NPR on heating with coal

Thanks for posting that, Gaw.

I question the steady decline. Where does NPR get that ? I think coal has been making a come back. Just in the past few years I have 4 more coal dealers within ten miles of here. And they are ALL doing a good business selling coal.

Seems just about once a week we get a newbie on here looking for places to buy coal. Some are just lurkers for a long time that we don't see as coal newbies until they have been using coal for a while and ask stove operation/repair questions.

Then, look at all the places LehighMatt has listed as Lehigh's new dealers all over the Northeast and into the Midwest, just in the past couple of years.

If coal use was declining, then hey NPR, who's using all that coal that got by on much fewer dealers as little as 5 - 6 years ago ?

Interesting article, but I think NPR has not gained in their ability to give accurate reporting.

Paul

Thanks for posting!
NPR, like most of the media, has an agenda to promote. They'll slant every story to fit. This is an example that stands out to us because we know what the truth is.
-Len

they used 1940 as the time they were comparing home heating by coal . 40 percent of home used it then. now? I think its declined since then with ups and downs based on the time frame and the energy situation .

came here to post this, figures someone beat me to it.

"fewer than 130,000 households left in the United States that burn coal to heat their homes"?

seems awfully low.

I'm not sure how they know how many homes are heating with coal today. Supposedly, the 2000 long form census was the last time that coal heat was an option on the home heating question. I'm sure that PA. still has by far the largest amount of coal burners. ( 1.4% in 2000). West Va. and KY. were the only other states with a fair amount of coal heating folks. I would guess that there has been a small uptick during the insane prices of HO and propane and the economic collapse of 10 years ago.

https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/hi ... fuels.html

In addition to the Census, I believe DOE concluded that residential coal use had become so small that they stopped gathering data on it. While there may be local areas where coal use has subsequently increased, I think the bigger picture has been that sustained low NG prices have put a lot of pressure on residential coal use, even in PA.

Mike

Thanks to our Albany idiot banning fracking in NYS, pro-pain is more expensive than coal. And even though we have lots of gas pipelines to our cities and New England, there's very little NG outside the cities.

Plus, the pulpwood industry had developed ways to use hardwood. Commercially, demand for wood has increased, which has made firewood prices higher.

So, all that has made coal more competitive than 14 years ago when I got away from wood and got back into using coal.

Paul

I think their number for households using coal is low.

coalkirk wrote: ↑

Tue. Mar. 05, 2019 9:30 am

I think their number for households using coal is low.

Well, they never mentioned checking with this website,.... so we know their research is incomplete.

Paul

The article mentions talking with a coal dealer that is the last one in that area. Anecdotally one could assume there are fewer dealers because less coal is being used.

David

The article mentions talking with a coal dealer that is the last one in that area. Anecdotally one could assume there are fewer dealers because less coal is being used.
The article brought up the benefits of coal and may spur some to look further into it.

David

So there are so few of us and so this brings up a CN saying... when everybody else is running in one direction and you are going the other way, most of the time you are onto something good. Coal burning is no exception.