Coal Loses to Natural Gas

[Robert.Boston]

Some people I've talked to in PA are very concerned that the landowners are getting rich, but everyone suffers from a degraded environment, heavy equipment on roads, and imperiled water supplies. As long as royalties are not spread more broadly, matching the impact on others', there's going to be a lot of resistance to extended hydro-fracturing.

[Robert.Boston]

A Sea Change in U.S. Generation
Ever since I can remember, a rough but useful rule of thumb to describe the sources of U.S. electricity generation is that 50% comes from coal-fired plants, 20% comes from nuclear, and the rest comes from natural gas, hydro, and various other renewable sources.
That steady relationship has been changing over the past few years and markedly so since the middle of 2011. So much so that this past Friday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) announced that in April 2012, for the first time since EIA began collecting monthly data almost 40 years ago, generation from natural gas-fired plants was virtually equal to generation from coal-fired plants, with each fuel providing 32% of total megawatt-hours of power.

[Citizen-T]

I'm bookmarking this for the next time someone writes in a comment that the electricity for an EV comes mostly from coal.

[brianman]

Closing down coal plants tends to make that happen...

coal plants closing down - Bing

[Robert.Boston]

Closing down coal plants tends to make that happen...

coal plants closing down - Bing

What makes this even more interesting is that very few of the announced coal plant closures have happened yet. Mostly they are slated for 2013/14, in advance of the new EPA regs that take effect in 2015.

[vfx]

Messaging is:

The US grid is:

1/3 Natural Gas
1/3 Coal
1/3 Other (mostly renewable ('cept nukes))

[JRP3]

One of the few coal plants we have here in NY that was shut down for the last few months has just started operating again I haven't seen any coal trains go by so they must just be testing with what's already on site.

[Robert.Boston]

Messaging is:

The US grid is:

1/3 Natural Gas
1/3 Coal
1/3 Other (mostly renewable ('cept nukes))

That last 1/3 could fairly be called "zero-carbon sources".

[rolosrevenge]

Messaging is:

The US grid is:

1/3 Natural Gas
1/3 Coal
1/3 Other (mostly renewable ('cept nukes))

Since nukes are 20%, of the total, the remaining 33% is then mostly nukes.

[Robert.Boston]

In set notation:
{ Zero-carbon sources } = { Renewables } U { Nuclear }

It's always useful to note that oil (diesel, etc.) is a trivial fraction of electric generation fuels and almost entirely for "behind the meter" applications. IOW, if we didn't drive gas- and diesel-fueled cars, the U.S. wouldn't import oil. Even if we could halve the number of ICE vehicles, we wouldn't import oil.