Study: The coal industry is in far more trouble than anyone realizes
By Brad Plumer, WashPost, Updated: April 8, 2013
Here’s some bleak news for the coal industry: As much as 65 percent of the U.S. coal fleet could find itself under threat in the years ahead, thanks to cheap natural gas and stricter air-pollution regulations.
That’s according to a new peer-reviewed study by three researchers at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment, who take a detailed look at the costs of operating both coal-fired power plants and natural-gas plants around the United States.
Their conclusion? Coal power is far more economically vulnerable than most analysts have realized to date. Here’s why:
Cheap natural gas is crowding out coal: Already, a glut of cheap natural gas from shale deposits in Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere is upending the electricity sector. The researchers found that around 9 percent of the U.S. coal fleet has become uneconomical — it’s now cheaper to burn natural gas for electricity than to keep running those coal plants, which are now slated for retirement.
(More here.)
Here’s some bleak news for the coal industry: As much as 65 percent of the U.S. coal fleet could find itself under threat in the years ahead, thanks to cheap natural gas and stricter air-pollution regulations.
That’s according to a new peer-reviewed study by three researchers at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment, who take a detailed look at the costs of operating both coal-fired power plants and natural-gas plants around the United States.
Their conclusion? Coal power is far more economically vulnerable than most analysts have realized to date. Here’s why:
Cheap natural gas is crowding out coal: Already, a glut of cheap natural gas from shale deposits in Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere is upending the electricity sector. The researchers found that around 9 percent of the U.S. coal fleet has become uneconomical — it’s now cheaper to burn natural gas for electricity than to keep running those coal plants, which are now slated for retirement.
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
A couple of other concerns ... that involve worker safety.
A backlog of nearly 11,000 mine operator contests of health and safety violations are clogging up the system, which delays MSHA’s ability to hold our nation’s most dangerous mine operators accountable. The Litigation Backlog Project was set up by the US Labor Department in the wake of the Upper Big Branch disaster to deal with the backlog of contested mine safety citations. The sequestration cuts will close two of the Litigation Backlog Project’s five offices, and 30 of the 74 lawyers hired for the project will be laid off by June 1. Robert J. Lesnick, chief judge of the citation review panel, criticized the move in a comment reported in the Washington Post: “If litigation is the bite in any enforcement model, then [the Labor Department], in firing 30 attorneys, is pulling its teeth.”
With more than $68 million in fines are currently unpaid and mines that are more than 180 days in arrears on paying fines, or failing to live up to a payment plan, means the taxpayers are getting stiffed.
And with John Kline as Chairman of the Education and Workforce Committee, who has failed to move mine safety legislation, the future does not look good.
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