Thursday, April 24, 2008
How I Spent Earth Day 2008
by Tom Bozzo
I had the rare experience of riding along one of the marvels of modern railway engineering, the Union Pacific's main line in Nebraska, over which some 400 million tons of coal from the South Powder River Basin in Wyoming (and plenty of other freight) travel over three and four tracks to a power plant near you. Stephen Karlson calls it the "world's finest railroad," not at all unjustifiably considering that these 20,000-gross-ton coal unit trains and dozens more like them every day move at astonishingly low costs per ton-mile. (It doesn't hurt that the coal is, for the most part, rolling gently downhill.)
Seeing all this coal does slap one in the face with the magnitude of any significant transition away from coal-burning for electricity generation. If nothing else, any major reduction in coal shipments to U.S. power plants in the near term would probably just be offset by export volume.
I had the rare experience of riding along one of the marvels of modern railway engineering, the Union Pacific's main line in Nebraska, over which some 400 million tons of coal from the South Powder River Basin in Wyoming (and plenty of other freight) travel over three and four tracks to a power plant near you. Stephen Karlson calls it the "world's finest railroad," not at all unjustifiably considering that these 20,000-gross-ton coal unit trains and dozens more like them every day move at astonishingly low costs per ton-mile. (It doesn't hurt that the coal is, for the most part, rolling gently downhill.)
Seeing all this coal does slap one in the face with the magnitude of any significant transition away from coal-burning for electricity generation. If nothing else, any major reduction in coal shipments to U.S. power plants in the near term would probably just be offset by export volume.
Labels: Energy, Trains Planes and Automobiles
