FreedomTalks

The Texas Public Policy Foundation has an excellent article on its website about the Governor’s plan to build 11 new coal powered plants in Texas.

Texas will need more electric power in the coming years—lots more—and coal will be critical to meeting those power needs.

Coal is a secure energy source, since the United States contains more than a quarter of the world’s recoverable reserves, equaling a 250-year supply at current rates of consumption. As a result, coal-fired power plants generate 52 percent of the electricity in the United States.

Researchers at Pennsylvania State University estimated the economic benefits of coal. They estimated that by 2015 coal-fired electric power generation would produce more than $1 trillion annually in gross domestic product (GDP), $360 billion in additional household income and nearly 7 million jobs. By comparison, replacing 33 percent of coal capacity with natural gas and renewables would reduce GDP by $166 billion and household income by $64 billion, while cutting employment by 1.2 million jobs.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 29th, 2006 at 5:18 pm and is filed under Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.