Because of the nature of baseload power plants, only supplying enough to cover the base load, other plants have to be put online to cover any demand above the base load. These include load-following plants, which are more costly to run. In the old days, many of these ran on oil. Nowadays, the fuel of choice is natural gas, though the design of the plant is a different from that of a gas-fired baseload plant.
Senate Republicans, and four Democrats, squashed the Obama administration and supporting Democratic senators’ effort to eliminate ongoing oil and gas industry subsidies this week, but the US EPA took the historic step of issuing the nation’s first carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution standard for new power plants.
I was communicating with a knowledgeable reader on the topic above and got the following response from him (with some minor editing to make it into a post not an email). I thought this was well worth posting as a guest article. He decided, in no need of ‘fame and fortune’, to remain anonymous. Check it out, drop extra comments below the post, and let me know if YOU are interested in guest posting here on CleanTechnica (I know we have many knowledgeable readers who could definitely offer some useful 2 cents.)
