Guest post by Amy Oliver Cooke at RealClearEnergy
President Donald Trump will say it: beautiful, clean coal. Alaska will host the first new coal-fired power plant built in the U.S. since 2013. Xcel Energy, the first utility to pledge net-zero emissions, is pleading with Colorado regulators to let it keep its coal-fired plants open through 2030. Yet coal remains a four-letter word in polite energy circles.
States are trading reliable, dispatchable electricity for intermittent wind and solar, driving up costs and reducing reliability in exchange for emission reductions that have little impact on global temperatures. Not all megawatts are equal. We need an honest conversation about coal. Without firm, always-on generation, we cannot meet the demands of our 21st -century economy.
Artificial intelligence, data centers, advanced manufacturing, and the electrification of everything are driving a surge in electricity demand that America’s grid cannot meet. NERC’s 2025 Electricity Supply and Demand data projects U.S. peak summer demand across all assessment areas reaching nearly 967,000 megawatts by 2030, an 18% increase from today.
The consequences are real. Data centers form the physical backbone of AI, cloud computing, electronic health records, financial markets, and defense logistics. Hyperscalers making decade-long infrastructure commitments cannot afford unreliable or high-priced power. If they cannot get it here, they will look elsewhere, including countries unburdened by philosophical objections to coal, gas, or nuclear. Those countries may require that our data be stored there. Every gigawatt of data center load we fail to serve will move somewhere with fewer constraints and less accountability.
Operators are hoping to meet 24/7 data center load with natural gas. After PJM reformed its interconnection queue, gas projects surged 1,810% over the prior year. But gas faces two hard supply walls. Major turbine manufacturers are backlogged to 2029 or 2030, and prices are rising. New pipelines face years of federal permitting and litigation. Data centers needing power in 2027 and 2028 cannot wait that long.
Atlanta-based Southern Company is caught in the bind that AI-driven demand is forcing across the energy sector. The utility is tracking more than 50 GW of potential new customer demand and has approved several gigawatts of new natural gas generation to begin meeting it. However, supply is constrained as new pipelines don’t come online until 2028 and 2029. To preserve capacity in the meantime, it has reversed planned coal retirements in Georgia and Mississippi.
Duke Energy faces a similar situation in North Carolina, where a legally mandated 2050 carbon-neutral goal remains on the books, but the state legislature stripped the 2030 interim target, freeing Duke to delay some coal retirements and lean on new natural gas. A critical new pipeline into the state is under construction but faces active litigation that could complicate its completion.
This leads to an obvious but challenging conversation: we need coal. Always On Energy Research’s analysis of Indiana’s levelized costs shows that existing, depreciated coal plants generate power at roughly $55 per megawatt-hour. With firming costs, wind reaches $129 per MWh and solar $159 per MWh, two to three times more expensive than existing coal. Indiana’s electricity prices rose 93% between 2007 and 2025, nearly twice the national average, as the state’s once-formidable cost advantage for manufacturers eroded with the help of state-incentivized investment in costly wind and solar.
Indiana isn’t unique. Across the country, regulated utilities earn returns on capital investment, not fuel. A paid-off coal plant earns shareholders nothing; a new wind farm earns a regulated return. The incentive to retire low-cost, reliable generation in favor of expensive, intermittent new generation is structural. After two decades of structural incentives that have driven up costs and driven down reliability, shareholders have done well, but ratepayers are worried about costs. And utilities are worried about reliable capacity.
Xcel Energy’s March 2026 filing with the Colorado Public Utilities Commission was blunt: the state faces capacity shortfalls in 2026 and 2027, reserve margins are “challenged” even in 2028, and there are “no viable alternatives” to keeping all four remaining coal plants online through 2030. Tri-State Generation and Transmission’s Craig Unit 1, scheduled for permanent closure at the end of 2025, was urgently called back into service in April 2026 after the Southwest Power Pool issued a resource advisory amid wind shortfalls. Ratepayers must pay for both resources.
The policy path is clear but politically challenging. Stop mandating coal retirements on arbitrary timelines. Prematurely retiring coal plants threatens reliability and makes it impossible to meet new demand. Where possible, modernize and reopen shuttered plants. Consider new coal capacity in the Southeast, which has the infrastructure and demand growth to support it. Reform permitting for gas and nuclear. And redirect wind and solar investment toward dispatchable resources. In a capacity-constrained environment, prioritizing intermittent generation over firm power compounds the very problem it claims to solve.
Our 21st-century AI buildout cannot pause for permitting reform, and national security infrastructure cannot wait to litigate pipelines. The economic opportunity of leading the digital economy belongs to those willing to power it. Right now, that means keeping coal in the conversation.
