In fact, gas prices would have to increase fivefold, to an average $10 per million Btu over the life of a power plant, for coal to become competitive again, the report notes.
Segal said he disagrees that new coal-fired generation will become obsolete due to market forces alone, citing utilities' interest in maintaining a diverse fuel mix to hedge against price fluctuations. "Many power providers are still interested in maintaining a balanced portfolio," Segal said.
But, he added, EPA's rule will disrupt utility hedging by eliminating coal from the fuel mix and "depriving the market of its flexibility."
Other mitigating factors for coal-fired electricity would be if thermal coal prices dropped off steeply or the cost of building a coal-fired power plant came down. But Barnett said such conditions would hinge on a number of factors, including a reduction in coal demand overseas.
He noted that U.S. coal companies are already positioning themselves to boost exports, especially to energy-consumptive countries like China, as domestic demand for coal continues to drop off.
"It's really a tale of two markets," he said, noting that as U.S. thermal coal prices soften, demand for high-grade metallurgical coal and some thermal coal has helped prop up U.S. coal mining activity in traditional high-volume regions like Appalachia and the Powder River Basin.
Click here to access the Bloomberg report.
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500
See what we're tweeting about
30 Comments
Add CommentOk, couple things:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. Natural Gas is still fossil fuel, just a much cleaner one than coal.
2. This turn of events has more to do with the massive natural gas deposits found in the gulf region and east coast than with politics - ie market forces, not political forces have pretty much pushed coal out.
Good. The health effects of coal burning are immense, for example children's asthma is way higher downwind of coal plants than on average. There is no such thing as "clean coal" - that's a euphemistic term coined by the industry.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe effect on CO2 emissions will be small: Coal prices will drop a little which would cause a little less coal to be produced. Whether it is burned in the US or China doesn't make a difference.
"The agency disingenuously refers to its rule as path forward for coal, when in fact it's a dead end," Segal said in an interview.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisReally? How long as the coal industry been telling us about clean coal technology, and how coal will take us into the future? Who is being disingenuous? The coal industry has had its bluff called, and it's about time. The coal industry has long criticized renewables based on cost because the coal industry has never had to account for the environmental damage they cause. Now that the EPA is factoring a part of that damage into the equation, coal looks like a dead end because until someone comes up with a cleaner way to use it, coal IS a dead end.
It's great when the troll-bait first paragraph of an article is swiftly countered by its more reality-based second paragraph. This isn't an end of coal power generation in the USA, just an implementation of a much-needed law that confirms the reality that new coal power plants aren't compatible with a prosperous 21st Century. Since coal destroys $2 with the effects of its pollution for every $1 it "creates" in electricity sales, this can't happen soon enough:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/aer.101.5.1649
"The largest industrial contributor to external costs is
coal-fired electric generation, whose damages range from 0.8 to 5.6 times value added."
Note, this study concluded that pollution fromcoal power causes around $100B in external damages (i.e. negative health effects, reduced productivity, property damage, premature mortality, etc.) while some studies have found those damages to be closer to $500B!
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2010.05890.x/full
"The tabulation of the externalities in total and converted to 2008 US$ is given in Table 3 and normalized to cents per kWh of coal-generated electricity in Table 4. Our best estimate for the externalities related to coal is $345.3 billion (range: $175.2 bn to $523.3 bn). On a per-kWh basis this is 17.84¢/kWh, ranging from 9.42 ¢/kWh to 26.89 ¢/kWh."
Or get a load of this:
"Subsidies
In Kentucky, coal brings in an estimated $528 million in state revenues, but is responsible for $643 million in state expenditures. The net impact, therefore, is a loss of $115 million to the state of Kentucky.126 These figures do not include costs of health care, lost productivity, water treatment for siltation and water infrastructure, limited development potential due to poor air quality, and social expenditures associated with declines in employment and related economic hardships of coal-field communities.126
The U.S. Federal Government provides subsides for electricity and mining activities, and these have been tallied by both the EIA and the Environmental Law Institute.2, 127, 128 The EIA estimate is $3.17 billion of subsidies in 2007, or 0.16¢/kWh, and the Environmental Law Institute estimate is $5.37 billion for 2007, or 0.27¢/kWh."
Yeah, coal has got to go.
As a geologist I can say this is as misleading STUPID piece of journalism. Coal is not...not on the way out in the USA,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRidiculous junk article that should be retracted by Scientific American.
