Per today’s WSJ “The Coal Age Nears Its End”. The claim is that natural gas is now so cheap and abundant that coal cannot compete, consequently 10 to 20% of coal plants may shut down by 2016.
Meanwhile in the same section they report that the Toshiba AP1000 nuclear reactor design just won U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission final approval, which they state is “clearing a path for the sale of the reactors in the U.S. and a revival of domestic nuclear power construction.”
Seems like it may be time for an update to this long running debate. Let’s keep it focused. Not about safety. Not about whether or not renewables can compete or are up to the task. (Let’s just assume that we’ll grow that segment as best we can, but that it will not be enough by itself … for the sake of this thread’s discussion anyway.) Not about climate change other than realistic assessments regarding carbon pricing that might actually occur and its potential impacts. Coal, natural gas, and new nuclear as competitors based on the economics. Is coal the coal age indeed being priced out, not by pricing carbon but by the current large supplies of natural gas? If natural gas plants continue to multiply, then how long until natural gas starts to significantly increase in price and how far down the field do natural gas supplies kick the ball? Does it buy just enough time to get enough of the new generation of nuclear plants constructed and able to compete on price at that point, or will they never be able to compete on price without major supports?
I’ve seen a program, perhaps on Discovery or History channel, that predicted that after mid-eatern oil has ‘run out’ they will be shipping condensed natural gas in supertankers designed for this as that supply far exceeds knows oil reserves. I think natural gas even surpasses coal.
Also to it’s benefit, it seems to be cleaner, containing more hydrogen and less carbon (so less CO2), and works in fuel cells.
Somebody better tell the Chinese-they have signed long-term supply contracts with Australia-I guess that won’t matter.
As for natural gas-I agree, there is a criminal waste of the stuff-Venezuela “flares” (burns off ) most of theirs at the well heads.
Of course, to exploit it, you need to build compression and purification plants-that takes time and money.
Coal is NOT dead-it will be around for decades-if not centuries.
Question: Germany plans to replace its closed nuclear plants with coal fired plants-why is this?
The article is behind a paywall but I’m guessing they’re comparing new coal to new gas, in which case they would be correct. The shale gas revolution is the biggest thing to happen to the power industry in my career, possibly my lifetime, and it caught a lot of industry experts flat-footed. I remember talking to an oil man in the late 1990’s who told me that a huge revolution was about to happen, and I just sort of brushed him off as everyone else I knew in the gas field was saying it would “never happen.” Now the sky’s the limit, and we really don’t know how much natural gas can be developed, except that it’s huge.
What’s hurting existing coal plants is a combination of factors.
Price competition from gas is putting pressure on coal units, if not trumping them.
Low demand in some critical areas of the rustbelt, NE, and SE have idled many coal plants for extended periods of time. Some plants I work with who used to have 30-50% NCFs are now down about 10-20% NCF, and some have been shut down for half a year at a time. This primarily impacts small, high heat rate units.
CSAPR (pronounced “Casper” in the industry) is a huge factor which worries almost all of my clients. In short, it is a new ruling from the EPA to reduce SO2 and NOx, and it’s putting huge pressure on many power plants, some which had been given initial responses from the EPA that they would not be impacted (Texas). This is causing many of my clients to seriously explore replacing large numbers of smaller coal plants with CCGTs, and to explore natural gas co-firing and repowering in larger plants. I have more business than I know what to do with, in fact.
The Coal Combustion Residues Rule (CCR) could require significant amounts of major site changes for power plants which process their ash in a wet basis on-site. This doesn’t make the press much, but it will significantly increase capital and O&M costs at power plants. I doubt that by itself it could shut any down, but it is one more straw on the back of plant already facing other problems.
Mercury and Air Toxics Standards Rule for Utilities - formerly known as Utility MACT, this rule was only just finalized on 21 December. This will require reductions in mercury, arsenic, cadmium, particulates, SO2, NOx…PM and HCl will serve as proxies for some of the toxics that are emitted, to reduce monitoring requirements. It’s going to be a tough rule, and will shut down many small plants.
