{"id":4227,"date":"2016-02-26T07:46:56","date_gmt":"2016-02-26T13:46:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/?p=4227"},"modified":"2016-02-26T07:47:53","modified_gmt":"2016-02-26T13:47:53","slug":"watching-coal-plants-crumble-to-a-tchaikovsky-score-is-insanely-satisfying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/?p=4227","title":{"rendered":"Watching coal plants crumble to a Tchaikovsky score is insanely satisfying"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>February 26, 2016 &#8211; by Melissa Cronin in <a href=\"http:\/\/grist.org\/climate-energy\/watching-coal-plants-crumble-to-a-tchaikovsky-score-is-insanely-satisfying\/\">Grist<\/a><\/strong><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"640\" height=\"400\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/fX8zi1HtxQg\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Hearing the news that a coal plant, a facility that once\u00a0<a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.onearth.org\/earthwire\/dirty-coal-plants-shutting-down\">belched<\/a>\u00a0CO2, mercury,\u00a0sulphur, nitrogen oxides, and other hazardous chemicals into the air, is shutting down is certainly a cause to celebrate. Seeing it explode\u00a0in glorious\u00a0high definition and\u00a0set to lively classical music is another thing altogether.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Duke Energy, the largest electric power holding company in the U.S.,\u00a0<a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.charlotteobserver.com\/news\/local\/news-columns-blogs\/earth-and-energy\/article61820827.html\">released a video this week<\/a>\u00a0showing the death of four of its old coal power plants, giving environmentalists an awesome soundtrack to the death of the coal industry.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The video shows the demolition of Weatherspoon,\u00a0H.F. Lee,\u00a0Cape Fear, and\u00a0Cliffside, all facilities in North Carolina. The demolitions, set to a rousing rendition of\u00a0Tchaikovsky\u2019s 1812 Overture, are nothing short of transfixing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">A\u00a0spokesperson for Duke Energy told Grist that the\u00a0plants were mainly operated from the 1930s to the \u201960s,\u00a0and were\u00a0destroyed as a way to celebrate \u201cmodernizing the way we generate power for the past decade.\u201d But as the company transitioned away from coal, it looked to\u00a0<a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.journalnow.com\/news\/local\/duke-energy-makes-billion-offer-to-buy-piedmont-natural-gas\/article_dc52531e-7bd9-11e5-9259-d377f12c5524.html\">natural gas<\/a>\u00a0as its main money-maker and maintained its spot\u00a0<a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"http:\/\/grist.org\/climate-energy\/these-are-the-10-dirtiest-power-companies-in-the-u-s\/\">atop the country\u2019s worst carbon emitters<\/a>\u00a0in 2015.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Thanks in large part to cheap natural gas, many of America\u2019s coal plants have been\u00a0reduced to rubble\u00a0\u2014\u00a0or are about to be. As of last November,\u00a0over\u00a0<a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/Global\/international\/publications\/climate\/2015\/Coals-Terminal-Decline.pdf\">200 coal-fired stations had been retired<\/a>\u00a0or were scheduled for retirement.\u00a0According to an\u00a0<a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2015-07-13\/the-latest-sign-that-coal-is-getting-killed\">analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance<\/a>\u00a0last year, about 17 percent of U.S. coal-fired power generation\u00a0is expected to disappear over the next few years.\u00a0It\u2019s been said that the coal industry is \u201cin terminal decline,\u201d and there\u2019s no better way to visualize that than the crumbling of an enormous, dirty power plant.<\/span><\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>February 26, 2016 &#8211; by Melissa Cronin in Grist Hearing the news that a coal plant, a facility that once\u00a0belched\u00a0CO2, mercury,\u00a0sulphur, nitrogen oxides, and other hazardous chemicals into the air, is shutting down is certainly a cause to celebrate. Seeing &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/?p=4227\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4227"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4229,"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4227\/revisions\/4229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}