Maybe I’m wrong about this, but I thought the decline of coal involved more than just environmental policies. Here in the Northeast we’ve seen coal displaced by natural gas as a preferred form of energy for power generation, as more and more Marcellus Shale projects come on line.
You are correct. The historic low price of natural gas is making it a preferred fuel in some cases.
Yet how do you explain the exponential (800%) increase in costs?
“PJM Interconnection, the company that operates the electric grid for 13 states, including Ohio, recently held its 2015 capacity auction. This gave the first real indication of just how drastic the effects of Obama’s war on coal will be. The market-clearing price for new 2015 capacity was $136 per megawatt.
That’s eight times higher than the price for 2012, which was just $16 per megawatt. In Pennsylvania, the new market price is $167 per megawatt — 10 times higher. In northern Ohio, which is suffering from more forced coal-plant retirements than the rest of the region, the 2015 price is an astounding $357 per megawatt.”
Well, Obama said his policies would necessarily ‘skyrocket’ energy prices. Hope you don’t live in Pennsylvania.
No you are not... As an interested observer in the industry I noticed the grid coal / gas percentages have changed dramatically via the Fracking Revolution as Gas has a lower price point now.
Coal lost something like 5% points from 44% down to 39% that is a marginal decline of greater than 10%.
What is a shame is they have not found a use for the coal i.e. coal to oil via the Fisher Tropsch process to make "JP" fuels for our military and domestic airliner fleet.
175+ coal plants to be shut-down ... 9+ gigawatts in 2012, alone!
Qick question: do these coal plants have a pre-built system in place to accept gas as the fuel source? One day they run coal and the next day they flip a switch to run on gas?
Is there a massive move going on to retro fit these plants and if so wouldn’t that effect a rise in employment to hire the construction crews to perform this work?
Something or someone’s logic doesn’t add up.
Sir,
The 2010 “cost per million btu of coal was $1.70.
The 2010 “cost per million btu og ga was $4.32.
I don’t have immediate access to 2011 numbers or 2012.