dance.

But for the coal industry — which donated about $223,000 to Trump’s campaign — reality is less rosy. Sure, shares in the bankrupt coal company Peabody soared nearly 50 percent the day after Trump’s victory. But that’s just Wall Street’s knee-jerk response. The fact is, the coal industry’s future is — at best — flat, according to analysts.

Over the last eight years, coal’s portion of the American electricity supply has dropped from half to a third, a result of falling natural gas prices, declining demand from China, and regulatory efforts to reduce carbon emissions. The best Trump can do, says Bloomberg News, is halt coal’s steep decline.

But even though Trump can’t save Big Coal, he can severely damage the planet by enabling the industry. He has promised to dismantle the Clean Power Plan, ignore the Paris climate agreement, and end investments in renewables. Just as coal can’t be revived, the planet can’t either.

Visit source:

The farmers who voted for Trump may be in for disappointment.

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, ONA, Ringer, solar, solar panels, solar power, Uncategorized, wind energy | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The farmers who voted for Trump may be in for disappointment.

Dirty money bought one coal company a whole lot of denial

mistrust fund

Dirty money bought one coal company a whole lot of denial

By on Jun 14, 2016Share

Perhaps this should come as no surprise, but there is now definitive proof that Big Coal has been secretly bankrolling climate deniers in science, media, and the government. And they’ve been doing it for years.

According to Peabody Energy’s recent bankruptcy filings and analysis by the Center for Media and Democracy, the nation’s largest coal company has funded individuals, nonprofits, and political groups that actively work to undermine government and private-sector action to address climate change. The list includes:

Willie Soon, an aerospace engineer and go-to “climate expert” for Big Oil and conservatives alike
Laurence Tribe, who received $435,000 to fight the Clean Power Plan in court
ALEC, the infamous conservative lobbying network
The Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), makers of the recent climate change-denying film Climate Hustle
The Center For The Study Of Carbon Dioxide And Global Change, whose chairman, Craig D. Idso, wrote, “Contrary to misguided assertions, political correctness, and government edicts, carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.”
Berman And Company, a public relations firm working together with conservative think tanks to release reports opposing the Clean Power Plan
Roy Spencer, academic for-hire who received $4,000 from Peabody to testify on their behalf at a hearing on the impact of carbon dioxide
The Republican Attorneys General Association, the Republican Governors Association, and the Democratic Governors Association

And there are many, many more. “These groups collectively are the heart and soul of climate denial,” Kert Davies, founder of the Climate Investigation Center, told the Guardian. “It’s the broadest list I have seen of one company funding so many nodes in the denial machine.”

Despite Peabody’s best efforts to influence politics and the public discourse, the future for the coal industry is bleak. Coal production in the U.S. is now at a 35-year low, and Peabody’s bankruptcy proceedings happen alongside fellow energy giants Arch Coal, Patriot Coal, Walter Energy, and Alpha Natural Resources. Meanwhile, prospects for renewable investments have never looked better.

Big Coal is on it’s way out — let’s hope they take their dirty money, and their climate denial, with them.

Share

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.

Get Grist in your inbox

Visit site – 

Dirty money bought one coal company a whole lot of denial

Posted in alo, ALPHA, Anchor, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, ONA, solar, solar panels, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Dirty money bought one coal company a whole lot of denial

One of the World’s Largest Coal Companies Misled Investors About Climate Change Risk, Investigation Finds

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Just days after President Barack Obama rejected the Keystone XL pipeline, environmentalists were handed another victory Monday morning when New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman released the results of an investigation that found one of the world’s largest coal companies had misled the public and its shareholders about the risks climate change could pose to its bottom line.

After several years of investigations, Schneiderman reached an agreement with Peabody Energy that won’t require the company to admit it broke the law and does not entail a fine or other penalty. Instead, Peabody must file revised shareholder disclosures to the Securities and Exchange Commission with new language acknowledging that “concerns about the environmental impacts of coal combustion…could significantly affect demand for our products or our securities.”

