Yes, it’s more complicated than that — this was a hard story to come up with a title for — but this is the gist of a new proposed plan (or several new plans) for balancing the nation’s budget that would ALSO, by chance, cut CO2 emissions considerably, thus slowing or stopping human-caused global warming and saving us trillions of dollars in damage and health costs in the process.
The Obama administration is moving ahead with not one, but three EPA rules that will start to reduce our use of coal, (by far the worst emitter of greenhouse gases in the nation) to move the nation towards a cleaner, safer, healthier energy future, despite misuse of the Senate filibuster by Republicans who are paid to support coal.
Every barrel of oil extracted in the US also produces ten barrels of hot fluids in addition to the oil. Why not use that potential energy in the waste heat?
Rather than discard that “geothermal” resource created by the process of oil extraction, the DOE is going to show the traditional energy industry how to tap into those waste fluids to power equipment at the site. If generally applied by the industry, this would help reduce the high carbon cost of oil production in the US.
