The Works

American Coal Plants Going Offline Faster Than Expected

Up to 60 gigawatts of coal-fired electrical generation capacity will be retired between 2012 and 2016.

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Some good news for those of us who breathe air: According to federal researchers, coal-fired power plants in the U.S. are closing at a faster rate than we thought. In 2012, the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicted that 27 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity during the summer months (the most electricity-hungry time of year) would be retired within five years. Last month, the EIA released an early version of its 2014 Annual Energy Outlook, which upped that figure to 60 gigawatts between 2012 and 2016 — doubling the number of old, inefficient plans that would be taken offline.

The next few years will see a particularly high number of coal-fired plants retire as the Environmental Protection Agency’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards take effect in 2015 (with a one-year extension possible for some plants). The new standards will require plants to install scrubber systems — “flue gas desulfurization equipment” and “dry sorbent injection systems,” in the poetry of industrial air pollution control terminology — to older plants. Some plant owners, though, will find the new regulations uneconomical and choose to shut the plants down instead.

Regulation isn’t the only thing making life difficult for coal in the U.S. Falling natural gas prices, coinciding with a boom in production that started around the middle of the last decade, have put pressure on the coal industry. Shale gas production, which taps underground rock formations for natural gas, has accelerated in recent years. While gas from shale was a negligible part of total natural gas production at the start of the new millennium, it surpassed 20 percent of natural gas production by 2010, and may close in on half of all production by 2035.

It’s not just older plants that are shutting down. According to SourceWatch, the vast majority of the 151 new coal plans proposed around 2007 never saw the light of day — victims of falling natural gas prices rather than environmental regulations. (The converse, however, is also true: The EIA predicts slightly more coal generation in 2014 than it did last year, due to higher natural gas prices.)

All of this adds up to coal declining as a share of total electricity generated. While coal has traditionally been the leading source of electricity in the country, natural gas is projected to reach parity by around 2035, with each taking 34 percent of the total share, and natural gas gaining in every year thereafter. This is only proportionally, however: As the overall electricity pie grows, so will coal’s use in absolute terms. (That is, barring very likely advances in technology, mainly around renewables, and more stringent pollution controls.)

You can download the EIA’s early release of its 2014 Annual Energy Outlook here).pdf.

The Works is made possible with the support of the Surdna Foundation.

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Stephen J. Smith is a reporter based in New York. He has written about transportation, infrastructure and real estate for a variety of publications including New York Yimby, where he is currently an editor, Next City, City Lab and the New York Observer.

Tags: infrastructurethe worksenergy

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