Twin Ports’ shipping season ending with taconite up, coal and grain down
January 15, 2012 at 6:00 pm in Duluth News Tribune
A Canadian power company’s decision to go green resulted in lower waterborne cargo totals passing through the Twin Ports this season, even though taconite and other cargoes were up.
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Ontario actually made the decision to get off coal three years ago, everyone should of seen this coming and planned on new coal markets long before now IF there were new markets. Ontario saw a much better deal for its residents health and well being by planning to realign its baseload capacity to the nuke, biomass, and more hydro as mentioned. But Ontario also started the largest feed-in tariff market in North America. This plan allows businessmen, farmers, and residents to develop their own clean energy resources and actually make a return on investment just like any utility enjoys.
What a concept, clean energy used as an economic development tool. And it will help keep energy costs down in the future. Could it happen here? Just call you utility company and ask.
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Ontario Power did make the decision several years back, but it was not due to the urging of their customers. It was primarily due to the fact that its executives saw the writing on the wall [or as DNT so delightfully puts it, "other changes in the North American market"] that the Canadian government was leaning heavily in favor of totally banning coal all together.
There are two things that I would hope would be eventually covered instead of waiting another 3 years to report on it. Firstly, industries, specifically power suppliers, do change through natural progression and technology developments over time and the work force that supports it should be prepared for {drastic} change. And secondly, industries can change very quickly due to government intervention.
In the case of Canada we can clearly see that the government has a big influence on power generation. The same applies to the U.S. were clearly an anti-coal president is in power and the democratic liberal movement to free ourselves from coal is very strong. I would assume those in the coal industry do not support this freedom from dirty coal movement, yet when we pay little attention to what a candidate stands for it is inevitable. Can you see what would happen if a ‘Green Society’ was totally embraced? I can. And I hope that the 1000′s of unionized workers that supply us with this resource do to.
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