Review of Coal-to-Gas Legislation A Positive Step

When I read this past week in the Denver Post that the coal industry lobbyists were asking for a review of last year’s legislation that required conversion of Colorado coal plants to natural gas, it lifted my spirits. The government is way too involved in forcing “green” energy moves in an industry that should be adjusting to economic realities on its own and on a less than crisis-oriented atmosphere so popular with the Obama EPA administration. The government should not be picking winners and losers in any industry and should allow market and economic forces to make improvements naturally.

As an example, this morning I saw a large UPS truck in our office complex with the letters on its side “powered by natural gas.” This is a logical transitional energy movement particularly from expensive oil to currently abundant (in the U.S.) and cheaper natural gas. According to Natural Gas entrepreneur and cheerleader T. Boone Pickens, it’s a lot cheaper to get eight million trucks in the U.S. on natural gas than on batteries by converting existing trucks and building new trucks to run on natural gas. Another major move would be for the conversion of most homes in the northeast United States from heating oil to natural gas heating. Both of these would reduce our importation of expensive oil.

However, we should not legislate away economical use of coal of which we have a great abundance of in the U.S. and for which conversion from coal to lower-cost cleaner fuels is now possible. China is taking and utilizing all the coal it can get its hands on from Canada and other countries to fuel its economic growth. In the U.S. we should continue to use coal and seek the continued technological improvement of our cheaper and abundant coal-based fuels.

Joseph Chavez, Attorney.