By Rich Nolan
The U.S. needs more dispatchable electricity—and we need it immediately. Power demand is exploding across the country at the very moment the nation’s grid reliability is teetering on the edge of catastrophe.
The reshoring of heavy industry and the unprecedented AI-driven data center boom have collided the with the Biden administration’s effort to wipe out the coal fleet and make it impossible to build new baseload coal and natural gas plants.
President Trump is already tackling this crisis. On his first day in office, he declared an energy emergency, issued an “Unleashing American Energy” executive order and has since established the National Energy Dominance Council to refocus the nation’s energy policy. Reliability and affordability have once again taken center stage.
But the challenge facing the administration is enormous. U.S. electricity demand is projected to fully double by 2050 with a remarkable jump in demand already underway. A recent forecast sees demand rising 128 gigawatts (GW) over just the next five years—equivalent to adding 80 million homes to our already overstretched and under-supplied grid.
As the administration looks for reliable, immediately available generating capacity, the underutilized coal fleet is the answer hiding in plain sight.
Battered by an unrelenting regulatory agenda and unfair competition from heavily subsidized power sources, the coal fleet’s capacity factor – a measure of how often it’s providing power to the grid – rests at just 40%. The fleet is capable of much more. It is our strategic electricity reserve waiting for its moment. And that moment is now.
How much more power can the fleet provide? Consider its performance in critical, high-demand weeks and months. The coal fleet regularly ramps up generation, often reaching capacity factors above 60%. As recently as 2021, there were several months when the fleet had a capacity factor above 65%.
With months of fuel on site and the world’s largest coal reserves, the coal fleet is the nation’s ace in the hole to underpin reliability and dispatchable fuel diversity.
As power demand growth laps efforts to build new generating capacity and energy infrastructure, driving up electricity prices and threatening the economy, greater utilization of what we already have in place is the clear answer.
The Industrial Energy Consumers of America (IECA) – representing manufacturers with over 12,000 facilities nationwide and more than 1.9 million employees – have already warned “the manufacturing sector’s economic growth has never before faced such a growing crisis as we are faced with today, due to inadequate natural gas pipeline capacity.”
IECA told Congress gas supply on the East Coast is already so constrained it’s all but impossible for manufacturers to consider expansion of existing operations or investment in new facilities.
Semiconductor and battery plants, and even data centers with the energy needs of cities, simply won’t be built if they can’t find affordable energy, leaving untold jobs and tax revenue just sitting on the table.
While reducing barriers and timelines to adding new energy infrastructure is an important piece of the answer, IECA has asked for one critical, difference-making action: “to not prematurely shut down coal-fired electric generating units.”
Utilities are already answering the call, cancelling planned coal plant retirements across the country from Georgia to Indiana to Utah and Wyoming. But federal action to not only preserve the fleet but make greater use of it is what is needed in this energy emergency.
Energy abundance is the key to winning today’s global industrial arms race. The world is using more coal than ever before. It is past time the U.S. recognizes its coal fleet and coal mining industry not as problems to solve but as answers to today’s most pressing challenges. The coal fleet can and should underpin the administration’s energy abundance agenda.
Rich Nolan is President and CEO of the National Mining Association
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
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It remains hard to comprehend how decades of electrical engineering was, in some countries, largely ignored when coal was demonised and wind and solar, with well known intermittency and frequency synchronisation were favoured. Research institutions were not active enough to show the cost magnitude of this change, with some even promoting the change, when they must have known that it would replace some cheap electricity with expensive.
I have yet to read any personal accounts from people who were missing in action when they knew that they should have cried foul. Was it a case of loss of professionalism, or of inadequate personal experience/knowledge or simply the result of threats and bullying?
Asking because I want to know how senior engineers will treat the coming self-evident emphasis on nuclear, with or without personal emotion ruling over clear engineering direction? For more high costs? Geoff S
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
My friends in the industry retired because upper management did not listen or care. Before retirement, they just put their heads down and did their jobs. When the public wants renewable power, the companies have few choices.
The article talks about coal having capacity factors like 40%, 60%. But what is not stated explicitly is that coal is capable of 90%+ capacity factor, and the only things holding it back are (1) the preference given to renewables, which (a) causes the coal to be switched off or down when it is perfectly capable of producing more and (b) causes maintenance of coal to be cut because its income has been cut by (a), and (2) competition from gas which benefits by being able to back up intermittent energy better because it ramps up and down quickly. The various factors apply differently in different countries, but the bottom line is that coal has suffered terribly from the Net Zero mass-suicide scheme. The entire western world needs to get back to building new coal fired power stations. Now. If challenged, cite China.
When I worked in the industry, most of the coal plants had annual capacity factors in the 65% range. This was 40 years ago. The reason was that the nuclear plants ran full capacity all the time, and the coal plants mostly cycled as needed. The few very large units in the coal fleet might have hit 70% but it is much easier to tamp back and ramp up even a big coal unit than nuclear. The preference was to tamp back all units a little overnight, rather than take smaller ones off line altogether and then have to bring them back up slowly in the morning.
Yes, coal is the answer to fill much of the energy gap! What is more – with modern flue gas technology – no worry fgor future “London fogs” anywhere!
And that coal is just as “free” as the wind and sunshine provided by nature, but is also an excellent source of useful carbon containing compounds.
Coal, along with wood and coconut husks, is also used to produce activated carbon.
Activated carbon has multiple uses for removing impurities plus others.
Many coal units have been allowed to deteriorate from lack of maintenance or capital expenditures due to 1) environmental regulations specifically aimed at making coal units too expensive and 2) coal sunset laws (like “zero by 50”) making any investments guaranteed to end up abandoned in place.
“Crying foul” has been done by many professionals in the industry, but the business side ignored them due to the factors stated above.
Yabut, look at all of that black “smoke” spewing from coal plants. Pictures don’t lie. Do we really want to be breathing all that “carbon” and stuff? Sheesh.
Mostly water vapor.
Poe’s Law is an adage of Internet culture which says that, without a clear indicator of the author’s intent, any parodic or sarcastic expression of extreme views can be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of those views. {You can look it up!}
Gas is just cheaper in most of the US now. Coal plants require more btus per MWh and more O&M costs per year than gas plants.
Gas pipelines are much cheaper and easier to operate per BTU than coal delivery options.
Unless gas prices rise and stay high, coal plants in most of the country will continue getting shut down. The small handful of coal plants very near low cost mines will remain cost-effective.
For many years, coal and gas offered us competition, with coal providing a stabilizing effect on energy prices. I don’t know what would have changed, except that we no longer have a level playing field, which needs to come back. Also, NG is not available everywhere. We need to get coal back to help stabilize the grid, and lower electricity prices.
Yes, gas pipelines are cheaper and easier than coal delivery options, but coal storage is cheaper and easier than gas storage options. Storage should be a major factor in contingency planning. So I’m not saying use coal not gas, I’m saying both should be in the mix. Long term, I think we should expect to use nuclear for the bulk of electricity, and use coal and gas more for feedstock, less for energy. We don’t get a lot of long term thinking reported from politicians, unfortunately. (Is that the politicians’ fault, or the media’s?).
Compared to other fuels, coal is relatively easy to store and transport. And the supply of coal isn’t controlled by OPEC-like entities.