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Title: Displacing oil and gas with coal: Constraints and opportunities

Conference ·
OSTI ID:6866067

It is obvious that a major result of the oil supply interruptions of the 1970s was to dramatically increase the competitiveness of coal as an industrial and utility fuel. In fact, between 1973 and 1981, coal's share of the energy feed to the electric utility industry did increase from 43 to 52 percent. However, given the actual market place incentives, this increase is not a remarkable improvement, and reflects the fact that disappointingly few existing units have been converted from oil to coal. In the wake of the 1973 embargo, the passage of the Energy Supply and Coordination Act of 1974 (''ENSECA'') and the Power Plant and Industrial Fuel Use Act (''FUA'') provided the Executive Branch with the power to mandate the conversion of oil and gas units to coal. However, ENSECA lacked strong enforcement provisions and there resulted few conversions other than those which were made voluntarily on purely economic grounds. As a result, in 1978, Congress enacted the Fuel Use Act which placed the burden of proof upon owners to demonstrate that a specified coal convertible unit could not be converted.

OSTI ID:
6866067
Report Number(s):
CONF-8210161-
Resource Relation:
Conference: International mining show and annual meeting of the American Mining Congress, Las Vegas, NV, USA, 11 Oct 1982
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English