Coal Power is spinning down

There are definitely a lot fewer coal plants in the US than there used to be. In 2011, the US had 310 GW worth of coal-fired power plants online. In 2017, that number was 260 GW[1]. Between 2018 and 2020, an additional 21 GW worth will go offline via scheduled plant shutdowns[2].

Just to give a sense of the scale, let’s look at the Wind and Solar industry in the US. At the end of 2016, Wind made up 81 GW of generation, and Solar Photovoltaic (Solar panels) made up an estimated 32 GW[2]. Between 2011 and the end of 2016, coal production lost 51GW. In those 5 years, more coal _stopped_ than the entire solar industry in 2016, and over half of the entire wind industry. Over the next two years, an estimated 20GW more of coal will shutdown, making the drop over twice the solar industry[3].

A lot of people tend to blame this on environmental regulations. The argument goes: if environmental regulations were laxer, then it would be cheaper to operate and maintain a coal plant, and so more people would want them. Loosen regulations and see coal power plants return to prominence!

A second argument goes more like: Wind and solar are increasingly cheap to build, and they don’t require fuel, so coal is increasingly noncompetitive to these resources, and is dying off because of that.

Notice the convenient political shift here? If you’re a free-marketer, burdensome regulation is, well, burdening coal power. If you’re an environmentally-minded person, though, the Green Power revolution is driving fossil fuels out of business. That type of easy answer makes me suspicious. Coal-fired power plants are enormous engineered resources run by businesses, and businesses rarely make decisions that fall neatly into political tropes; they usually make decisions based on money. So what’s the truth?

The truth is that, while the regulation aspect *does* play some role, both arguments miss the reality by a long mile. It isn’t wind and solar that coal is competing against: it’s natural gas. And while some of the reasons why coal struggles against natural gas is due to emissions regulations, a much larger segment is because of the engineering facts.

Over the next few weeks, I hope to begin breaking down the engineering choices that go into this particular problem. I hope you’ll join me.

Sources:

[1] ”EIA Projects that U.S. coal demand will remain flat for several decades”. Energy Information Agency, march 30, 2018. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=35572#

[2] “EIA Annual Report, Summary Statistics for the United States, 2006–2016”. Energy Information Agency, 2018. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_01_02.html

[3] “EIA Annual Electric Generator Details”. Energy Information Agency, 2018. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/eia860/