Retiring Coal-Fired Power Plants? Not So Fast…
It appears that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will significantly delay the formal publication of climate-change rules for power plants — rules that could force some coal plants to close. Whether it’s an attempt on the part of Democrats to get past the 2014 elections, or whether it’s rooted in the Republicans friendly relationship with Big Energy, no one seems to know. Either way, as my colleague Jesse Berst of SmartGridNews reports, “It seems that coal plants will have a reprieve in 2014.”
Unfortunately, this type of behavior is to be expected; there is no reason to think that Washington has the least interest in serving the will of the people, who, according to this report from US News, overwhelming support a rapid migration away from fossil fuels in the direction of renewable energy.
Craig,
The answer is simple: Cold winter.
This winter has been punishing due to the continued abnormalities of the jet stream. That has sent us into record-shattering withdrawals from natural gas inventories, and has resulted in a rapidly increasing price for natural gas.
If natural gas inventories are too low going into the peak summer season (They will perhaps end below 1 Tcf!!!!), then the nation would be ill served by taking coal capacity offline this year. The natural gas inventories must be rebuilt to at least ~3.3 Tcf going into next winter or the prospect of a major cold spell next winter could result in regional gas shortages.
You cannot make a claim that averting global warming is such a significant concern THIS YEAR that we can institute a risk that hundreds of thousands of Americans might freeze to death next winter. (I’m not exaggerating, the risk is low, but is nontheless very real, and it’s a risk that policymakers cannot take).
In the end, the administration wanted to push for greater coal plant decommissioning, and old man winter chose this period to show us that our infrastructure wasn’t as well prepared for taking a large chunk of our energy portfolio offline as we thought. It’s likely that NG supply will increase significantly this year, and we’ll probably trend towards a higher average inventory level going into the winter in future years. But it makes perfect sense to me why you will want to delay decommissioning coal plants right now.
Craig, I’ve been banging the drums to eliminate coal as quickly as possible for as long as possible – and by any means necessary… But I’d be concerned right now about the prospect of significantly increasing summertime demand for NG. The industry cut back too far during the last two warm winter years… they have to build out their supply again, and shift more rigs to drill for NG, I suspect most of their inventory wells have been tapped at this point.
I will acknowledge that I’m not privy to some of the data needed to be certain of my assertions here: It’s possible that there are still thousands of spudded inventory wells that are still capped and waiting for the market to need the gas, but I don’t believe so… and the major players aren’t acting as though that is so.