The Cooling Water and Intake Structure Rule (316b) - this is a “stealth ruling”, in that folks in the industry didn’t see it coming and didn’t realize how serious it would be. Basically, it requires a minimizing of environmental impact from cooling water-related systems, and in many locations modifications are just not going to be possible. NERC themselves have issued a recent report which claims that of all the environmental factors threatening coal power plants, this one has the potential to shut down the most of them, anywhere from up to nearly 40 GW of power lost. When all combined impacts are added together, NERC says up to 60 GW of coal power could shut down, which would leave a pretty large reduction in power (however, it’s only roughly 6% of generating capacity, and probably close to that in terms of generation, as many of the coal units which will be shut down will be smaller, low-NCF units).
Coal is under serious attack from many angles. The situation is completely different than it was even 5 years ago, and just 2 or 3 years ago most wouldn’t have seen this many plants closing. Lawsuits will only delay the EPA actions by a few years, and my legal experts believe the EPA actions will be upheld by the USSC.
Now considering that a new coal plant has to meet BACT, as well as dealing with all the above factors, and yes gas can compete fairly well with it now.
I don’t think anyone has a clear idea of what the industry will look like in 5 years. There is a lot of flux right now. It’s causing a tremendous amount of uncertainty.
This is my neck of the woods and we replaced a REAALLY old coal plant with peak-use gas turbines and then shifted our core electrical use to a newer coal plant down the road.
I’m wondering if gas is so cheap why they don’t use the peak-use generators more often.
A question for Una. I had heard from someone in the coal business that China was bidding up our own coal reserves. Does this mean that our coal will shift overseas (assuming China does not have the same level of gas reserves we have)?
The tone of what I’m reading here seems to be ‘oh bummer, we have discovered new and large reserved this great new and fairly clean source of energy that is threatening to replace a good portion of a carbon intensive, normally considered dirty energy source. These assumed dirty power plants are closing and plants to use this clean energy are being constructed, oh no’
Well, there are a couple of difficulties. One is that there are very limited avenues for exporting coal to China - the PRB and Uinta fields are closest, but there are only a couple of ports on the west coast to send coal through (one is trying to expand) and they all are facing huge environmental pressures. I think it’s hard to see there being much expansion in the ability to export, but I could easily be wrong. This is another area where there is a lot of flux, and if the economy recovers then it’s possible the expansion plans may be cut back (it’s harder to make the pitch for “this will make jobs/improve our trade balance” if the economy is good).
US coal can leave via the Seaway or US Eastern ports, but it’s very expensive to ship across the globe.
China can take a lot from Australia, Indonesia, and other places, but a lot of what they’re looking for is metallurgical coal for steel, and many of the SE Asia resources are not that good for that use. Of course, neither is the PRB and Uinta basin coal.
China is looking at unconventional other avenues, such as Afghanistan, Cambodia, Viet Nam, and even some Indian coals, but we have doubts that they will work well for them. They also are seriously trying to assess ways they can reduce waste and improve their own coal utilization.
I don’t know if it should be read that way. I think the concern people have is that there are a lot of unanswered questions about how the best way to use this natural gas is. Should it be used to replace coal in the short term, should it be used for transportation (CNG vehicles), should it be reserved for home heating and industrial use, or should its use be throttled so it remains a strategic reserve? And how much will really be available? Many folks are very uncertain about the true extent of the resource. What happens if we go hog-wild replacing coal with gas, and then suddenly, for one reason or another, the gas reserves don’t make it?
A couple of friends I have high up in the pro-nuke enviro movement (real, Birkenstock-wearing pony-tailed hippies with PhDs) are not as happy with the huge gas reserves because they worry it will reduce the will to develop and deploy safe nuclear designs and research into things like thorium reactors. And of course there is the who fracking issue, which I actually don’t know much about so I won’t get into. Other than those and my aforementioned concerns, I’m not sure there is much that’s really negative.
