Yes, natural gas is now cheaper than coal for power generation, and solar has become much cheaper. Even disregarding environmental concerns, it's just not a good choice any more.
I'm curious, in case anyone knows, how much of the economic disadvantage of coal is because of environmental reg compliance versus other, more fundamental costs?
Coal requires manual labour and mining so even without environmental regulations it's expensive. In the US coal use decrease had very little to do with environmental factors most of it was because fracking brought in cheap natural gas and pushed coal out.
I think it's primarily a fundamental cost issue. It's simply far cheaper to get an equivalent amount of energy from fracking a natural gas formation than having to literally dig coal out of the ground.
(disclaimer that I manage a climate&energy research group)
Most of the comments here are speculative.
The TLDR is that coal plants have trouble ramping their production up/down quickly, unlike natural gas which can do so in minutes. So, if you have a grid that is being thrashed by variable production (renewables), this results in variable pricing and demand for baseload. Coal cannot economically compete in that market (and neither can nuclear, which has the same problem).
Well, if you want to answer that question, you probably also need to figure out the hypothetical cost of the other power sources minus environmental regulations.
Nuclear would be (and used to be) massively cheaper, before regulations went wild against it.
I'm deliberately saying 'went wild', because the earlier nuclear power generation that was built to saner standards also has turned out to be incredibly safe already.
(Basically, anyone who avoided insane Soviet bullshit had safe nuclear power, as measured in eg fatalities per Joule of electricity generated.)
NE is starved for natural gas. They replaced the coal plants with gas and didn't bother to build enough pipelines (and even blocked them). We are getting a lot of our gas from Tankers from Europe and even Russia before the war. So now NE has nearly the highest electricity costs in the country even though we're not far away from some of the most abundant natural gas in the planet.
Including regulatory and litigation expenses, this is simply not true. That said, coal is very dirty and is not the best choice for power generation because of pollution. Coal is pretty cheap, and it's take most of my lifetime to change the cost through regulation, litigation and lawmaking.
Unlikely. The ISO has 3.5GW of solar and nuclear capacity equally (I’m aware of capacity factor of solar vs nuclear, but the ISO also reports ~6GW of behind the meter distributed solar which only manifests as reduced demand). The ISO needs more batteries, renewables, and transmission from hydro in Quebec, Canada (1.2GW), but nuclear is not needed to succeed long term and those two generators will eventually be decommissioned, as their license only extends their operating period to ~2050. Twenty five years is plenty of time to replace their 3.5GW of output; 18GW of battery storage, 17GW of wind, and 13.5GW of solar is in the ISO’s interconnect queue or has been proposed by developers.
https://www.mainepublic.org/politics/2023-11-30/documents-re... (NextEra, which owns the Seabrook nuclear power plant in N.H., stands to lose tens of millions of dollars every year if the NECEC comes online and attempted to use political donations to scuttle the Quebec Hydro transmission line)
https://www.iberdrola.com/about-us/what-we-do/smart-grids/ne... (“The new transmission line between Quebec and Maine will provide 1,200 megawatts (MW) of renewable hydroelectric power to the New England power grid in Lewiston, Maine, sufficient to meet the demand of 1.2 million homes. Once built, NECEC will be New England's largest renewable energy source, saving customers $190 million per year.”)
ericd|4 months ago
pragmatic|4 months ago
You have to physically handle every piece of coal. Extract, load ship, unload.
Natural gas is shooting out of the ground in North Dakota.
You can compare to wind and solar also.
The economics aren't favorable.
thelastgallon|4 months ago
Coal beats everything else by a mile. We also get mercury pollution for free, so no more eating fish.
xbmcuser|4 months ago
LarsAlereon|4 months ago
chris_va|4 months ago
Most of the comments here are speculative.
The TLDR is that coal plants have trouble ramping their production up/down quickly, unlike natural gas which can do so in minutes. So, if you have a grid that is being thrashed by variable production (renewables), this results in variable pricing and demand for baseload. Coal cannot economically compete in that market (and neither can nuclear, which has the same problem).
eru|4 months ago
Nuclear would be (and used to be) massively cheaper, before regulations went wild against it.
I'm deliberately saying 'went wild', because the earlier nuclear power generation that was built to saner standards also has turned out to be incredibly safe already.
(Basically, anyone who avoided insane Soviet bullshit had safe nuclear power, as measured in eg fatalities per Joule of electricity generated.)
KevinMS|4 months ago
indymike|4 months ago
monero-xmr|4 months ago
Solar makes up 4% of New England electricity. Not much sun there. Needs nuclear to succeed
toomuchtodo|4 months ago
https://www.mainepublic.org/climate/2025-01-03/central-maine... (“Central Maine Power aims to finish controversial western Maine power corridor in 2025”)
https://www.mainepublic.org/politics/2023-11-30/documents-re... (NextEra, which owns the Seabrook nuclear power plant in N.H., stands to lose tens of millions of dollars every year if the NECEC comes online and attempted to use political donations to scuttle the Quebec Hydro transmission line)
https://www.iberdrola.com/about-us/what-we-do/smart-grids/ne... (“The new transmission line between Quebec and Maine will provide 1,200 megawatts (MW) of renewable hydroelectric power to the New England power grid in Lewiston, Maine, sufficient to meet the demand of 1.2 million homes. Once built, NECEC will be New England's largest renewable energy source, saving customers $190 million per year.”)
https://www.iso-ne.com/about/government-industry-affairs/new...
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy/northeast-...
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-NE-ISNE/live/fif...
(Quebec, interestingly, has ~40GW of hydro generation capacity)
unknown|4 months ago
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