Warren Buffett's Green Cash Washes Over Coal Country

[question everything]

RAVENSWOOD, W.Va.—No state is more reliant on coal for electricity than West Virginia. Yet a clean-energy industrial project rising on the banks of the Ohio River is challenging coal’s stranglehold on the Mountain State. Behind the project: Warren Buffett and state Republican lawmakers. It’s a surprising base of support in a region where political power and wealth has long derived from coal mining.

Two of Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway companies are teaming up to build a manufacturing hub that will include a $500 million factory to produce titanium for aircraft parts. It will be powered by solar panels and rechargeable batteries. The Buffett name and the promise of 300 jobs helped the companies overcome resistance in a state where coal provides more than 90% of the electricity.

West Virginia has in the past year approved some $400 million in funds for three renewable-energy projects, including Berkshire’s. The Republican-led legislature, eager to create jobs, has passed new legislation that benefits renewable energy. Accelerating the shift are billions in federal subsidies to clean-energy entrepreneurs and manufacturers from the Biden administration’s new infrastructure and climate laws.

The federal money—tied to industrial production that brings jobs—is beginning to sway even the most coal-centric areas of the country. The funds have reframed the renewable-energy debate away from global warming and environmental protection, and toward economic development. That’s brought on board many Republicans in the GOP-majority states of Appalachia, where green energy projects backed by the federal subsidies are drawing billions of dollars in investments.

(snip)

To pave the way for the Berkshire project, the Republican-led West Virginia state legislature passed a law last year that bypassed the state’s powerful pro-coal utility regulator.

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[NNadir]

1. Well he can certainly afford to lose $500 million on a bad idea.

If the plant is built, it will ultimately run on coal. If it doesn't it will fail.

It's clearly an FFC process plant, requiring heat to be continuous.

[Think. Again.]

2. West Virginia residents...

...got royally screwed over by Manchin when he blew that state's chance to become THE leading renewable energy state during the IRA and BBB negotiations.

All to protect his pathetic little mom & pop scrap coal company (and his fossil fuel johns).

[LiberaBlueDem]

3. Rich guy invests in solar?

Why doesn't he invest in nuclear? He must believe in solar as the future for clean energy and nuclear as a loser.

[hunter]

4. It's all lipstick on a pig.

Hybrid natural gas / solar / wind energy systems won't save the world.

[NNadir]

5. So the theory here is that wealth is wisdom?

There are a lot of people who think that solar is a winner; but they can't do numbers. After trillions of dollars, endless cheering, and the destruction of huge swathes of virgin land for reactionary forms of energy that did nothing to address climate change the solar and wind industry, combined, produced just 12 Exajoules of the 624 Exajoules of energy in 2021, the last year reported in the World Energy Outlook.

This is less than half of the energy produced by nuclear energy, using largely mid 20th century technology, has been producing in an environment of catcalls, and very dubious bad reasoning of which Appeal to Authority is just one example.

As for what is a loser, I would say all of humanity is a loser, because the trillions squandered on solar and wind with wild mindless cheering left the entire planet on fire.

Numbers don't lie. People lie, to themselves and each other, but numbers don't lie:

The trillions squandered on cult bad thinking:

Source: UNEP/Bloomberg: Global Trends in Renewable Energy.

I manually entered the figures in the bar graph in figure 8 to see how much money we've thrown at this destructive affectation since 2004 (up to 2019): It works out to 3.2633 trillion dollars, more than President Biden has wisely recommended for the improvement of all infrastructure in the entire United States.

The result of squandering this money for reactionary bourgeois bullshit:


Source: 2022 IEA World Energy Outlook Table A 1a, page 435

The fact that Bill Gates is funding Terrapower, a nuclear company (not the best by any stretch, by the way) does not make nuclear energy better than the industrialization of wilderness by wind and solar thugs who can't think or read numbers.

