Friday, October 16, 2015 -- Part II

The president's update on the train wreck, from The Washington Post:

The Obama administration is predicting a meager increase next year in the number of Americans with private insurance through the Affordable Care Act — a forecast, far below previous government estimates, that signals the obstacles to attracting people who remain uninsured.

Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell announced Thursday that an expected 10 million Americans will be covered by late 2016 by health plans they bought on the federal and state insurance exchanges created under the law.

That figure is just half the most recent forecast by congressional budget analysts, who have long expected 2016 to usher in the biggest surge in enrollment. The number represents a marginal increase from the 9.1 million Americans the administration believes will have ACA health plans by the end of this year.

The anemic projection comes as the sprawling law is entering a new phase. Having survived the disastrous 2013 rollout of HealthCare.gov, the federal exchange’s online enrollment system, and weathered two Supreme Court challenges, the ACA has moved past critics’ early hopes that the law might quickly collapse.

Proponents note that the statute has been responsible for the biggest gain in insurance coverage in decades. But questions linger over whether it can reach deep into the pockets of the nation’s most intractable uninsured populations and whether people who currently have health plans through the marketplaces will decide that the coverage is worth keeping.

The ACA’s third open-enrollment period starts in barely two weeks.

The new HHS prediction represents the second time that the administration has significantly undercut that of the Congressional Budget Office. The latest discrepancy is much greater than a year ago, when federal health officials predicted that enrollment through the insurance marketplaces would reach up to 9.9 million by the end of 2015, compared with the CBO’s 13 million.

Some health-policy experts suggested that the tepid 2016 forecast may be partly strategic. “The ACA has become such a numbers game,” said Larry Levitt, a senior vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation. “So, yes — the optics of a low projection are bad, but not nearly as bad as not succeeding when the final enrollment numbers come in.”

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Sticker Shock 

Cape May Off-Short Energy, New Jersey

Bizjournals is reporting:

A Cape May-based energy company is proposing to build six turbine three miles offshore from Atlantic City after losing an appeal to build five larger turbines. The Press of Atlantic City reports the New Jersey Supreme Court rejected Fishermen's Energy LLC's latest appeal, which challenged the Board of Public Utilities rejection of the $200 million demonstration-scale wind farm. 

The article does not mention the production expected from these five or six turbines. It turns out that the company is shooting for 25 MW. Really? 25 MW? That's not even worth talking about. Cost: $200 million / 25 MW = $8 million / MW. Yes, you read that correctly. $8 million / MW. No wonder they didn't mention that in the story.

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More Sticker Shock 

Southern Company / Kemper

Who was it that said, "a sucker is born every minute"?

Just when I thought it could get no more ridiculous, I was sent this story by a reader. First, for background, re-read the Kemper story, the cost of "clean coal" in the US:

Note: at $6.1 billion this was three times more than expected; now it's up to $6.3 billion.

This is a 582-megawatt plant. So, $6.3 billion (and still rising) / 582 MW = $11 million /MW. Remember, even the most expensive solar energy / wind energy project seldom gets above $3 million / MW and even at $3 million / MW, that's outrageous -- in the US.

Fuelfix is reporting:

Atlanta-based Southern Company is teaming up with South Korea’s largest electric utility to take their carbon-capture and so-called “clean coal” technologies worldwide for coal-fired power plants.

Carbon-capture projects for coal plants have slowed of late because of high costs and the competition from low natural gas prices, but Southern Company is seeking to set the global blueprint on making projects work. Southern’s technology was developing with Houston-based KBR Inc. in concert with the U.S. Department of Energy. Capturing and storing carbon from coal plants is seen within the industry as making coal plants cleaner, but environmentalists largely deride the term clean coal as an oxymoron.

Southern Company’s new partnership announced Thursday with the state-owned Korea Electric Power Corp., called KEPCO, is intended for them to jointly explore “clean coal” power plant technologies in the U.S., South Korea and developing nations worldwide that rely on coal for power.

Much of the partnership’s focus is on expanding the usage of Southern Company’s technology used at its Kemper clean coal plant in Mississippi, which is scheduled for completion next year. The project cost more than $6 billion — nearly triple the original estimate — and it is behind schedule to the point that the company warned Sept. 29 that it may have to return $234 million in federal tax credits if it misses an April 19 startup date.

Southern Company and KBR are already jointly marketing the transport integrated gasification technology to energy companies globally. KBR developed the technology in concert with Southern Company. The Kemper facility is designed to capture at least 65 percent of the plant’s carbon emissions and then utilize the carbon for enhanced oil recovery in U.S. shale production.

"Clean coal" may not be an oxymoron, but it sure is expensive the way Southern Company and the US Department of Energy went about doing it.

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Western South Dakota Wind Farm

Still Being Considered By County Commissioners

Earlier story reported by The Rapid City Journal:

Two brothers have proposed a wind farm that could become the first in western South Dakota. John O’Meara, of Indiana, and Patrick O’Meara, of Colorado, are the chief operating officer and chief executive officer, respectively, of Wind Quarry LLC.

The company has submitted an application to the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission to build a $210 million, 45-turbine, 103-megawatt project about 10 miles northeast of Newell.

It would be Wind Quarry’s first project. John O’Meara, a chemist, said the company is the brainchild of his brother, a family-practice physician who’s had a lifelong interest in renewable energy.  

$210 million / 103 MW = $2 million / MW + eye-sore + migratory bird decimation.

My dad was born on the Oksol farm a couple of miles south of Newell, South Dakota, almost one century ago.

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Silent Intifada --> Third Intifada?

And So It Goes