Plans for New (US) Coal Plants Lose Steam

http://www.newwest.net/index.php/city/article/wave_of_shutdowns_hits_new_coal_plants/C94/L94/

I’ve reported on several decisions in recent months by Western utilities, including Tri-State Energy and Generation of Denver, to scrap plans for building new coal-fired power plants. Opponents of new coal-burning plants also got a boost when a private-equity group bought giant utility TXU and said it would scale back the company’s plans for new coal plants.

Now that movement has spread nationwide (Sub. req.), according to The Wall Street Journal, which reported this week that :"From coast to coast, plans for a new generation of coal-fired power plants are falling by the wayside as states conclude that conventional coal plants are too dirty to build and the cost of cleaner plants is too high.”

Journal reporter Rebecca Smith writes that in the last few months plans for many of the 150 or so new coal-fired generating plants on the books have been scrapped or delayed, and many more may fall victim to global-warming concerns. “Nearly two dozen coal projects have been canceled since early 2006, according to the National Energy Technology Laboratory in Pittsburgh, a division of the Department of Energy,” writes Smith.

In addition, major coal-mining companies saw their stocks downgraded last week, as analysts at Citigroup noted that “prophesies of a new wave of coal-fired generation have vaporized.”

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:o

Does everyone realize how big this is! We're talking major, major reductions in what was going to be future greenhouse gases.

This is the kind of news I've dreamed about for years!

That's good news considering the ecological destruction wrought by strip mining for coal and the carbon pumped into the atmosphere by burning dirty coal. On the other hand, what ARE we going to do for electricity when natural gas supplies fall off the cliff? We are certainly facing a future of strictly rationed electricity, and a lot sooner than most people suspect.

and I think that will become more widespread.

Coal is not the only answer. We're a nation that's smart enough and rich enough to find a series of alternatives.

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There is no reason that we can't over time convert usage from coal to a variety of alternatives.

If we're serious about replacing fossil fuels, then we must have a pretty good reason why. They are easy to find, easy to procure, easy to use for energy generation...and yet they are prone to depletion, making finding and procuring much more difficult (and eventually impossible, maybe a lot sooner than most think), very dirty so as to directly contribute to all sorts of nasty health impacts on the nearby populations, as well as the global population, and are the main driver in anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. So if we acknowledge this, and we acknowledge that we needed to do something about it decades ago, why insist on more time to go directly from coal to wind/solar/other? Why not just take a middle step that is much less dangerous, alleviates the second and third problems with coal and somewhat addresses the first, and gives us the time we need to transition to something else?

is advisable.

I'm not saying wipe coal off the map. Just reduce it bit by bit until it becomes a much smaller factor in global warming. As the new energy sources take over, coal can eventually be eliminated, or be used only as something supplemental and marginally harmful.

Why is this even up for debate? It is reasonable and achievable no matter how you cut it.

and MIT and Princeton's Climate Mitigation Institute and even accounting firms like PricewaterhouseCoopers and ....

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OK, so we don't know, within the year, when those turbines came on. It's therefore reasonable to take an average value.

So, NNadir's sum gives the lowest capacity loading - 23.33%
Your sum gives the highest capacity - 31.47% (still a bit short from 38.9%): But that's not a sound way to analyse it, either
Without month-by-month figures, all we can do is say there was an average of 7,581 MW operating that year - which gives us a capacity factor of 26.8%.

And no, it's not going to replace any coal because it's not it's not baseload power. I know you think baseload is some sort of zen concept, so I expect this to go right over your head, but if you're running a prison or a hospital or a silicon smelter you can't just run around pulling plugs out because the wind's dropped at night: You need something to pick up the load.

On-demand hydro assisted by wind can replace coal; On-demand biomass assisted by wind can replace coal: Or, if you're Gerhard Schröder, On-demand NG assisted by wind can replace coal.

With a wind capacity of 26.8%, a NG/wind combo will produce 1 lb of CO₂ per KWh: That's about half as much as coal, for reference.

Maybe you think doing half the job is good enough?

Here in the great state of Iowa there are proposal's for 2 more coal fired plants(another one is already being built by MidAmerican) and many more coal fired ETHANOL plants.. So far I have not heard our governor come out for or against any of these plans..

It might be fun to do some carbon sums... :D