Three years ago, during one of my first roadshows across the U.S., I met with senators, congressional representatives and policy advisers from both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill.
What struck me most was not the debate about coal.
It was the curiosity.
There was a genuine appetite to understand what was happening in China and India, the world’s two largest coal-consuming economies and among its fastest-growing industrial powers. Many policymakers understood the U.S.’s domestic energy challenges. Fewer had a clear picture of how other nations were approaching them.
Those conversations have stayed with me because China and India were already asking a different question.
While much of the West debated which fuels should be phased out, they concentrated on securing the affordable, reliable energy needed to grow their economies and strengthen their competitive position.
They understood something simple. Energy security is national security, and affordable energy underpins competitiveness.
Looking back, it should not surprise anyone that the U.S. is now investing heavily in coal. The real question is what took so long?
The last five years have been a reminder of why energy security matters. COVID exposed the fragility of global supply chains. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the collapse of Russian gas supplies into Europe triggered the largest energy shock in decades. More recently, disruption in and around the Strait of Hormuz demonstrated how quickly energy markets can be thrown into turmoil.
Each crisis reinforced the same lesson. Reliable, affordable energy underpins economic resilience.
Now the U.S. faces a new challenge.
Artificial intelligence is driving the strongest growth in electricity demand seen in a generation. According to the International Energy Agency, a typical hyperscale data centre consumes around 100 megawatts of electricity, enough to power approximately 100,000 homes. Meta’s proposed Hyperion project in Louisiana is expected to require at least 5 gigawatts of electricity, roughly three times the power demand of the entire city of New Orleans.
AI may be driving today’s headlines, but this conversation is much bigger than AI.
Reliable and affordable electricity underpins manufacturing, industry, jobs, investment, living standards and economic opportunity. Countries do not compete on climate targets. They compete on productivity. And productivity depends on energy.
That reality helps explain why Washington has committed more than US$1.3 billion over the past year towards coal-fired power generation, grid reliability, supply chains and technology development.
These investments are often portrayed as support for ageing coal plants. That misses the point.
The average U.S. coal plant is nearly 50 years old. Most operate on technology developed in the 1970s and 1980s, achieving thermal efficiencies of 33 per cent. The objective is not to preserve ageing infrastructure; it is to modernise it.
The Administration’s recent US$850 million investment is focused on extending plant life, improving efficiency, strengthening reliability and advancing new coal projects in Alaska and West Virginia using advanced technologies.
The U.S. has already demonstrated what modern coal technology can achieve.
The John W. Turk Jr. power station in Arkansas, commissioned in 2013, remains the country’s only ultra-supercritical coal plant. Compared with a conventional coal plant, it consumes less fuel, avoids approximately 320,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually and reduces sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury and particulate emissions.
Yet while the U.S. largely stopped building advanced coal facilities, other countries continued innovating.
That is why China and India matter, not because the U.S. should copy them, but because it should learn from them.
China’s newest ultra-supercritical coal plants operate at thermal efficiencies exceeding 47 per cent. The country is deploying carbon capture at scale and converting coal into fuels, chemicals, hydrogen and industrial feedstocks. India is investing billions in coal gasification to strengthen energy security and create higher-value industrial products from domestic resources.
These are not simply energy projects. They are competitiveness projects.
The technologies improving efficiency and reducing emissions are also strengthening manufacturing, creating new industries, reducing dependence on imports and generating greater economic value from coal.
This principle sits at the heart of FutureCoal’s Sustainable Coal Stewardship (SCS) framework, which promotes proven technologies that make coal cleaner, more efficient and more valuable, from high-efficiency power generation and carbon management to coal-to-products technologies and new industrial applications.
The Global South never took its eye off the ball.
While many Western economies became consumed by debates over which energy sources should disappear, countries across Asia remained focused on a more fundamental question; how to secure the affordable, reliable energy needed to grow.
The U.S. now appears to be returning to that conversation.
The question is not whether coal remains part of the energy system. It is how the U.S. builds the reliable, affordable and secure energy system needed to support AI, strengthen industry and compete in an increasingly energy-intensive world.
AI may have accelerated the debate.
Competitiveness will determine the outcome.
Michelle Manook is Chief Executive Officer of FutureCoal, the global organisation representing the coal value chain. She works with governments, policymakers, investors and industry leaders across North America, Asia, Africa and Australia on issues relating to energy security, industrial development and coal innovation. Recognised by Mining Journal as one of the 50 most influential people in global mining for the past four consecutive years, Michelle is a regular commentator on global energy policy, with articles published in The Australian,Australian Financial Review, Financial Times, and Sunday Times in South Africa.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
I just came out of a County Commissioner’s meeting where they were considering extending for an additional 5 years a permit obtained 5 years ago for a wind energy project not yet built. The project, itself, is very badly considered for a number of reasons. I did my best to explain that the view of renewables versus coal and natural gas is undergoing a greatly revised understanding of what the electrical energy grid needs. Who knows what will transpire, but the playing field appears very stacked against the public and the affected homeowners whose neighborhoods are being invaded.
It would be fun to review the PowerPoint slides presented by the wind energy project managers 5 years ago. I imagine they were prijecting electricity too chaeap to meter by around… now.
Most recent “recoverable with current technology” coal reserves report 350+ years of coal in the USA. The death of coal in the USA has been reported many times in our 250 year history, especially in the last 50 or so years. People and dollars chasing the next shiny object (wind and solar) but coal marches on. Common bumper sticker in coal country years ago–LET THE BAST___S FREEZE IN THE DARK.