Climate change could pose a serious risk to investors in publicly-traded fossil fuel companies, as governments around the world move to restrict carbon emissions. Many climate change advocacy groups say those companies have an obligation to their shareholders to be transparent about how demand for their product could diminish in the near future.

According to Schneiderman’s findings, Peabody had known since at least 2013 that policies enacted in the United States and abroad to fight climate change could significantly diminish demand for coal—one of the primary sources of greenhouse gas emissions. For example, one internal projection from that year found that climate regulations could slash sales at two of the company’s US coal mines by one-third or more, according to the findings. But at the same time, the company filed disclosures with the SEC that claimed it was “not possible for Peabody to reasonably predict the impact that any such laws or regulations may have on Peabody’s results of operations, financial condition or cash flows.”

That mixed messaging, Schneiderman found, violates New York laws prohibiting false or misleading claims in the company’s financial statements.

“As a publicly traded company whose core business generates massive amounts of carbon emissions, Peabody Energy has a responsibility to be honest with its investors and the public about the risks posed by climate change, now and in the future,” Schneiderman said in a statement.

In its own response, Peabody said the agreement represented “no admission or denial of wrongdoing” and that “the company has always sought to make appropriate disclosures.”

The agreement comes just days after Schneiderman issued a subpoena to ExxonMobil, kicking off an investigation into whether the oil giant has misled investors and the public about the basic science of climate change for decades. Exxon has denied any wrongdoing. While the two investigations have some similarities, Exxon could face tougher penalties than Peabody, said Andrew Logan, director of oil and gas programs at Ceres, an investor advocacy group. The allegations against Exxon stretch back much further in time and could potentially be more serious, so the attorney general could pursue more aggressive action against the company, Logan said.

Even with the Peabody investigation over, the coal company is hardly in a happy place. Its share price has tanked 87 percent this year, squeezed by the shrinking global market for coal. Many of Peabody’s coal-industry peers are also gravely wounded. In fact, coal demand may soon hit its fastest decline in history, according to data released today by Greenpeace. And while Peabody escaped financial penalties this time around, it could still face litigation from aggrieved shareholders, Logan said.

“They’re going back in time to change what they said in their disclosure statements,” he said. “It’s a very unusual thing in the securities world, and tends to bring real liability.”

Meanwhile, the agreement could put pressure on the SEC to step up its enforcement of climate-related statements (or the lack thereof) made not only by other energy companies, but also by corporations in other climate-sensitive sectors, such as property insurance and agriculture.

“On the one hand, this action has been directed at two companies. But the reasons they were targeted could be applied to whole other industries,” Logan said. “This is a huge victory for investors.”

See original:

One of the World’s Largest Coal Companies Misled Investors About Climate Change Risk, Investigation Finds

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on One of the World’s Largest Coal Companies Misled Investors About Climate Change Risk, Investigation Finds

Greenpeace wants to keep coal in the ground by buying up mines and power plants

Greenpeace wants to keep coal in the ground by buying up mines and power plants

By on 15 Oct 2015commentsShare

Cheap coal isn’t usually good news for the environment. When fossil fuel prices tank, it’s a lot harder to convince governments (and the private sector) to invest in renewables. But if you’re Greenpeace Sweden, cheap coal isn’t so bad. Cheap coal means you can afford to buy a German lignite mine and a handful of coal-fired power plants.

But wait, you’re thinking, Greenpeace hates coal. Lignite is brown coal. What are they going to do? Just let it sit there? Avast, fools!

Wily, discerning reader, that’s exactly what they’re going to do. And it’s not an awful idea. A good way to ensure dollars spent on “keeping it in the ground” actually go toward keeping fossil fuels unburned is to buy a bunch of fossil fuels and keep them in the ground.

