This time of year, canned pumpkin seems to line my pantry shelves and people start bringing me zucchini from their gardens to use in my baking. For this reason, nearly everything I bake in the fall contains pumpkin or zucchini – there is something about the leaves changing that makes me long for the smell of warm spices. I even spike my coffee in the mornings with cinnamon and nutmeg. Luckily, a friend's husband who was recently in Qatar brought her back a bunch of wonderful cinnamon and she has been kind enough to share her cinnamon stash with me...

This all comes from the urge to use what we have. We have fields full of bright orange pumpkins and gardens full of large snake-like zucchini this time of year. While I have been known to bake my pies out of fresh sugar pumpkins, I always seem to have canned pumpkin on hand in the fall to use in my baking. One thing I really love about baking is that it allows me to creatively use what I have.

Speaking of using what you have, the U.S. Energy Information Administration ("EIA") released an interesting publication on the same topic today. A full copy of the post can be found here. The main topic is coal and how low-cost coal in the Rocky Mountain region has supported coal-fired electricity generation in the area.

The Rocky Mountain region has historically used what it has.

Coal has traditionally been a dominant source of electricity generation in the Rockies due to the resource's abundance in that location. In fact, the EIA reports that "in the eight Mountain states, coal-fired power generation made up almost 50% of the region's total generation in 2015, compared to the national average of 33%. A decade ago, coal's share in Mountain states was even higher, at 63%."

The EIA publication discusses the following: "In 2015, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico accounted for 79% of the region's coal-fired electricity generation. The other states in the region—Arizona, Idaho, and Nevada—lack abundant coal resources. Instead, hydropower dominates electricity generation in Idaho, while natural gas plays a bigger role in Arizona and Nevada."

Along the same lines, renewable energy generation and generating capacity has also been increasing. The EIA reports that, "[w]ind generation increases were mostly in Colorado and Wyoming, while solar generation growth was mostly in Arizona and Nevada."

Talk about using what you have!

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