Nuclear energy is superior because nuclear power plants last a long time, do not rely on back up from fossil fuels, have the highest energy to mass ratios of any form of energy, and works on minimal surface area, with minimal material requirements. It has nothing to do with Bill Gates, just as the solar crap is not superior to everything else because an old billionaire invests in it.

The plant is an FFC plant. It requires high temperatures to maintain molten salts continuously.

The solar junk is just advertising. Were the plant to rely on solar energy and slave sourced batteries, it would collapse. Like the fossil fuel sales people and sales bots who advertise fossil fuels as "hydrogen" this plant is being advertised as solar, but if it runs with any kind of reliability, it will run on coal.

After half a century of "solar will save us" bull, the planet is on fire, and since 1976, when people started into this deadly antinuke crap led by the moron Amory Lovins down the bottom rabbit hole, the concentration of the fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide in the planetary atmosphere has risen 90 ppm. This is the result of the "victory" of bad antinuke thinking.

The "victory" of fools has proved to be a disaster for every living thing on this planet.

A molten salt plant running on solar will either be an economic failure, or it will run on coal or another fossil fuel. Guess which will happen.

Have a nice day.

[BlueIn_W_Pa]

13. Yup

A molten salt plant running on solar will either be an economic failure, or it will run on coal or another fossil fuel.

Only way solar would work is if they destroyed all the forests to put up toxic waste created panels everywhere. Strip mining entire mountaintops are bad for coal, but doing the same for solar is somehow better?

[LiberaBlueDem]

6. All this nuclear will save the world is gobbledegook

What we have here are bankers and people who know money (not my favorite people) making decisions about where to invest energy dollars. They are investing in solar, not nuclear. That tells ya something, eh?

Well, nuclear will be around forever becase the waste is almost forever. Too bad with the 50 years of all the best scientists working on the waste problem, the best they can come up with is bury it.

[hunter]

7. They know damned well that solar and wind power are not an existential threat to fossil fuels...

... and will only prolong our dependence on fossil fuels, doing nothing, absolutely nothing, to reduce the total amount of greenhouse gasses humans end up dumping in the atmosphere, or even delay the final reckonings of our fossil use.

Natural gas is a far greater threat to our planet's natural environment and our civilization than nuclear power.

I consider natural gas the most dangerous energy source because people wrongly believe "it's better than coal" and it supports their solar and wind fantasies.

Buffet is a natural gas guy and a billionaire.

Fuck him.

[NNadir]

8. Um, nothing is going to "save the world."

Especially when we hear selective attention and stupidity represented as fact.

Ignorance has won. The world is in flames.

Today, as was the case yesterday, and the day before that, and every day stretching back decades, and every day going forward while people whine about so called "nuclear waste," 19,000 people will die from air pollution. That's seven million people per year.

I have yet to see one of the antinukes who are so busy destroying the planet with deadly rhetoric who can establish that so called "nuclear waste" - valuable used nuclear fuel - in the entire history of commercial nuclear energy, going back 70 years, has killed as many people as will die from air pollution in the next six hours from the illiterate fear and ignorance of antinukes. That would be about 4500 deaths.

Only reputable peer reviewed scientific papers will be accepted as evidence. (An example of such a reference, with an excerpt, showing how many people are killed each year by air pollution, a product of antinuke ignorance, is at the end of this post.)

Antinukes are exactly like antivaxxers, inasmuch as they scream out their ignorance in such a way as to kill people. The main difference between them, is that antinukes have killed vastly more people.

As it happens, most of the constituents of used nuclear fuel, all of which are potentially valuable, have half-lives and neutron capture cross sections. The lead, mercury, and indeed the uranium, never mind all of the organic combustion products from fossil fuels, about which antinukes couldn't care less, no matter how many people they kill, do not have half-lives.

