Ha. Have you ever been to W. Va? It’s pretty rural out there.
A local W.Va. “caterer” is more likely to be a guy with a truck who just dressed a deer and brewed some 'shine.
But the problem is keeping these guys employed. With China and India keeping coal cheap there is not much incentive for U.S.coal companies to continue to operate. Trump might get them to keep the doors open for longer but I am guessing they will end up operating at a loss with dire consequences.
Last I was through there was in 2003, in the panhandle.
There are plenty of women in rural West Virginia who can pull together a plate of white bread sandwiches or biscuits and gravy for a fee. There are also plenty of slightly shabby (i.e. inside a former Arby’s) local restaurants that do it. I see it regularly in the desert of northern Nevada where I’ve worked at small, scattered geothermal plant sites and mines. Over the years I’ve eaten quite a few modest catered lunches at these places.
I know it will shock some of the commentariat here, but ‘catering’ does not necessarily involve artfully arranged canapes crafted with locally-sourced, small-batch goat cheese. In much of our nation and much of our economy, it’s just round plastic trays of limp sandwiches. People make a living doing it in some pretty dreary places.
I will take the white bread sandwich, biscuits and gravy or some grilled deer meat over that stuff any day!
Oh, yes, regular food. Like elk sausage, fatted with a little ground pork. Grilled and served on low quality toasted bread. Maybe with chili. It’s ambrosia. But, at work damp submarine sandwiches rule at lunch. Still, they are catered. In the mornings its gooey donuts. Which I like, even tho they’re gross.
Right now. That’s changing, quickly, though. (And via private solar more than municipal suppliers.) Other countries come into the demand equation, too - England (of all places!) now generates more energy from solar than coal, for example.
I wonder when his supporters will figure that out - or if they even will.
We’re all screwed no matter what. Even if the economy doesn’t absolutely tank in the next four years, the climate will kill us.
No, no, no! Curb your tongue.
I’m sure Trump will review this information and rationally change his mind.
Yeah, I wonder about that too. If you can be gullible enough to believe Trump’s 200+ promises, and you are paranoid enough to think “pizza” means “pedophilia” in random emails, then whatever excuses Fox News makes with be perfectly rational to you. I would guess that enough of the people that voted for him in 2016 will be frustrated enough by 2020 to vote him out, but a huge number will still buy the party line propaganda, “class war, communism” etc.
I’m glad someone finally did. We’ve all been thinking it.
It really isn’t. I mean, we’ve gone from 0.65% to 0.9% in the last year which is impressive, but even the rosiest projections have solar hitting 14% of electricity generation by 2040 in the US.
and we have recorded your name for future reference. now please don’t be alarmed by that knock on your door. keep calm, and be carried out.
Problem is solar does not generate jobs. Nor does wind, etc… Not in the kind of numbers that coal did. It’s about jobs not whether it’s efficient, green or self sustaining. Where do you think Global Warming denial started? With oil and gas of course. If it’s not causing global warming well by gawd it must be good!
Figure out a way for tens of thousands of coal miners in West Va., Pa, etc. to gainfully operate in wind farms and solar arrays well then you have something. Technology is putting those poor fossil digging bastards out of work.
Trump’s coal plan will not work. Duh. But nor will anyone else’s to date.
What? Solar and wind (well mostly solar) require far more workers per-MW than coal does by quite a bit.
There are a little over 200K solar workers with 0.9% of US electricity production. in 1981, there were 1.2 million coal workers in the US when it was 52% of US electricity generation.
Solar, especially the way we install in the US, requires a lot of people.
White collar or Blue? Because in regards to coal mining we are talking about a extremely low information work force. Solar and Wind projects employ mostly white collar and tech jobs. Where are turbines produced? Where are solar panels produced? I am guessing nowhere near W. Va, Pa, etc. I agree that there is the potential to employ “lots” of people but what is needed is a way to employ and sustain folks and a rural culture that has relied on coal for the past 100 years.
A long term plan to move turbine and or panel production facilities into these areas, now, that would be a good thing. Throw in training facilities and technical schools for good measure and you’ve started a self sustaining option for these people.
Wait, wut? stump said something that wasn’t factually accurate? ALERT THE PRESS!!!
Awww man. It was funnier the other way!
As of this year, solar has now hit a point where it’s actually significantly cheaper than fossil fuels, at least for a number of countries (and prices are still dropping): Solar Has Become The World's Cheapest Form Of New Electricity | Fortune
In the US, the energy infrastructure hasn’t yet caught up with that fact. So you have electricity providers in the US who invested in their power plants and who aren’t going to want to throw them out in favor of solar, but consumers don’t care about the infrastructure investment - if they can buy solar panels that provide electricity cheaper than the utility provides it, they will. I’ve seen a fair number of solar panels go up in the last couple of years in California; given that we’re a massive energy importer, that could mean some similarly massive changes to the energy market if it continues. The dropping prices have been masked by a (temporary) drop in oil and gas prices, but as solar prices continue to drop relative to fossil fuels, you hit a threshold where solar becomes dramatically more popular.
Even if the cost dynamics in other countries don’t apply in the US (because of the various subsidies), the fact remains that the export market for US coal at least is gone.
I figure those people are pretty much unreachable by reality. I’m just not sure what percentage of the people who voted for him they make up.
I don’t know… I looked at it both ways, and I rather like it with the Trump angle.
The installers and maintenance workers (which are the vast majority of solar jobs in the US) are blue collar jobs.
Oh sure, it is cheaper, but all estimates are that growth will be linear in the near future because of limits of manufacturing capacity. There are very few historical instances of new capital goods continuing to have exponential growth after they reach about 1% marketshare. The reason is pretty simple - there aren’t enough investment dollars to continue to increase manufacturing capacity exponentially especially for goods that only need replacing every 25-50 years.
Well, the only time this isn’t the case is when governments (or large enough utilities) get involved and make gigantic orders which reduces risk enough to build out manufacturing faster, but that’s not the way solar is going. Wind on the other hand…
Good for Seattle, but us midwesterners are never going to be able to see those kind of numbers. Unless maybe the New Madrid kicks up like it never has before.
