ENERGY CHOICE IN AN ERA OF GLOBAL WARMING: HOW ANTHRACITE COGENERATION PLANTS SERVE AS A VALUABLE ACADEMIC EXERCISE

When societies or individual companies make choices about what sort of fuel to use in generating electricity, they have to consider price, total available resource supply, security of the supply lines, and externalities, such as pollution. The authors have used a field trip to a local anthracite co-generation plant to illustrate how factors likke technology can affect availability and sustainability. A different type of furnace allows the thirteen co-generation plants in Northeastern Pennsylvania to burn a much lower grade of coal, so that local culm banks are being mined a second time. The effect of this change in technology is to increase the total supply of the resource. The field trip is geared toward general education courses and has been helpfulin leading the students to consider resource supply and other factors that need to be considered in light of concerns about global warming.