We published a big raft of blog items about the coal industry's problems in 2010, and many of them are summed up in a story today in The Washington Post by Steven Mufson, whose key quote comes from Kevin Parker, global head of asset management at Deutsche Bank: "Coal is a dead man walkin'. Banks won't finance them. Insurance companies won't insure them. The EPA is coming after them. . . . And the economics to make it clean don't work."
The story's key datum is this: After nine years in which power companies started construction of 20 generating units, the U.S. has just gone through two years in which not a single plant has been started, because of "a combination of low natural gas prices, shale-gas discoveries, the economic slowdown and litigation by environmental groups," Mufson writes. He cites the latter two factors as the reason for cancellation of an East Kentucky Power Cooperative plant on which the co-op had spent $150 million.
He adds, "The battle over coal plants could sharpen in 2011, as the Environmental Protection Agency deploys regulations to improve the efficiency, and lower the greenhouse-gas emissions, of big power plants. . . . Republican lawmakers have vowed to handcuff the EPA, which is also planning to issue broader guidelines later in the year." Luke Popovich, spokesman for the National Mining Association, reminded Mufson that the federal Energy Information Administration expects that the nation will need to build 30 to 40 new plants to supply the 21 gigawatts of new electricity demand expected by 2035." (Read more) UPDATE: East Kentucky Power says the story has two errors: The total cost of the unit would have been $819 million, including the $150 million already spent, and the settlement does not call for new pollution-control equipment.
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