36. ELECTRIC COAL MINING MACHINERY
Coal and coal liquefaction will be a critical part of the response to peak oil, and I will address these topics in detail as this blog progresses. In this post, however, I would like to focus on one bit of misinformation being spread by the peak oil doomers. They claim that peak oil will cause coal production to decline because coal mining machinery is driven with oil. In general, this is not the case. Coal mining machines are driven by electricity, generated on-site by burning coal from the pit.
The following photos show some of the most incredible machines I have ever seen. They run on electricity, not oil (click on the images for a better picture):
Source
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Thanks to Licho for providing the link to these photos.
posted by JD @ 9:09 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Can you imagine what it would cost if they were run on gas? It would bankrupt the mining companies!
Thanks for this entry JD!
And of course in the days before massive open cast machinery it was a question of hand digging down the pit. Not that I'm suggesting this would be ideal, but it often makes me laugh when POers advocate there will be no jobs because everything runs on oil. Er no.
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