People making illiterate statements about what "scientists" do and do not know have obviously never opened a science book in their lives. If they are here to announce that there is someone who knows what to do with fossil fuel waste, which has left the planet in flames, about which they have nothing to say and couldn't care less, fossil fuel waste while we wait for the insipid reactionary so called "renewable energy" nirvana that did not come, is not here, and won't come, they are invited to demonstrate as much. Once again, only legitimate peer reviewed scientific literature can be accepted.

For the record, my son is a nuclear scientist, working to save the world from the victory of fear and ignorance. He knows as I know, all about used nuclear fuel.

The difference between what immoral people, who have never been exposed to a differential equation of any type, never mind Bateman equations, call "nuclear waste," and fossil fuel waste is that fossil fuel waste kills people, in vast numbers, without a whimper from the people proudly shouting out their ignorance of the nature of used nuclear fuel.

Antinukes are very much like antivaxxers, although truth be told, antivaxxers have never come close to killing as many people as antinukes kill every damned day.

An example of an (open) scientific paper from one of the most prominent and respected scientific journals follows. It covers all major causes of death on this planet, compiled by medical and scientific thinkers from around the world. The reader is invited to show any evidence that used nuclear fuel has killed anyone, at any time, anywhere in numbers that approach even remotely, the death toll from antinuke ignorance in the next six hours.

Source: Global burden of 87 risk factors in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019 (Lancet Volume 396, Issue 10258, 17–23 October 2020, Pages 1223-1249). This study is a huge undertaking and the list of authors from around the world is rather long. These studies are always open sourced; and I invite people who want to carry on about Fukushima to open it and search the word "radiation." It appears once. Radon, a side product brought to the surface by fracking while we all wait for the grand so called "renewable energy" nirvana that did not come, is not here and won't come, appears however: Household radon, from the decay of natural uranium, which has been cycling through the environment ever since oxygen appeared in the Earth's atmosphere.

Here is what it says about air pollution deaths in the 2019 Global Burden of Disease Survey, if one is too busy to open it oneself because one is too busy carrying on about Fukushima:

The top five risks for attributable deaths for females were high SBP (5·25 million [95% UI 4·49–6·00] deaths, or 20·3% [17·5–22·9] of all female deaths in 2019), dietary risks (3·48 million [2·78–4·37] deaths, or 13·5% [10·8–16·7] of all female deaths in 2019), high FPG (3·09 million [2·40–3·98] deaths, or 11·9% [9·4–15·3] of all female deaths in 2019), air pollution (2·92 million [2·53–3·33] deaths or 11·3% [10·0–12·6] of all female deaths in 2019), and high BMI (2·54 million [1·68–3·56] deaths or 9·8% [6·5–13·7] of all female deaths in 2019). For males, the top five risks differed slightly. In 2019, the leading Level 2 risk factor for attributable deaths globally in males was tobacco (smoked, second-hand, and chewing), which accounted for 6·56 million (95% UI 6·02–7·10) deaths (21·4% [20·5–22·3] of all male deaths in 2019), followed by high SBP, which accounted for 5·60 million (4·90–6·29) deaths (18·2% [16·2–20·1] of all male deaths in 2019). The third largest Level 2 risk factor for attributable deaths among males in 2019 was dietary risks (4·47 million [3·65–5·45] deaths, or 14·6% [12·0–17·6] of all male deaths in 2019) followed by air pollution (ambient particulate matter and ambient ozone pollution, accounting for 3·75 million [3·31–4·24] deaths (12·2% [11·0–13·4] of all male deaths in 2019), and then high FPG (3·14 million [2·70–4·34] deaths, or 11·1% [8·9–14·1] of all male deaths in 2019).

Have a nice day tomorrow.

[LiberaBlueDem]

9. Air pollution

There must be 100 sources of air pollution. Number 1 would be car exhaust from burning refined oils. Lead was taken out of gas some years ago, so it's a little better.

Coal burning is big. That's why most everyone here is for solar because solar beats coal in every way. People against solar must be for coal, eh?