The Arkansas Turk USC power station single unit is ‘only’ ~600MW and is 41% thermally efficient. All of China’s newish USC are at or over 1000MW per unit That alone explains why they are now achieving 47% thermal efficiency. A fundamental surface to volume ratio scaling typical of many industrial thermal processes
OTOH, US has abundant shale sourced natgas. 600MW Turk took ~4.5 years to construct at a cost of $1.8 billion. By comparison, FPL just a few years ago replaced a 45 year old resid fired 1000MW steam plant at Port Lauderdale with a new ~1300MW CCGT in 2.5 years (at the same location) for a cost of $1.2 billion and a thermal efficiency of 61%. At any price below about $8/mmbtu natgas is more fuel cost effective than Powder River basin sub bituminous coal—and Powder River is the cheapest in the US. It is what Turk burns. Current Henry Hub natgas is $3.16/mmbtu.
Anywhere natgas pipelines exist or can be built I think CCGT wins out over coal in the US, not necessarily elsewhere) for data center electricity expansion on time, capital, and fuel cost grounds.
An addendum. Out of curiosity I just researched and reran my some years old generic relative fuel cost numbers based on this year’s actual PRB coal price delivered to Turk by rail (~$39/ton, a ton of PRB averaging about 17.6/mmbtu—actual depends on varying moisture content). The newish FPL Port Lauderdale actual natgas fuel cost (including amortizing some new natgas pipeline capacity) delivered is currently $3.30/mmbtu per FPL, (about 5% above Henry Hub benchmark). Given the thermal efficiency differences, actual delivered fuel costs are about a wash (Turk cheaper but less efficient per mmbtu). Still leaves big time and capital differences favoring CCGT versus USC, especially for rapid data center buildout.
My training as a JD/MBA demands such an addendum.
Yes, but as a ‘system’ the grid benefits from using coal as baseload. Coal can be stockpiled to keep running during supply interruptions. Natural gas stops working if the “feed” is cut off, since it is unable to be stockpiled and is therefore dependent on continuous external supply.
Wind and solar don’t work, fossil fuel and nuclear do. You know the rest.
And yet in May solar power supplied more energy to the US grid than coal. Coal is more polluting and significantly more carcinogenic than all other fuel sources including nuclear power and nobody would chose to use it if there are alternatives. Rud has shown above that natural gas wins out over coal in the US which is the real reason why coal usage is declining.
Except at night it produced nothing and all the other forms had to carry it.
Yeah if you just aggregate its unpredictable, intermittent output and ignore how useless that is. All it does is drive up the overall price of power.
IW:
Coal is more polluting [I do not think CO2 is a pollutant] and must be done correctly.
Another reason for the coal decline was the Obama & Biden’s EPA threatening the economics of coal [why invest in modernization or even maintenance?]. One of the reasons the US currently has such a data center/AI energy problem is the premature closure of dispatchable sources before reliable replacements were online — all linked to NetZero stupidity by Obama & Biden administrations.
Note that Solar [and Wind] when hooked into the e grid makes the grid more fragile and the higher the % of non-dispatchables sources the higher the fragility. See UK, Germany, Spain and coming into view, China. [Doomberg had a good piece on China just recently]
[I have graph of grid fragility incidents for the US (its increasing) but I don’t see a way to attach it… any suggestions?]
“China’s newest ultra-supercritical coal plants operate at thermal efficiencies exceeding 47 per cent. The country is deploying carbon capture at scale and converting coal into fuels, chemicals, hydrogen and industrial feedstocks.”
“The technologies improving efficiency and reducing emissions are also strengthening manufacturing, creating new industries, reducing dependence on imports and generating greater economic value from coal.”
The WORST thing for the U.S. to do would be to push CCS for “climate” reasons. Likewise, “reducing emissions” makes no sense as a goal on its own, as it can be readily demonstrated that emitting CO2 while producing reliable power from coal (or gas) carries no perceptible risk of “climate” harm.
So let’s please not make reference to bad ideas as though the U.S. should feel pressure to do likewise.
Thank you for listening.
Agreed. The energy penalty from CCS Takes your 1000MW coal plant and turns it into an 800MW plant at best.
And check up on how China is using CCS, if that is to be your yardstick. They are notorious for bypassing environmental equipment when it interferes with production.
A MEA plant to capture CO2 for soft drinks carbonation uses almost 33% of the energy. Just not a feasible option. As an aside nature will replace any CO2 removed from the atmosphere. So Why?
Good article on the need for coal but another brainwashed author who has never bothered to look at the Climate Change™ hoax.
China is not making strides on carbon capture. It is fiddling at the fringes to keep the hoax alive in the west. It supports their sales of wind turbines, solar panels and batteries to western governments infested with global kleptocrats.
More CO2 improves productivity of biomass. CO2 has no impact on the radiation balance or temperature. It is the big con of the era.
Is anybody else grinding their teeth with frustration at the exposure of people like this woman? She joins Bjorn Lomborg in my grouping of people with a good approach, ADAPT for the future while apparently ACCEPTING that CO2 is the cause of warming. Sheesh!
It is disappointing that obviously smart people have not made more effort to understand they are being fed bullshit on the cause of climate change.
China and India are presently doing all the heavy lifting in restoring atmospheric CO2 above starvation level. Great work for humanity.
Coal is good for power AND economically helps China and India BUT (IMO):
Low wages and cost of living for highly educated professionals in China and India is a bigger worry for Americans AND Europeans expecting professional careers in 2036.
Hopefully, using super-critical plants (such as sCO2 (Baker Hughes) and the Brayton cycle, the extra energy efficiency (42 vs 28%) will pay for any scrubbing required to make coal-fired plants cleaner than natural gas.
And then there is Terra Innovatum’s SOLO small reactors (1.24MWe) that dispense with cooling AND scrubbing water.
Unfortunately, sCO2 is incompatible with the higher temperatures needed to make the Solid Oxide Catalyst Hydrolysis water-to-ammonia GEM practical. Have to wait for that one.