Then as a scientist, you understand the importance of sourcing your "facts".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGeo-Jelly-Brain Says: As a geologist I can say this is as misleading STUPID piece of journalism. Coal is not...not on the way out in the USA,...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrent Says: I do believe that this is call an ex recto arguementum. /s
Another Big Oil infomercial from its media outlet at Scientific American. Gas is not clean energy killing thousands of Americans annually with its noxious emissions still bad but less than of the tens of thousands done in by coal. Gas is a worse global warming producer than even coal because of the massive methane leaks within the production and distribution system.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisToday's subsidized renewable builds are little more than an effort to sell more gas with wind and solar backed up as they are by inefficient gas plant run inefficiently. Far less money less gas less GHG's building efficient CCGT plant or nukes. Notice almost no Obama subsidy money goes to solving this with Green storage- an anathema to Obama's Big Oil gravy train.
Note that the world nuclear doesn't appear in the informercial, as nothing scares Big Oil more than today's dirt cheap, clean and green, zero environmental cost nuke power at 4 cents a kwh when built by public power.. With today's gas domestic gas at $2/mcf only a $2/mcf LNG tanker ride to a $18+ /mcf international market, seems like all of Obama's Big Oil sponsored gas plant will seen be costing the suckered rate payer over 15 cents a kwh.
Seems like a lot of folk are being suckered by Big Oil propaganda
You are not the only corporate shill "geologist" on this forum that is selling snake oil for the republicans this fall. You are beginning to sound like the Drudge Report which is nothing more then an agenda driven tabloid that parrots right wing blog sites.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe EPA is not about to back down after the ridiculous attacks the right has tried in vain to destroy it with lately. The fact is, the EPA is perhaps the most successful agency in the history of the country. The average American is smart enough to know this in spite of what the tea party thinks.
We all know the dangers of coal fired plants and the massive destruction of our heartland do to strip mining. This will stop when natural gas takes over. Now, the next major disaster will be the fracking wells that fail, but those most affected will be the fools that sold their water rights along with their mineral rights, not most Americans as is the case with coal.
Wow sault, that ridiculous claim of coal destroying 2 dollars for every dollar in electricity it sells is one of my favorite of the warmist propaganda. Though it is not surprising you warmists come up with nonsense like that, you freely plug numbers and cherry pick data for your climate models which are also based on statistical equations gerrymandered for your pet theories.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes yes, you supplied a link big deal. The fact is the entire economy of America, western Europe, Japan, China and much of the rest of the world would not happen at all without electricity. There is no industry not dependent on energy. So your numbers are impossible. Because every dollar of electricity sold is supporting economic activity that far far exceeds your ridiculous $2 of destruction number making it completely irrelevant. Maybe you should go back to school and get an MBA or maybe study economics.
I seriously hope you are joking when you start making claims that you warmists can somehow determine that coal has actually caused a premature death or a negative health effect. I already debunked the so called reduced productivity. You do realize we humans are a heck of a lot more productive now than before electricity was being produced and that productivity is powered by electricity?
And if kentucky doesnt want to spend so much money on coal, the parasite politicians can reduce taxes and regulations they impose and then declare they need expensive union workers to fill.
At least you appear to be against subsidies. The entire article is ridiculous but the subsidy comment was the dumbest one. Placing a subsidy on CCS or anything raises the price. All that happens, just like solar panels or college educations, once the government steps in with the money pillaged from taxpayers, all of a sudden the cost of whatever it is, is raised by the amount of the subsidy, I know, I know a concept never understood by the liberals.
Do you just make all this stuff up because you NEVER source ANY of your arguments...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHey, why don't you publish a study refuting the claims of the world-class economists that made those calculations? Or better yet, you could FIND a study that has done the work for you. What's that? Nobody's challenged Nordhaus et al yet? Maybe that should tell you that it's a fairly solid study. Then again, getting the facts right hasn't really been your strong suit, right?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou can't just dismiss peer-reviewed studies because they inconveniently demolish your pre-determined beliefs.
Decades ago NASA said it could supply all of Americas energy using solar power. That and the advent of nuclear power made me realize those types of energy sources would eventually power the earth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat all fossil fuels are on their way out, in time, is a given. Probably won't happen in my life time, but then neither will all the political bickering. You humans still have a lot of evolving to do.
