Will this be the Straw That Breaks the Camel's Back..

Could be a lot of camels shivering in the dark this winter...

Let it happen…

This could conceivably give a boost to permitting and implementation of some Small Modular Nuclear Power Plants, which are desperately needed.

Ditto for large energy storage systems of various kinds.

Don't you think we should have had those in place and operational before we started burning bridges..?

I agree that having new capacity available before closing the old is ideal but we live in a capital economy where plants must start to repay their costs as soon as they are completed. Using power infrastructure at a commercially high capacity while coordinating one plant closure with another plant opening, when the plants may be of differing size, have different owners and be in different locations, requires a degree of prescriptive legislation that would not be tolerated in a "free" economy. In a state owned power generation system this could work (and did in the UK before we sold it off to private enterprise) because it is a single owner with centralized funding. Freedom always comes at a price.

A power station fuelled by burning bridges? Really?

More like the furniture....

Don't you think we should have had those in place and operational before we started burning bridges..?

Seems like we do that a lot...

Who's we? Is there a left hand in your pocket?

We = politicians in charge...

It seems absolute power demands foolish spending as a demonstration...

Regarding the first--closing of coal-burning generating plants: The politicians don't want to mention this, but the coal plants will have to close anyway to help meet our CO2 goals. Remember, IF the generating part of a coal plant is still good, a nuclear reactor could be used as the heat source.

..."Energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide in the PRC have increased more than 80 percent between 2005 and 2019, while U.S. energy-related emissions dropped by more than 15 percent during the same period, according to the International Energy Agency." ...Nov 24, 2020

https://ge.usembassy.gov/chinas-air-pollution-harms-its-citizens-and-the-world/#:~:text=Energy%2Drelated%20emissions%20of%20carbon,to%20the%20International%20Energy%20Agency.

"Does air pollution in China affect the US?

A 2014 study of 2006 data for air pollution in China found that when strong winds blew across the Pacific Ocean, pollutants produced by China's export industries accounted for, at worst, 4 percent to 6 percent of the carbon monoxide recorded in the Western United States, up to 11 percent of the black carbon pollution" ...Oct 12, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/12/opinion/china-us-environment.html

..."According to a briefing paper by the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air from June, China had more coal-fired capacity under construction or in planning at the time (249.6 gigawatts) than the existing capacity of either the United States or India."...

The nice thing about coal is that it doesn't usually leak out of the ground so it will be there for future generations.

No but it sometimes catches on fire. Such coal mine fires are impossible to put out and burn for generations.

"How many underground coal fires are in the US?

In the U.S., more than 100 underground fires are burning in at least nine states, including Colorado, Kentucky, Maryland, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wyoming."Jan 5, 2012

"How many coal fires are there?

In addition to underground fires, there are also 93 known surface coal fires, some of them in huge coal waste piles created during the process of coal mining, such as a 100-foot-high burning fire near Birmingham, Alabama."

" It is estimated that Australia's Burning Mountain, the oldest known coal fire, has burned for 6,000 years"

"In China, the world's largest coal producer with an annual output around 2.5 billion tons, coal fires are a serious problem. It has been estimated that some 10–200 million tons of coal uselessly burn annually, and that the same amount again is made inaccessible to mining.^[11] Coal fires extend over a belt across the entire north China, whereby over one hundred major fire areas are listed, each of which contains many individual fire zones. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-seam_fire

..."But America’s problem with coal fires is small compared with that of the rest of the world, where untold thousands of coal fires—no one can come up with a number judged to be even remotely accurate—burn unchecked. Eastern India has the densest concentration of coal fires in the world. Sixty-eight of them burn within a 174-square-mile region in the Jharia Coalfield in the state of Jharkand, some right next to areas where mining families live.

In China, estimates of the amount of coal consumed or made inaccessible by uncontrolled fires runs as high as 200 million metric tons per year, 10 percent of the country’s total coal production. Indonesia, a major exporter of coal to the Pacific Rim, has many thousands of coal fires. Whitehouse spent several years there fighting the burn. In a 2004 paper, he stated that the number of coal fires in eastern Borneo might be as high as 3,000. Today he thinks even that estimate was far too low. “The real number is so astronomical that no one would believe it,” he says. “The published numbers are about one percent of what could actually be there.”"...

https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/earth-on-fire

You'd think they would try burying a nuclear bomb right in the middle of the fire and homogenizing the earth in a big way to block any cracks and smother the fire...

The 5-megaton Cannikin test blast — which was set off below Amchitka, Alaska — registered a 6.8 on the Richter Scale.

WOW!

With all the talk of global warming and co2 emissions it is a little shocking that this problem is completely ignored by the press and legislators...most people are completely unaware of this problem other than perhaps of hearing of the Centralia fire which is so famous for whatever reason.... Why is everybody concentrating on shutting down our coal fired power plants that we need, and ignoring these coal fires that serve no useful purpose and are polluting the air unabated?

It doesn't serve their purpose in which the climate is a secondary concern to their primary concern.

I have to wonder if there is some way to harness that heat by pumping water into the hot zone and collecting up the steam?

There are probably details of nasty by-products in the steam etc.

Nothing is simple. If you think it is, you don't understand it.

Well there are probably several reasons why this wouldn't work, for one thing the heat would be transitory and unstable, imagine trying to get a permit...the environmentalists would have you roasting on a slow spit over the seam...

https://eros.usgs.gov/doi-remote-sensing-activities/2017/osm/satellite-based-detection-underground-coal-mine-fires

. . . and natural gas as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darvaza_gas_crater

Wow,, that's big...

How much CO₂ was produced by these oil fires?

What about landfill emissions worldwide?