The idea isn’t completely new. Bård Harstad of Northwestern University described a similar supply side solution in 2012, and data analyst Matt Frost proposed a related coal retirement plan in 2013. Frost suggested that one way for the U.S. to curb carbon emissions would be to allow activists and energy sector competitors to purchase coal reserves from the federal government — the largest owner of coal in the country — with the intent of letting the reserves remain untouched. He writes:

Strategically shrewd “investors” in unmined coal, motivated by the desire to prevent its mining and prop up its price, would start buying up tracts with the most economically viable reserves and continue down the supply curve, ideally until the spot price for coal meets that of natural gas. This would encourage the fuel-switching that is already underway in the U.S., thanks to the shale gas boom and recent regulations restricting coal.

Frost’s idea is slightly different from that of Greenpeace Sweden in that it’s slightly broader and more forward-looking. All else held constant, buying up coal reserves (and not doing anything with them) should result in higher coal prices — which makes things like natural gas (and renewable sources) more competitive. Of course, gas isn’t a perfect solution, but it’s certainly better than coal, and you can also imagine eventually applying the logic to shale fields, as well.

Greenpeace may not have an eye toward the macroeconomics at play, but the main thrust of the argument is the same: A dollar spent on literally keeping fossil fuels in the ground is a dollar well spent. Frost’s proposal continues:

Today, a climate activist who hopes to convert money into carbon mitigation can choose from among several different bank shots, such as political engagement, purchasing carbon offsets, or investing in alternative energy. In all these approaches, uncertainty and complexity dilute the carbon-reducing value of each dollar spent. Buying undeveloped fossil fuel and preventing it from ever being combusted results in both the direct benefit of sequestering the CO2 and the secondary effect of nudging prices upward by reducing coal available to other buyers. Private citizens and philanthropists could use their own funds to lock up coal reserves and corner the market, rather than lavishing money on political operatives and consultants and launching advocacy projects of dubious impact.

Of course, plenty of variables are relevant here. It’s not immediately obvious that the owners of coal — at least, the federal owners of coal — are the relevant players, for example. Peabody Energy doesn’t necessarily care about what the U.S. government does with the 88 billion tons of coal reserves that it owns, because Peabody already has 8.2 billion tons of coal reserves all to itself; unless, of course, the U.S. magically sells off the entirety of its reserves to Greenpeace for pennies on the dollar.

Which is also to say that the effectiveness of supply side coal retirement plans depends on their uptake at a pretty massive scale. We wouldn’t expect the purchase of a single coal mine or plant to affect the entire energy landscape.

If anything, though, the policy is worth a perusal — and in the meantime, it’s encouraging to see NGOs giving the concept a shot in other countries. If anyone wants to go halfsies on a German coal mine, let me know.

Source:

Coal Retirement Plan

, MWFrost.com.

Share

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.

Please

enable JavaScript

to view the comments.

Get Grist in your inbox

Advertisement

Continue reading – 

Greenpeace wants to keep coal in the ground by buying up mines and power plants

Posted in alternative energy, Anchor, Citizen, Cyber, FF, GE, ONA, organic, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Greenpeace wants to keep coal in the ground by buying up mines and power plants

Coal company demonstrates impressive feats of climate denial

Coal company demonstrates impressive feats of climate denial

By on 17 Jul 2015commentsShare

“[T]here are no demonstrated foreseeable effects of any GHG emissions.” While these words may have composed a halfway reasonable sentence a few decades ago, flat-out denial of anthropogenic climate change is less in vogue today. Even ExxonMobil acknowledges that greenhouse gases need to be cut.

But not Peabody Energy. The world’s biggest private-sector coal company is still clinging desperately to unconditional climate denial. The company’s position was demonstrated all too clearly in 71 pages of comments it submitted to the White House Council on Environmental Quality this spring, arguing against considering greenhouse gas emissions as part of analyses conducted under the National Environmental Policy Act.

Here are three more of the most absurd quotes from Peabody’s document.

1. “While the benefits of carbon dioxide are proven, the alleged risks of climate change are contrary to observed data, are based on admitted speculation, and lack adequate scientific basis.”

