As the Biden administration promises to eliminate coal power throughout the United States, energy experts are sounding the alarm about what will be left of U.S. energy infrastructure if these plans succeed.
“EPA projects these proposals would cut 617 million metric tons of CO2 through 2042 along with tens of thousands of tons of ... harmful air pollutants that are known to endanger public health,” the EPA stated.
Despite the unambiguous statements from the Biden administration that it’s ending coal production in the United States, supporters of the EPA’s new rules insist that coal plants will be able to comply and continue to operate.
Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.) said at a House Committee on Energy and Commerce hearing in June that the EPA’s new emission rules are “reasonable” and “a far cry from a government takeover of our power sector.”
“This is ultimately a modest rule that builds upon the Inflation Reduction Act, which will further support cost-effective compliance with the proposed standards,” he said. “This proposal provides ample flexibility to entities [to comply].”
However, critics of the EPA’s new rules say limits are set so tight that coal plants will be forced to close.
“It’s death by a thousand paper cuts,” Michael Nasi, an environmental attorney who provided testimony at the congressional hearing, told The Epoch Times. “They’re putting out a slew of regs that are intended to basically eviscerate the remaining coal fleet.
“This rule is not happening in isolation. We have three or four other major environmental rules that EPA is chasing.”
The net result is that many coal plants are simply surrendering and shutting down well before the end of their productive life. This includes the newer plants, which are among the cleanest-burning coal plants in the world.
“Everything that’s left in the U.S. fleet is not a bunch of dirty old coal plants; these are the plants that made the retrofits necessary to extend their lives,” Mr. Nasi said. “They are the newer plants, the ones that actually were so vital that more investment was made.”
The report cites research by the National Energy Technology Laboratory that shows “a new coal plant with pollution controls reduces nitrogen oxides by 83 percent, sulfur dioxide by 98 percent, and particulate matter by 99.8 percent compared to plants without controls.”
‘Largely Uninvestable’
Global banks and asset managers have joined the fight against coal, working within the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) movement to cut off financing for the coal industry.Caught between the Biden administration and Wall Street, the U.S. coal industry is withering.
An additional 41 gigawatts of coal capacity is scheduled to be shut down by 2027.
Overall, 83 gigawatts of coal, gas, and nuclear power generation are scheduled to be shut down over the next decade as the United States embarks on what President Biden calls the “incredible transition” to wind and solar energy.
Shutting Down Faster Than Replacing
Energy experts are sounding the alarm about the dangers of this transition, warning that the U.S. electric grid is becoming increasingly unstable as a result.The NERC’s risk assessment identifies a broad segment of the central United States, from Minnesota to Louisiana, as “high risk,” meaning that blackouts can occur under normal conditions.
All of the states to the west of this area, as well as all of the northeastern U.S. states, are identified as “elevated risk,” meaning that electricity shortages can occur during times of very high or low temperatures.
And the NERC isn’t alone in its assessments.
PJM Interconnection, a regional electricity transmission company that serves 13 states and the District of Columbia, stated in a February report that while it remains committed to shutting down coal and gas plants, the construction of new wind and solar facilities to replace them “would be insufficient to keep up with expected retirements and demand growth by 2030.”
The report notes significant growth in electricity demand, given the push to transition cars, stoves, and home heating onto the electric grid.
At the same time, the report states that “thermal generators [coal and gas] are retiring at a rapid pace because of government and private sector policies as well as economics, [and] retirements are at risk of outpacing the construction of new resources because of a combination of industry forces, including siting and supply chain, whose long-term impacts are not fully known.”
New capacity, PJM stated, “is composed primarily of intermittent and limited-duration resources.”
“Given the operating characteristics of these resources, we need multiple megawatts of these resources to replace 1 MW of thermal generation,” it stated.
Of the capacity being eliminated, 60 percent will be coal and 30 percent natural gas.
Because wind and solar are “intermittent,” or weather-dependent, the amount of electricity that they actually generate is a fraction—typically about one-fourth—of their capacity, requiring multiples more capacity of renewables to be built to replace coal, gas, or nuclear.
“For the first time in recent history, PJM could face decreasing reserve margins should these trends continue,” the company stated.
Rest of World Adds Coal Capacity
As the United States races to eliminate coal as an energy resource, the world’s most populous and rapidly growing countries, most notably China and India, are charging ahead.China has more than 90 gigawatts of new coal capacity in various stages of development. Worldwide, 41 percent of the world’s electricity is generated with coal.
With so much coal capacity coming online, it makes little difference what the United States does with its coal industry, in terms of reducing global CO2 emissions. And ironically, the U.S. drive for renewable energy is fueling the expansion of new coal capacity abroad.
China needs this additional coal capacity to keep up with the West’s demand for EVs, solar panels, and wind turbines.
What makes coal so attractive as an energy source is that it’s cheap, plentiful, and transportable by ship, rail, or truck. It can be stored onsite at power plants, making it one of the most reliable and affordable power sources. It also adds to the diversity of a country’s energy resource mix, providing some degree of safety against weather events and political embargoes, as Europe learned to its dismay after Russian supplies of natural gas were abruptly cut off.
This supply is about 17 times larger than known reserves of oil and gas, and more than one-fourth of the world’s coal reserves are located in the United States.
The Rise and Fall of US Coal
Coal became the dominant fuel for electricity generation in the United States in the mid-20th century and reached its peak in 2007, when more than 1 billion short tons were consumed. It remains an abundant energy resource in the United States.The decline of coal in the United States began with the rise of fracking and the supply of cheaper, cleaner-burning natural gas. The transition to natural gas is the primary reason that the United States now leads the world in reducing CO2 emissions.
Currently, 43.7 percent of U.S. electricity generation capacity comes from natural gas, 17.1 percent from coal, 11.3 percent from wind, 8 percent each from nuclear and hydro, and 6.5 percent from solar.
This mix will shift dramatically toward renewables in the coming years, with 58 percent of the additions to capacity projected to be solar, 18 percent wind, and 21 percent natural gas.
Much of this investment benefits from government subsidies, including the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which provides tax breaks for the manufacturing of components for solar and wind energy. This bill was passed with the support of Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), a Democrat from the coal-dependent state of West Virginia.
During the times when wind and solar plants are operating, their variable costs are low, and the capital costs of building them and the transmission lines to connect them into the grid are often subsidized by taxpayers or passed on to customers in the form of higher utility bills.
Despite the argument that wind and solar energy are cheaper, in places where the transition to renewables has been implemented, electric bills have escalated sharply.
One country that’s decades ahead of the United States in its transition to wind and solar is Germany, which went all-in on its renewables bet, mothballing its coal plants and shutting down its nuclear plants.
However, the United States likely won’t have this option. Here, when plants are shut down, they aren’t kept in a state in which they can be fired up again.
“We have a market-based system, and if the EPA makes it impossible to deploy capital quickly enough to survive, the unit is retired,” Mr. Nasi said.
“It is deconstructed and melted, the steel is recycled, and the workforce is let go.”
Therefore, the elimination of coal energy from the U.S. energy mix may prove to be long-lasting, if not permanent.