March 23, 2019

Why Coal Plants are Going Out of Business

Coal plants are struggling to keep up with the fast paced changes in the energy sector, despite federal efforts to prop them up.

Coal Doesn’t Make Economic Sense

It’s expensive to build and run coal fired plants
- “In many areas, it is not cost-effective to building a coal plant: Increasingly, building a new solar or wind farm is cheaper than just operating an existing coal plant.”
- The average coal fired plant in America is 43 years old, meaning they require lots of maintenance and run less efficiently.
It’s important to acknowledge the decline, and to plan how we want our power grid and economy to develop.
- A town in Montana had proposed to purchase a struggling coal plant a few years back, fearing what it going under might do to the economy.

Can We Use Decommissioned Plants?

Coal plants suddenly shutting down could cost jobs, and burning coal causes contamination at the old sites.
- There have been some creative solutions – to avoid losing around 1,600 jobs, Acme Equities LLC purchased an old coal plant in New Mexico that was about to shut down for $1.
  - They plan to keep the plant running, but install carbon capture technology and sell off the CO2 as an additional revenue stream.
- A coal plant in Germany was faced with a similar issue.
  - They’re investigating turning the old plant into molten salt storage unit – basically a huge battery that would preserve the coal plant jobs and also add storage capacity for renewable energy.

What’s Taking Coal’s Place?

There are several drivers of coal’s decline. Although GDP is up, energy usage has remained fairly flat due to efficiency increases.

Cheap natural gas and explosive additions to our solar and wind capacity are a more economically feasible way to meet our current energy demands.

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