Amy Oliver Cooke is a founder, President, and Chairman of the Board of Always On Energy Research and host of the Colorado-based energy podcast Power Gab.
Originally posted at RealClearEnergy, reposted with permission.
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Uh does that mean sequestration of CO₂, or is CO₂ off the table?
Fairy dust.
Xcel Energy is not building a coal plant in Alaska. That is a bad juxtaposition of things. The proposed coal-fired power plant is the Terra Energy Center, with plans for a capacity of 1.25 gigawatts and integrated carbon capture and storage technology. The significance of that is not something I have time to pursue.
It is a mistake for Xcel Energy to pledge net zero emissions. This implies that there is something wrong with carbon dioxide and there isn’t.
I was happier before XCEL purchased Colorado Public Service.
It is an old pledge so maybe no longer in play.
CO2 is actually THE GREEN GAS.
It keeps the planet’s plant life alive.
It is currently at sub-optimal levels in the atmosphere for that purpose.
Did you ever try inhaling pure CO2 instead of oxygen? It’s good for curing what ails you.
Did you ever try inhaling pure Dihydrogen monoxide?
It’s good for curing what ails you.
Try it sometime, although I wouldn’t recommend it.
Are you really that stupid, if you inhale pure oxygen for too long and you get oxygen toxicity. You obviously thought you could be clever but all you really showed us is how ignorant you are.
The human body is optimized around 21% oxygen the other gas fraction so long as non toxic doesn’t really matter.
The IPCC, etc., has endowed CO2 gas as having magical global warming power, based on its own “science”
The IPCC, etc., claims, CO2 acts as Climate Control Knob, that eventually will cause runaway Climate Change, if we continue using fossil fuels.
The IPCC, etc., at one point denied the Little Ice Age, used fraudulent computer temperature projections.
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Governments proclaimed: Go Wind and Solar, Go ENERGIEWENDE, go Net zero by 2050, etc., and provided oodles of subsidies, and rules and regulations, and mandates, and prohibitions to make it happen.
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Net-zero by any date to-reduce CO2 is a super-expensive plant/crop destruction pact to:
1) increase command/control by governments, and
2) enable the moneyed elites to become more powerful and richer, at the expense of all others, by using the foghorn of the government-subsidized/controlled Corporate Media to spread scare-mongering slogans and brainwash people, already for at least 50 years.
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CO2, just 0.042% in the atmosphere, is a weak absorber of a small fraction of the available, absorbable, low-energy IR photons.
CO2 has near-zero influence on world surface temperatures.
CO2 is a life-giving molecule. Greater CO2 ppm in atmosphere is an essential ingredient to:
1) increase green plants and for animals and reduce desert areas, such as the Sahara, and
2) increase crop yields to better feed 8 billion people.
At About 30% Annual W/S Electricity on the Grid, Various Costs Increase Exponentially
The W/S systems uglify the countryside, kill birds and bats, whales and dolphins, fisheries, tourism, view-sheds, etc.
The weather-dependent, variable/intermittent W/S output, often too-little and often too-much, creates grid-disturbing difficulties that become increasingly more challenging and more costly (c/kWh) to counteract, as proven by the UK and California for the past 5 years, and Germany for the past 10 years, and recently in Spain/Portugal.
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All these countries have “achieved” near-zero, real- growth GDPs, the highest electricity prices (c/kWh) in the EU, and stagnant real wages for almost all people, while further enriching the moneyed elites who live in the poshest places.
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Native People Suffer Extra Burdens: Their angry, over-taxed, over-regulated native populations, already burdened by the wind/solar/batteries nonsense, and then further burdened by the increasing cost, chaos, crime, subversion of “integrating” the continued influx of uninvited, unvetted, uneducated, unskilled, crime-prone-ghetto trash from Third World countries. Those folks are sucking from the multiple, government-programs, while making insufficient efforts to efficiently produce goods and services, and often have high crime rates, and insist in their own cultures, instead of assimilating. These are outcomes the native populations never voted for.
CO2 emissions accumulate in the atmosphere, leading to a 50% increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration since 1750. Ever hear of the atmospheric greenhouse effect (discovered by scientists in the 19th century)?
Warren,
yes and even then (1860s) science knew that H2O was the dominant greenhouse gas.
I am well aware of the benefits of carbon dioxide.