As for nuclear waste pollution, it is invisible, tasteless and tightly controlled. One wonders what if we controlled coal as much as nuclear it would end coal pollution?

Most air pollution comes from hundreds of human activities, forest fires, volcanos and building materials.

It is really quite unfair to blame those who are anti-nukes for all the air pollution.

[NNadir]

11. Now I've heard everything.

The implication is that fossil fuels are not the real problem, it's volcanoes.

Do let me know more about how it is possible to contain billions of tons of coal waste in gaseous form and in the form of toxic aerosols by "tight controls."

As for the theory that people eat used nuclear fuel, please provide some insight onto how large this problem is. What is the death toll from people tasting used nuclear fuel?

All antinukes, 100%, are apologists for fossil fuels to my mind, but often it's subtle, nowhere near as obvious.

Volcanoes, forest fires, building materials...

This is far worse than anything I've ever seen in overt denial.

Unbelievable.

[hatrack]

10. Warren "Climate Change Risks Are Hugely Exaggerated" Buffett?

Warren "I'll Be Dead Relatively Soon So I Don't Have To Give A Shit" Buffet?

That Warren Buffett?

?t=2

[LiberaBlueDem]

12. Air pollution #2

Asbestos, formaldehyde, glues, solvents, lead in water pipes, + 100 others

Denial, in a very unscientific way of pollutants, all the while hating on solar and anyone who supports solar against coal in the defense of nuclear power and denial of the dangers of nuclear power -- well, i just do not get it.

[BlueIn_W_Pa]

14. I'm all for local pollution control because we can control that

and thanks to the Clean Air Act, coal plants had to put in scrubbers to clean the exhaust and move to low sulfur coal. It's a lot easier to control pollution at it's source than any other way. Nat Gas plants are some 8 times cleaner than coal.

GHG control to help climate change? The US can't do anything of substance on that front because of SE Asia. That's just simple math.

Solar? I mean, of course there's a place for it, but it simply doesn't generate enough power to replace coal/gas. It just doesn't. So we must get nuclear going (and the reactors that use nuclear waster as a fuel) and just as important, enact laws to reduce energy consumption.

[hunter]

15. You are completely ignoring greenhouse gasses which are carelessly dumped everywhere.

That's worse than other sorts of pollution in the long run and will ultimately cause the death and suffering of billions of humans and the extinction of many species. This happening now, at an accelerating rate.

Our world is burning.

Solar and wind power are incapable of displacing fossil fuels entirely.

Quitting fossil fuels entirely is something we must do.

How do you propose we do that?

Aggressive renewable energy programs in places like California, Denmark and Germany have failed, in the case of Germany quite spectacularly.

At this point in the argument solar and wind enthusiasts generally start waving their arms about magical batteries and synergies that are just that -- magical.

Magical thinking will not save us.

Like it or not, nuclear power is the only energy resource that's capable of displacing fossil fuels entirely for electrical power generation, transportation, and the manufacture of nitrate fertilizers critical to supporting our population of eight billion people. That's demonstrated reality.

Arguing for hybrid fossil fuel / wind / and solar power systems is just another flavor of climate change denial.

My opinion stands that Warren Buffet can go fuck himself knowing that he'll probably be dead before the worst shit hits his fan. He knows damned well that solar and wind power are no existential threat to the natural gas industry and that the primary power source for this project will be coal and natural gas, no matter how many solar panels and batteries he slaps onto it.

[LiberaBlueDem]

16. Plutonium found around the world

From both Chernobyl and Fukushima. Found because it was easily traceable. Those high temperature explosions reactor spread core material around the world.

[hunter]

17. Well there's a non sequitur.

Fossil fuel wastes, some of them greenhouse gasses, some of them toxic substances with half lives of FOREVER, are dumped freely everywhere and permeate the entire biosphere.

[LiberaBlueDem]

18. One atom of plutonium

If breathed into your lung will kill you in ten years, so I have read.

No wonder birds and insects have declined, eh?