Why The Heck Are U.S. Power Plants Short On Coal?

It's the 1970's energy crisis all over again.  

Just like in the 1970's we have a massive surplus of energy.

So how is there a shortage and how do we have higher prices?

Power plants in the U.S. are actually running short on coal. Utilities and struggling and scrambling to get what they can, and winter is coming.

How is this possible when, Wyoming for example, has hundreds of years worth of coal in Campbell County alone?

Some politicians are trying to wean America off of coal. Yet despite what they say America, along with the rest of the world is using more if it, not less.

In the video below you can hear "Climate Czar," John Kerry says that America will no longer be using coal by 2030.

Yet American burns its coal CLEAN! U.S. coal plants are not wrecking our environment.  We are not like China that just shoves it in the burner and lets it pollute.

It's all about those blasted supply chain issues. 

We have the coal. Now can we just get it to the buyers?

Add inflation to that and we now have the problem of rising energy prices for the producers as well as the consumers.

This means trouble for national power generation and your ability to buy cheep electricity. That's right, energy prices are about to go up. Way up.

That's not welcome news because it will cause already high prices to go even higher.

Thanks to Jimmy Orr, Cowboy of State Daily who spoke to Travis Deti, the executive director of the Wyoming Mining Association. We now have an idea of what the problem is.

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“We’ve been screaming from the rooftops for the last 10 years that America needs coal and that you can’t throw all of your eggs in one energy basket,” Travis told Cowboy State Daily on Tuesday.

“You’ve got companies up in the basin right now that are offering $5,000 signing bonuses just to come on board,” he said.

You can read the full interview at Cowboy State Daily.

So now we have to figure out how to get people back to work or the nation will start suffering through blackouts and brownouts during some of the coldest months this winter.

What's aggravating about all of this is that we have everything we need in this nation to prevent that from happening, at low prices, with a massive surplus.

Coal and natural gas are reliable sources of energy. If it gets too cold for us or too hot we can just dial it up and there we have it. Wind and solar and unreliable in that way.

OPINION: There is a simple way to fix this.

United States Department of Energy - Founded August 4, 1977. The agency was supposed to solve our energy problems and make America energy independent.

Decades went by and they only made the problem worse. We only solved the problem, for a few years, when we finally got the Department Of Energy, along with a long list of other government agencies, out of the way.

The government created this problem.

As voters, we have to blame ourselves for the current crop of politicians and for allowing for a massive and ever-expanding bureaucracy.

Government can solve this problem by getting out of the way and allowing the market to do what it does best.

If we stop paying people to sit and home and do nothing and if we allow those who produce energy to provide what we need and what we want then we will go back to the way things were just a couple of years ago.

Low prices and a surplus is within our grasp any time we want it. No one needs to be in danger of being frozen out during the winter or not cool enough in the summer.

Get the problem makers in our government out of the way and our economy will come roaring back.