There is a 97 percent consensus on the science of climate change, but the Peabonator apparently thinks that “adequate scientific basis” means hitting triple digits. Doubting the science positions the company squarely among the ranks of obfuscators like Fred Seitz, the same goonish ringleader who worked on the atomic bomb, fought to discredit the link between smoking and lung cancer, and remains an avid skeptic of anthropogenic climate change. Immaculate moral compass on that one.

2. “Increases in CO2 emissions worldwide have led to prosperity, not to the predicted global temperature increases or adverse effects.”

Try telling that to climate refugees from drowning Pacific Islands or Syrian farmers hit by the worst drought in recorded history. Unless “prosperity” has somehow become synonymous with “relentless suffering,” it’s a mind-bogglingly hard sell to argue that CO2 emissions in their own right are good for much more than absorbing and re-emitting solar radiation.

3. “U.S. coal use has a strong relationship with increased life expectancy.”

Here’s the accompanying chart from Peabody:

Peabody Energy

Bask in the sweet, sweet warmth of mistaking correlation for causation. Colorful lines are indeed helpful for catching a policymaker’s eye — good call, Peab’ — but there’s just no reason to believe these lines have anything to do with one another. Consider these correlation charts, from author Tyler Vigen:

Tyler VigenTyler Vigen

And yet nobody’s arguing that Nic Cage is pushing those people into the pools. (Right?)

It’s an odd world in which such powerful interests are blinded by such massive horse blinkers. And you thought the Seattle earthquake was terrifying.

Source:
Peabody Energy to White House: Greenhouse Gas a ‘Non-Existent Harm’

, DeSmogBlog.

Share

Please

enable JavaScript

to view the comments.

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work. A Grist Special Series

Meat: What’s smart, what’s right, what’s next

Get Grist in your inbox

Read more: 

Coal company demonstrates impressive feats of climate denial

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, oven, PUR, Radius, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Coal company demonstrates impressive feats of climate denial

Ten Years Later – Hoda Kotb

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

Ten Years Later

Six People Who Faced Adversity and Transformed Their Lives

Hoda Kotb

Genre: Spirituality

Price: $16.99

Publish Date: January 15, 2013

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Seller: Simon and Schuster Digital Sales Inc.


New York Times bestselling author and beloved Today show co-anchor tells the incredible stories of people who, when faced with impossibly challenging or tragic life situations, persevere—and even thrive— and asks, What if you, facing a game-changing event or decision right now, could see ten years into the future? Through years of perseverance, purpose, and passion, Hoda Kotb landed a spot with Kathie Lee on the Today show, won numerous journalism awards, and gained valuable life lessons. Now, after captivating readers in her blockbuster memoir Hoda , she turns to stories about others who have undergone personal transformation against great odds. In Ten Years Later , Hoda chronicles six amazing stories by identifying a game-changing event in her subjects’ lives and then revisiting those lives a decade later. We meet Amy Barnes, who took the leap to escape an abusive relationship, lost an astounding 340 pounds, and now encourages women like her to cultivate their mental and physical strength. There’s also Ron Clifford, a civilian hero of 9/11, who saved the life of a burn victim in the wreckage of the towers—only to learn the same day that his beloved sister and niece were passengers on Flight 175. Patrick Weiland, a former network producer who won a Peabody at age twenty-two and later spiraled into drug addition, demonstrates the power of a second chance. Ten Years Later is a firsthand testament to the enduring power of the human spirit. Through inspirational life stories, Hoda shows how adversity can unleash our best qualities: resilience, perseverance, gratitude, empathy, and creativity. This book will inspire you to believe in the future, no matter how dark the present, and tap into the ability to reach your highest potential.

Link: 

Ten Years Later – Hoda Kotb

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Ten Years Later – Hoda Kotb

As another coal mine closes, the government says to expect more closures in the future

As another coal mine closes, the government says to expect more closures in the future

Peabody Energy announced yesterday that it was closing its Willow Lake coal mine, a facility that employed around 400 people in southern Illinois. Earlier this month, one of those employees was killed by a piece of mining equipment, a factor cited in the closure. But the reason coal companies like Peabody are shutting down mines and declaring bankruptcy is simpler: economics.