What nonsense! Coal is likely to be used for centuries. Of course there is no such thing as "clean coal" and never will be, but stack scrubbers can be used to clean up the emissions if needs be. The most interesting possibility of coal use may be conversion of it into a liquid fuel replacing that extracted from oil wells. Natural Gas, Fracking, and drinking water contamination are other interesting areas of interaction with possible unintended results. "Make Haste Slowly"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy do you say "fossil" fuels?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCoal costs are far higher than it's benefits. 30k dead and 150k hospital stays just from US breathing it's wastes in.
Coal can easily meet the new standards by either cogen of various types or better, making fuel, chemicals from it and electricity from the waste heat. Plus the CO2 comes out almost pure can be pumped back into the ground cost effectively.
But all of them will have a hard time beating home, building RE generation who save the retail costs of power.
As for Nukes costing $.04/kwhr that's a joke here in the US. Progress just upped the cost for 2.2Gw to $24B!!! Customers will pay $.05/hr for 8 yrs without getting any power!! Please tell me how thatis ecomonical?
Facts are RE is simple equipment costing about $2k/kw vs $11k/kw for nuke. One can build 5.5x's as much RE for the same price of this new nuke.
@Jerry D,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCan you link me to the story on the cost of the nuclear reactor you are talking about?
Never mind I found it:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisProgress says Florida Levy reactors delayed, cost up:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/02/utilities-progress-levy-idUSL1E8G27AU20120502
From the article:
"Cost estimate up to $19 billion-$24 billion"
RATES TO RISE
"If Florida regulators approve of Progress' request, the company said total nuclear cost-recovery charges would be $5.09 on a 1,000-kilowatt-hour (kWh) residential bill beginning with January 2013 billing, compared to $2.86 in 2012."
Oh, yeah. So cheap. and it is only going to take 11 years to build! /s
".. Do you just make all this stuff up because you NEVER source ANY of your arguments..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually all my stuff is sourced as you well know in numerous previous posts with real data from real projects. When anybody credible asks I repeat. You in your role as the stupidest commenter on Sciam in its entire history are not credible.
Every single link you've ever handed out is from a wacky biased greenie source downloaded from activist's on the alternet and based on data from Big Oil's climate denier shop.
Jerry is a noted DIY'er that lives in house on stilts somewhere in the Everglades. As well as kickass moonshine he tells us he has invented a 100% efficient roof top windmill - in negotiations with Siemen's for a patent. How's that going Jerry?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisProgress's project is more about much needed grid improvements required with any power source than nuclear power.
I've pointed out to Jerry that the VC Summer AP-1000 project due for 2107 service and under budget built by American lawyers is on schedule coming in at $4B/Gw If you can do arithmetic (no nonuking greenie can) that comes in at 4 cents a kwh when built by a public power operator like TVA. Four of the same AP-1000's built by American engineers under the watchful eye of the NRC are 90% complete on schedule on budget in China at half the cost.
++
Here is a inconvenient fact (and referenced) for you: according to a EIA study, which sought to normalize the subsidy per kWh of electricity generated:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.eia.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/subsidy2/pdf/chap5.pdf
Since wind and solar are getting over $23.37 and 24.34 per kWh and coal and natural gas are getting $0.44 and $0.25 per kWh I can see where renewables really make economic sense. Put those subsidies right in there with the rest of the entitlements that we are paying out of the government coffers and we'll all be fine in fantasy land.
I am sure that you will throw out all of the studies that claim the EIA is not reporting fairly because they are normalizing the numbers out instead of giving the totals per fuel (which they do in this report) but that is just noise. Normalizing the relative subsidy is the only way to judge the cost effectiveness of one fuel against another.
On another note the EIA is just about the only agency in this country that actually knows what is going on with energy supply and use so I think that maybe we should listen to what they have to say on the subject(s) and not some paid shill who is trying to undermine the message because it contradicts their agenda.
Plus God forbid that we actually consider the poor dunes sagebrush lizard when we build the massive solar arrays over their home and the environmental impact that is going to have upon their poor souls. Or maybe the migratory birds and bats that are killed by the wind mills. I can't wait until the wind farm builders are sued under the migratory bird laws.
There is no way we (mankind) are going to live on this planet without causing some catastrophe so maybe we should all just drink the cool aid and let mother Earth heal herself (note the sarcasm here).
I just about shot my drink out of my nose when I read this post!!!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think that it is kind of fun to point these things out but we all know that sooner or later he will post yet another link to another ridiculous rant or just resort to calling us names.
