Refurbished Insulin Pumps

The Coal as a strategic sector

News of the progressive collapse of the coal sector in Spain every morning splash pages of the press in recent months. Farm closures, ERE's in the other, workers marched to defend the stability of their work ...


This week's historic Basque Hullera Leon, "The Basque", announced a record of employment regulation for almost all of its employees for, in principle, six months.

seems that news of temporal stability that came from the European Union have failed to strengthen the sector has begun a relentless dismantling phase.

this situation and returning some data from the report and the conclusions of the Parliamentary Sub-analysis of the English energy strategy for the next 25 years, you might want to consider some hypothetical situations to test the strategic positioning of our energy sector. Let

figures of installed capacity in Spain in 2009: Nuclear

: 7,716 MW Coal

: 11,999 MW

P. Oil: 7,612 MW Natural Gas

: 31,249 MW

Pumping: 2,546 MW Renewable

: 39,499 MW



electricity production in 2009 with the different technologies was: Nuclear


: 52,732 GW

Coal: 37,403 GW

P. Oil: 20,380 GW

Natural Gas: 110,387

GW Pumping: 2,797 GW

Renewable
72,809


GW Now assume a scenario of crisis bilaterally with our southern neighbor, that is, the Kingdom of Morocco, through which circulates much of the natural gas we use both to generate much of the electrical energy consumed to heat our homes or use in our kitchens and connected to the mainland through the international connection fee.

(For this scenario we must not think too much ... but any assumption that violence in the gas transport infrastructure can be damaged we will anyway)


is true that Spain has other international connections with Africa Through Algeria with northern Europe through the Pyrenees, with our neighbor across Badajoz Portuguese and Tuy, in addition to the six regasification plants scattered around the main ports of the Mediterranean and the Bay of Biscay.

But we must return to the figures given and remember that natural gas accounts for almost 40% of the electricity produced in Spain.


is vital to have total power production that could make coal power plants to be able to replace that produced by other technologies where necessary, as the case that we have proposed.

it is necessary to have a productive sector itself, that is able to provide domestic fuel at competitive prices (this does not necessarily mean cheaper ...) and to maintain levels of electricity generation in about acceptable levels of national security.

Coal sector therefore requires a clear institutional support that guarantees the survival of a very high level technology, constantly improved with new advances in clean combustion processes or to capture CO2. Focused