Obama’s Attack on Coal-Fired Electrical Power

Obama’s Attack on Coal-Fired Electrical Power:
I find it somewhat surprising how little press the ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers) Report card on the nation’s infrastructure received when it came out in 2013.

Considering how poorly our nation’s infrastructure faired on this report, I would have thought that the press would have been all over it.
Bridges, which have received a lot of press for needing upgrading or replacement nationwide, actually received one of the highest grades at a C+.
Overall, the nation’s infrastructure received a D+, nothing to brag about.
If I had ever dared to bring home a report card like that to show my mommy, I would have died an early death and wouldn’t be writing this right now.
While everything on this report card is important, one of the biggest concerns is the Energy infrastructure, which received a D+.
The energy grade includes the electrical grid, natural gas and oil. 
Of the three, the electrical grid is obviously of the greatest import and the one that we should be the most concerned about. 
A large percentage of our electrical grid is aged; having outlived its 50 year intended life expectancy.

.....Coal accounts for about 40 percent of our country’s electrical power generation.
Of the 600 coal-fired power plants in the country, about half of them have already outlived their designed life-expectancy.
Another 20 percent of them are within ten years of the end of their programmed life.
That means that at least in theory, our country’s electrical power industry needs to replace about 400 of these within the next ten years, just to maintain our current electrical power production.
Here’s where the problem comes in. Obama’s EPA has created regulations making it virtually impossible to replace those coal-fired plants with newer coal-fired plants. While the EPA isn’t saying that they can’t be built, their new regulations are so stringent, that it is driving the cost up to the point where it is no longer financially feasible.
While Obama wants solar and wind power to replace coal, that’s not all that financially feasible either.
The technology hasn’t reached the point where it need to, in order to be able to take over our country’s energy needs.
Coal costs 4.1 cents per kilowatt hour to produce, where wind costs 4.3 cents and solar a whopping 7.7 cents. 
Natural gas, which seems to be the most likely alternative to coal, is running at 5.2 cents per kilowatt hour to produce.