Comments on: Power Vote UMaine To Ask Governor to Ban Coal http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2008/10/24/power-vote-umaine-to-ask-governor-to-ban-coal/ Dispatches from the Youth Climate Movement Sun, 06 May 2012 08:12:09 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Anonymous http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2008/10/24/power-vote-umaine-to-ask-governor-to-ban-coal/#comment-69837 Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:25:51 +0000 http://itsgettinghotinhere.wordpress.com/?p=6587#comment-69837 Do you really think that banning coal is possible. Where do you expect all the excess power to come from? As mentioned above we already have the infrastructure. Maybe over time it is possible to phase it out but you can’t just ban it. It’s foolish to think you can.

]]> By: R Margolis http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2008/10/24/power-vote-umaine-to-ask-governor-to-ban-coal/#comment-68610 Fri, 24 Oct 2008 18:16:00 +0000 http://itsgettinghotinhere.wordpress.com/?p=6587#comment-68610 While I am no fan of coal, you bring up a serious point. The largest recent change in US power infrastructure was the construction of 200 GWe of gas turbines in the 1990′s. Gas turbines are the easiest and quickest devices to build, so replacing ~500 GWe of coal will certainly be an enormous challenge. Similar large projects such as the interstate road network or the TVA grid took over 20 years to complete.

I am not saying it’s impossible (especially if it is scheduled over longer than the ten year timeframe I often hear proposed), but the breadth and scope of such a shift seems to get glossed over in the press.

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