The relationship between the Clean Air Act and Great Lakes shipping
The complexity of the coal and electric utility industries in the United States poses difficult challenges for strategic planners, market analysts, and policymakers. Changes in the Clean Air Act of 1990 further impact this relationship. While the Act codifies emissions trading, low sulfur coal is presently more central to the workability of regulating power plant emissions. On average 10 to 12 million net tons of Western coal are shipped annually to lower Lake utilities. As utilities respond to Clean Air Act compliance requirements, waterborne coal demand could increase to as much as 40 million tons per year by the end of the decade. This research examines the geographical, conceptual, and logistical linkages between the low-sulfur coal deposits of the Power River Basin in Montana and the electric utility industry via the Great Lakes Shipping industry. The central question researched is whether the increased demand for waterborne clean coal by lower lakes utilities can be accommodated by current U.S. flag fleet shipping capacity with its competing commodities. The approach of this study is to evaluate various government and industry forecasts for increased demand for coal, iron ore, and limestone in the Great Lakes basin to the year 2000, to quantify growth rates, develop forecasts, and compare this composite dry bulk demand to U.S. dry bulk fleet carrying capacity. The basic concept employed is supply increasing demand by American utilities and by manufacturers, but supply of vessels is limited. From a purely numerical standpoint, composite forecasts indicate that there will be no capacity shortfall before the year 2000, but when the fleet is examined by vessel size a different picture emerges. Excess capacity exists primarily in the smaller vessels which, because of economics of scale, are not engaged in long distance, high volume transport. In reality, several new thousand foot vessels will indeed be required throughout the nineties.
- Research Organization:
- Michigan State Univ., East Lansing, MI (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 6780639
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: Thesis (Ph.D.)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
COAL
ECONOMIC ANALYSIS
MARITIME TRANSPORT
ELECTRIC UTILITIES
AIR POLLUTION CONTROL
SHIPS
SUPPLY AND DEMAND
CLEAN AIR ACTS
COMPLIANCE
GREAT LAKES
CARBONACEOUS MATERIALS
CONTROL
ECONOMICS
ENERGY SOURCES
FOSSIL FUELS
FUELS
LAKES
LAWS
MATERIALS
POLLUTION CONTROL
POLLUTION LAWS
PUBLIC UTILITIES
SURFACE WATERS
TRANSPORT
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010900 - Coal
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