Iowa's Future Shouldn't Depend On Fossil Fuels

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Iowa's Future Shouldn't Depend On Fossil Fuels

Posted Sep 3, 2009 by Richard Heinberg

[Excerpt]
More than 70 percent of Iowa's electricity comes from coal. That's a much higher proportion than the national average of 50 percent. Not only does this imply a supersized statewide contribution to global, climate-changing, greenhouse-gas emissions, it also means vulnerability to higher coal prices.

Higher coal prices? The very idea seems ludicrous today, as depressed energy demand has led to a temporary national coal glut. Moreover, we have all been lulled by the mantra that "America has 250 years' worth of coal."

But coal is a depleting non-renewable resource, and we have tended to extract the best first. That's why Britain, formerly the world's coal powerhouse, has virtually no coal industry left. That's why nearly all of Pennsylvania's anthracite is gone. That's why the energy content per ton of U.S. coal has been declining steadily for well over a decade...

Read full article. Originally published in the Des Moines Register, September 2, 2009.

Photo credit: The Sierra Club/flickr

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