And my request for discussion was without any value judgment placed; more of a handicapping the race kind of discussion request. The concerns are exactly what Una mentions above: how long can natural gas remain cheap in an environment of relying on it for a larger share of electricity generation and how will its current and likely future supply/demand curves impact the development of new and improved nuclear power plants (without discussing whether those are desirable outcomes or not).
Una’s expertise in this area is appreciated. Yes, the article did cover many of the issues she alluded to in her first post.
Just a discussion. Gas fired turbines would be great. Just need to get the word out to those who object to it or charge those communities for the extra cost of going around them.
The infrastructure costs for NG are huge. You may call flaring a criminal waste, and I agree that it is not ideal, but if someone could easily make money off of that gas, it wouldn’t just get flared.
My notes from a random presentation that cites some unnamed NOAA study* (crap cite, I know) say that “flares are ~25% of total US gas consumption…and 5.5% of global production of natural gas.” No idea if production includes natural and agricultural emissions.
Last I checked, some ~$40 billion are being spend on a gas pipeline in Alaska.
There has been an effort to efficiently convert methane to something that is liquid at or near STP, with partial oxidation to methanol being the main thrust. I’ve actually done some work on this, although nothing terribly promising.
*Looking at wikipedia, it might be cite #8, but of course that goes to a newspaper article rather than the actual report :rolleyes:.
Uncredited nighttime view of Nigerian coast showing gas flares:
Gas is cheap to use when it’s produced locally, although one needs to be aware of potential costs of the infamous fracking. When it’s far away, it’s not so cheap. I’ve never seen side-by-side comparisons of transportation costs of various hydrocarbon fuels. That would be interesting. It’s not like you can send coal through a pipeline.
The electric power industry is in serious turmoil and I weary of chasing the research and business will-o-the-wisps. That’s one reason I’m slowly transitioning my career into academia, or maybe even just retiring in a few years when I reach 45. I really don’t know; I’m tired of nearly two decades of 60-70 hour weeks.
Not new. California has relied on natural gas power plants for a long, long time. Natural gas is the state’s #1 method of generating electricity, and has been for ages. California has no history of coal mining. Thus, there are (or were) very few coal plants in the state (less than 1% of in-state power generation as of 2005). Last I heard, those few were in the process of either decommissioning or converting to biomass.
A significant amount of electricity is brought into California from out-of-state coal plants, but state regulators are putting the kibosh on that too. When the contracts expire, they will not be renewed.
I’ve provided backing information above. I’ll bump this by answering the questions in the OP with my opinion.
Is coal the coal age indeed being priced out, not by pricing carbon but by the current large supplies of natural gas? - Cheap natural gas is a large part of it, but there is sort of a “perfect storm” brewing against coal right now from many fronts.
If natural gas plants continue to multiply, then how long until natural gas starts to significantly increase in price and how far down the field do natural gas supplies kick the ball? - I think there is almost a scary level of uncertainty here. Well, scary to people like me who get paid to worry about these things; Mrs. and Mr. America won’t be scared until the lights go out and their beer gets warm. I think in an ideal situation (maximum natural gas yield, minimum regulation on fracking) coal is predicted to decrease to 20-25% of total annual generation by 2050, with gas making up something like 40-60%. Nuclear and renewables make up the difference. In the “lots of gas/new nukes” scenarios, I often see 2050 figures of 30% nuke/40% gas/15% coal/15% renewables. In the worst-case “enviro lobby kills all nukes/enviro lobby kills fracking” scenario, coal still takes a hit but stays as high as 40%, gas 40%, and the balance is nuke and renewables by 2050.
Does it buy just enough time to get enough of the new generation of nuclear plants constructed and able to compete on price at that point, or will they never be able to compete on price without major supports? - It could, but I don’t know if it will. To tell the truth, I’m not 100% certain why new nuke isn’t going forward more. Oh I could list off 20 reasons in no time flat, but is the real reason one over-riding one, a combination of several, or all of the reasons together? I don’t know.