I wrote a piece earlier this week at Slate.com that is sort of a beginner’s guide to why coal is doomed over the long term. It is called “Coal Is Doomed,” just to get the point across. The argument, in short: Coal is both unhealthy (over the short and long term) and getting less cheap compared to natural gas and renewables. To be even passably healthy, use of coal needs to get more expensive. Even the industry acknowledges the need to be cleaner. And that’s the game. (The full piece is a lot more words, so you should go read that, at some point.)

denverjeffrey

Farewell, my friends.

The Peabody closure is still on the leading edge of coal’s decline and may in fact be an outlier. But a new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office [PDF] largely echoes the argument above: Coal is slipping, badly.

Two broad trends are affecting power companies’ decisions related to coal-fueled generating units — recent environmental regulations and changing market conditions, such as the recent decrease in the price of natural gas. Regarding retirements, forecasts GAO reviewed based on current policies project that power companies may retire 15 to 24 percent of coal-fueled generating capacity by 2035 — an amount consistent with GAO’s analysis. GAO’s statistical analysis, examining data on power companies that have announced plans to retire coal-fueled units, found that these power companies are more likely to retire units that are older, smaller, and more polluting. … Regarding new coal-fueled units, these are likely to be less polluting as they must incorporate advanced technologies to reduce emissions of regulated pollutants. Coal-fueled capacity may decline in the future as less capacity is expected to be built than is expected to retire.

Deeming coal plants to be “less polluting” requires containment of two sorts of pollutants. The first are those that can cause acute and long-term health problems: particulates, mercury, and so on. The second are those that contribute to global warming — specifically, carbon dioxide. For years, proponents of “clean coal” — the hollow industry mantra aimed at reframing the toxic rocks — have touted carbon capture and storage as a solution to the second type of pollution. The idea is that coal-burning plants could, perhaps obviously, capture and then store the carbon dioxide they emit. But as noted in The New York Times yesterday, that’s unlikely to happen, mostly due to economics.

Carbon capture and storage could be a boon for the gas and power industry because — if plants could be built economically — it offers a way to use fossil fuels like coal and gas to generate electricity for decades while also meeting greenhouse gas targets. But today, building a gas or coal-fired power station equipped with carbon capture apparatus roughly doubles the cost. That is a big problem now, especially in Europe, which is paring back its commitment to green energy. …

Carbon capture is touted by organizations like the International Energy Agency as a major component of the global effort to reduce greenhouse gases. The I.E.A. calls for 100 carbon capture projects by 2020 and 3,400 by 2050.

But those goals seem more appropriate to a few years ago, when there was money to burn. The Global CCS Institute, an industry group in Canberra, reports that there are only eight large carbon capture projects operating in the world today. In fact, they are so rare that some executives in the carbon capture industry have never seen one. …

Further hurting the prospects for carbon capture are fears that the gas will somehow bubble up to the surface. These concerns, along with a lack of onshore oil and gas production, mean that it is hard to dispose of gas on land in Western Europe. Depleted North Sea oil fields are a more acceptable repository, but pumping CO2 under the sea is also more expensive.

The numbers don’t add up. Or, rather, they do add up — just to smaller and smaller amounts. The United States is still the second-largest user of coal in the world, behind China. But as the math and the GAO suggest, coal use will keep going down. Which will mean companies like Peabody are going to have to start closing mines that aren’t outliers — until, eventually, Peabody itself closes its doors.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

Read more:

Business & Technology

,

Climate & Energy

,

Politics

Also in Grist

Please enable JavaScript to see recommended stories

Visit link:  

As another coal mine closes, the government says to expect more closures in the future

Posted in GE, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on As another coal mine closes, the government says to expect more closures in the future