Yes mate, and they said any rising CO2 would benefit humanity because it’s plant food, their warming theory by greenhouse gases has some truth, however all these gases are reaching saturation in their ability to cause warming by absorbing and re-radiating IR frequencies, thus AGW is all a fairy tale to suit the ignorant public. Climate scientists should be ashamed by their blatant climate scare campaign pursued through the UN with these dangerous and stupid Net Zero policies that are hurting poorer people but cannot affect climate, so are immoral and environmentally devastating- what a mess!
Hi Warren,
You are very late to the ballgame. This topic has been discussed at length in this blog. I suggest doing some reading.
Yes we have heard of the green house affect. We also know that in the current atmosphere it only accounts for a few tenths of a degree of warming.
Which is a good thing for life on this planet.
We have also heard about how more CO2 in the atmosphere means plants grow faster and bigger, which is also a good thing for life on this planet.
In other words, there is absolutely no reason to cut CO2 emissions and many reasons to wish for more of them.
Mark W., where did you get your few tenths of a degree number ?
This article Table 1 gives the watts on a component extraction basis.
A bit dated now but still one of the best…
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2012GL051409
You can roughly use the number in the column b for each component divided by 242.7, the top number, times 33 C, the total GHE…to get the contribution of each component to the present GHE from the GHG in consideration. Roughly…assuming lapse rate from average emissions temp altitude remains unchanged, which might be unwise by a few degrees.
What isn’t being said out loud is the USA changed most of its’ coal fired plants to natural gas making it the leading country in reducing so called “bad” emissions without relying on interconnects.
US emissions are now rising.
Good. I rather prefer stable and cheap electricity.
So is their prosperity and energy security.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with allowing CO2 back into the atmosphere.
700ppm + should be the aim.
!000 ppm CO2 would be better, but we will take any rise we can get to improve the planet!
Somebody calculated that if we burned all the available fossil fuels at one time, this would raise the CO2 amounts from the current 430ppm to about 900ppm, so we can’t quite make that 1000ppm even if we burned it all at once.
Whats the perfect level?
Current CO2 amounts and higher.
The more, the better.
Data from the European Commission’s EDGAR database and the IEA:
India:
The most rapid growth among major economies. In 2024, India’s emissions rose by 3.9% to 4.6%, representing the largest absolute increase (+164.8 Mt CO2eq) among top emitters.
China: Emissions are stabilizing.
Recent reports indicate a slight increase of roughly 0.8% to 1% in 2024.
USA: Emissions are flat or slightly declining.
Data shows a negligible increase of 0.3% to 0.4% in 2024, following a longer-term trend of gradual reduction due to the shift from coal. Some datasets even show a slight decrease depending on the specific year-over-year comparison.
Not the most up to date but still negligible. Behind China and way behind India.
So I guess Warren was wrong when he said U.S. CO2 emissions were increasing.
According to John Clauser, 2022 Nobel Physics Price recipient, “Atmospheric CO2 and methane have less than 0.25 to 0.75 C effect on atmosphere temperatures. The policies government have been implementing are totally unnecessary and should be eliminated. The dominant process is “the cloud-sunlight-reflexivity thermostat” mechanism. Clouds are bright white, reflect 90% of the sunlight back into space, are the most crucial aspect of the climate system. Oceans are 70% of the Earth surface. The Pacific Ocean alone is 30%. The average cloud cover for the Earth is 67%; about 55% over land and 72 – 75% over oceans.”
People keep on mentioning CO2, as if it is important.
It is only important, because the IPCC says so, based on its own science.
It is only important, because moneyed elites saw an opportunity to have long-term, lucrative, no-risk tax avoidance.
Each day the sun comes up the world breathes in and breathes out as the sun goes down.
Without the huge evaporation/condensation energy transport from the rainforests in the tropics, much of the higher latitudes of northern hemisphere would be uninhabitable. The same with the southern hemisphere.
It is a good thing heat of vaporization is so large that the rising vapor easily overcomes other factors that would hinder its upward motion. The presence of CO2 is utterly unimportant. It just goes along for the ride.
Rainforests are the lungs of the world. Lungs means huge evaporation of water in the rainforests of the tropics on a year-round basis and then energy transport. Clearcutting destroys part of that process, because what “regrows” are grazing animals and heavily fertilized crops.
At future COPs, they should be discussing the ways of restoring tropical rainforests and set restoration targets.