Yes the EPA is successful at enforcing laws that were not passed by the Legislature and I for one hope that they hang for it. Not only is it treasonous behavior that they and the executive branch are committing but the Legislature and Judiciary are complicit in allowing them to get away with such actions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLast time I checked the Legislature was supposed to write the laws that the Federal Government was to enforce, through the legislature, and the judiciary was supposed to rule on the Constitutionality of the laws. The checks and balances (which are now called grid lock when one side does not get its way) are in the crapper and the executive branch is now allowed to create and enforce laws and penalties (under the term rules). This is entirely laughable and if you do not understand why then I challenge you to read both the US Constitution and the Federalist. Then get back to me on the state of our union.
I mean through the executive branch.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisevoburgh, You care to show how you figured out wind and solar cost that much because it's a lie? You should be ashamed of yourself putting up such bull.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPV panels are now $1k/kw which comes out to under $.10/kwhr or so plug and play for $2k/kw, sunelec.com That is less in most areas for coal, NG or new nukes at the retail level customers pay.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSethdayal,
You lie about Progress plant because it makes a huge lie of the prices you put out that are not believable. None of the price increases are about the transmission lines which are less than 10% of the project. Just another of your distortions.
Just google Progress Energy nuke and not only read about $11k/kw nuke plants and rising but the perfectly good one they broke!!! Yes the nuke industry is in good shape!!
Plus you need to look at the VC Summer plant more recent cost estimates before using it as an example. As an OEM I can put in 5x's the KWhr/$ as VC can and most of mine is on call, something far more valuable than constant power, No? Can you wrap your tiny brain around that Seth?
I unlike you build things for a living including wind, tidal and river current generators and lightweight cost effective EV's plus other electrical and composite devices.
I just have to wonder what kind of drugs you are on that make you incapable of learning new things that don't fit your rather narrow mind. Or were you born that way?
I like nukes thugh not found of complicated overpriced PHW ones but the smaller,, inherently safe and far less costly ones.
But if it comes from a utility it carries their costs, profits, etc so by the time the power gets to you it's 2-3x's higher. So a good home, building RE set up can be the low cost energy source. Or be stupid like seth and be a slave to the utility for the rest of your life.
Jerry Jerry Jerry my friend!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMost folks don't know that Jerry and and his ancestors - DIY'ers all - have been making biofuel's for decades out in the scrub lands of Florida. The problem is those damn Revenuers lost in the last century don't get it just because folks are choosing to imbibe rather than filling their tank. As you can see from friend Jerry's posts, he does sample the quality from time to time.
OK Jerry we know that the cost of building anything in Florida - the most corrupt state in the union is expensive - but who knew it was that bad. We know folks in that State are unable to even count so we can understand that it must cost a lot to build with an illiterate work force. But for three times the cost of the similar complex at VC Summer in North Carolina? Sheesh - there must be other stuff going on .A look at the project shows extensive grid rearrangement (substation, transmission, distribution switching, grid control etc etc etc
The $4B/GW at VC Summer is the current budget figure for that project believable since it is twice the cost of having American engineers build them in China -90% complete on time on schedule. If building in China was so cheap why aren't we seeing Chinese cars and airliners flying around.
"VAs an OEM I can put in 5x's the KWhr/$ as VC can and most of mine is on call, something far more valuable than constant power, No? Can you wrap your tiny brain around that Seth?
I unlike you build things for a living including wind, tidal and river current generators and lightweight cost effective EV's plus other electrical and composite devices."
Goodness Gracious Jerry. Nobody else in the world has managed to come even close you on that. Lets us know when Siemens and you can make a deal. I for one am ready to invest!!!!
Thank Randomness for that! Perhaps in a dozen years we in Texas will be able to eat the fish from our lakes and impoundments, free of the constant rain of mercury-laden particle ash from the coal-fired power plants that pepper our state. Now if we could only do something about the sulfur dioxide that the refineries pour down upon us we could live in health and peace.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs a geologist, you ought to know that the cheapest, most easily produced energy source will win out. Coal has been a declining industry for the last half-century; it is dirty, dangerous to extract, and much less efficient than natural gas. The environmental costs of coal production alone are enough to doom it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFrom some of the earlier comments, it appears that coal is not on its way out, if we continue to mine it for sale to China. The only result will be that someone in the Whitehouse will claim a reduction in GH gases (which will not be true, since they will just come from China), and they will claim an improvement in the trade imbalance with China, due to the coal exports - also not true, since providing them with cheap energy, just improves their ability to compete with American businesses, who must pay higher energy prices.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWow. Doublethink. I wonder how many people will hear each statement separately and fall for them.