Here are four articles attesting to the small global warming role of CO2 in the atmosphere
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Eight Taiwanese Engineers Determine Climate Sensitivity to a 300 ppm CO2 Increase Is ‘Negligibly Small’
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/eight-taiwanese-engineers-determine-climate-sensitivity-to-a-300
By Kenneth Richard
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The Fairy Tale of The CO2 Paradise Before 1850…A Look at The Real Science
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-fairy-tale-of-the-co2-paradise-before-1850-a-look-at-the-real
By Fred F. Mueller
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Achieving ‘Net Zero by 2050’ Reduces Temps by 0.28 C Costing Tens of $TRILLIONS
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/achieving-net-zero-by-2050-reduces-temps-by-0-28-c-costing-tens
By Kenneth Richard
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German Researcher: Doubling Of Atmospheric CO2 Causes Only 0.24°C Of Warming …Practically Insignificant
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/german-researcher-doubling-of-atmospheric-co2-causes-only-0-24-c
By P Gosselin on 19. November 2024
So are China, India and most of asia … your point?
Trump’s cuts to miner health programs threaten black lung protections
https://www.ehn.org/trumps-cuts-to-miner-health-programs-threaten-black-lung-protections
Trump loves his country and its people.
While we are at it, why not modernize the truck fleet?
“Black lung disease, once in decline, has resurged in recent years among miners in Central Appalachia. The resurgence is tied to thinner coal seams that force workers to cut through more silica-laced rock, releasing dust that scars and inflames lung tissue. The disease is irreversible and often fatal.”
Reloaded linked to an article written by either liars or idiots – as quoted above.
Hint: “I will take silicosis for $200, Alex.”
Has it ever linked to an accurate article?
Great line, ain’t it?
A Cider truck. From 1917. Got it.
Some coal miners probably drink cider
Oh, wait. Cider from 1917? Never mind.
All mining equipment I have seen, and I live near coal field in the Hunter Valley, is modern, air-conditioned and filtered.
Changing perverse financial incentives is essential. As long as wind gets counted as if it produces power reliably, it will get built.
Clean Energy Is Outspending Fossil Fuels Nearly Two To One
https://archive.md/tAHry
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As if anyone needed proof that fuels work 24/7 and wind and solar do not.
Stupidity is drawn to CO2 like flies are drawn to sh!t.
That is not wasted energy, it is invested energy. So long as you get more than you put in it is a bargin. For example: The heavy oils in California have burned one of three barrels to get two for decades. By the way: burning more fossil fuels is great for the earth and it’s inhabinents. Increases food production, increases the greening of the earth and has NO negative impact on weather.
Sorry everyone, I was responding to a stupid post by you guessed it, which has been taken down.
No, I was responding to the last paragraph in the post.
No, it’s not. EROI exists for a reason. And try your fake “It’S gOod FoR plAnTs” talking points on somebody else.
It is good for the plants. Marxists are bad for the planet.
CO2 is a fake “it’s good for plants talking point?
I propose the following wager for a million dollars: We each plant two potatoes, ten grains of wheat, and twenty seeds of rice. Mine will grow in a greenhouse where we double the current global level of “carbon pollution” (CO2). Yours will grow in a greenhouse where we reduce the level of CO2 down to 50 ppm, so the plants won’t have to struggle against that pollution.
Whoever grows the most calories wins the million dollars.
Will you take my bet?
Considering all material imput costs, the EROEI is negative for both wind and solar.
Actually including all of the data is invalid, according to LooserName.
And the environmental damage cost from wind and solar is ENORMOUS.
And ecological damage-the two are separate, but linked like siamese twins.
I tend to think of ecology as being part of the environment…
… otherwise, I agree with your point. 🙂
This moron still thinks LCOE is the best way to judge wind and solar.
EROI doesn’t exist.
When the standard measures don’t show what the party wants to see. Invent new ones that do.
Again … it’s not your money and they and the market don’t care about your EROI and what you think it means. If they believed you it would have all collapsed but the same as us we think you are stark raving nutters.
EROI exists for one single purpose.
To “prove” WTG and SV are “better.”
The lifecycle costs of wind and solar totally ignore many cost factors.
Take your fake talking points somewhere else.
Good grief! Are you truly that ignorant?
Was that a rhetorical question?
Wind and solar are less than 10% of power generation, yet costs more than the other 905 combined.
That’s not a good thing.
An unstable-and grid destabilizing-l0%. But the true believers will never accept that.
Certainly the EROI should include the costs of blackouts, as well as all the rest, but blackouts are not ever mentioned as a cost.
The costs will become apparent when large chunks of the population lose their freezer stockpiles and old folks gasp and die when their medical devices fail-but those costs will never be loudly proclaimed, or ignored by the politcos. Who will rise to be the spokesman for those people? Will anybody?
Why highlight the UTTER WASTE of funds on unreliable energy supply ?
Spending heaps of money on wind and solar…. and contributing only to the degradation of world electricity supplies… just dumb. !!
There is nothing remotely wrong with using fossil fuels to POWER MODERN SOCIETY.
Wind and solar definitely cannot do that.
And why are you so against countries around the world having access to fossil fuels. !!
Do you want all countries to go back to the dark ages ?????
btw.. you are totally wrong about wind and solar being “clean”….
Over their pitifully short life, they are probably the most environmentally destructive form of electricity production there is.
MUNR,
there is a good reason that renewables (Not clean, that’s an illusion) have more investment, you have to build a lot more to get an equivalent to conventional, about times three for wind and times nine for solar, plus infrastructure expansion, this in the U.K. other countries may differ in the figures.
What some call subsidies are taxable allowances, which all businesses claim. Again U.K. , the oil industry pays a much higher tax than other industries. That is part of the reason the oil industry is retreating from here.
Yes, there is a lot of waste in thermal processes, but do you think that renewables are not part of that, think of the processes necessary to build wind turbines and solar panels, largely thermal.
I would doubt Rystad’s figures, think of all the cargo China exports for example?
You asked him to think? 😉
You may be right that spending on alternative energy outranks fossil fuels and nuclear in recent decades due to the crazy notion that humans are affecting climate by CO2 emissions, so we are told we need to stop using our traditional fuel sources. However, this climate myth has now been exposed for the nonsense that it is by proper observational science by a range of experts in atmospheric physics, solar radiation, orbital cycles, oceanography and historical geology.
Therefore, it’s past time that the politicians, bureaucrats and academics realized this means that the UN pushed energy transition is fundamentally unnecessary, and regressive in it’s tendency to close down heavy industry and manufacturing because of resultant high electricity prices and intermittent power systems that can’t serve baseload. All this climate scam is doing is wrecking western economies and empowering
developing' nations including communist countries, as was planned by the socialistone world government ‘ agenda of the China controlled UN.It’s time we opted out of this system like the Trump administration, and defund the bastards including propagandists like you NUR!
Lets say I buy that garbage it’s not your or my money and we don’t get a say. About all that is correct is there is a fossil fuel industry … that is true. The reason for that industry is it makes all sorts of useful stuff beside being the backbone of energy use by most developed nations.
The question is what significance is it to you and what do you think you can do about it?
“For every dollar the world invests in fossil fuels today, it invests nearly two in clean energy. Despite record political backlash, the money keeps moving in one direction, and it is not the direction the headlines suggest.”
Well, at least part of your post is honest, although the 2:1 ratio is unverifiable and likely higher.
As usual, LooserName believes that government mandates prove that the people are demanding it.
a ‘dirty’ modern coal plant:
Whichever AI program drew the picture at the top, it seems the program was not told that when smoke and steam is issuing from the smokestacks, steam will also issue from the cooling towers.
Bravo.
It couldn’t be any simpler, fossil fuel and nuclear work, wind and solar don’t. Fire up all fossil fuel and nuclear generators. Remove wind and solar from the grid. Build new fossil fuel and nuclear generators.
That’s the recipe for success.
If coal is what it takes to meet increasing energy demands, it’s only logical that it should be utilized and never mind shuttering coal plants and keeping subsidizing wind and solar which are consistently proving they can’t meet the demands. Countries like China and India don’t worry about emissions because thy have learned that consumer/industrial/business demands take precedence over foolish, often unachievable emissions reductions targets. It’s too bad Western nations seem determined to learn the hard way.
It’s a gift…
Natural gas is a much better choice to back up (compensate) for wind and solar as it can be throttled for quick response. Especially straight gas turbine driven generator, slower if steam generator uses its exhaust heat. Gas is easy to distribute once pipeline built, and more acceptable closer to cities – a plant was built west of Calgary AB. Alberta has NG throughout the province. NE BC has plenty as well, many buildings in the western US use it via big pipes from the Peace River region to southwest BC with spur into US – built in the 1950s. And some electricity generation – there’s a plant just across the border in Sumas WA.
Yes but THERE IS NO NEED FOR wind and solar to begin with, so that should not even be a consideration.
We need reliable BASELOAD power. Coal and nuclear are best for that. Coal can be stockpiled, unlike gas.
While true, what is the EROI for this dual energy system?
If you still need the NG thermal generator, the cost of that adds to the EROI of WTG and SV.
“States are trading reliable, dispatchable electricity for intermittent wind and solar, driving up costs and reducing reliability in exchange for emission reductions that have little impact on global temperatures.”
NO, “emission reductions” have NO IMPACT WHATSOEVER on global temperatures. Zero empirical evidence supports the “CO2 drives temperature” nonsense.
And while we’re on the subject. A WARMER CLIMATE IS BETTER.