7 ms·

Will the U.S. Ever Build Another Big Coal Plant?

49 points by artsandsci 9y ago

sxates 9y ago
No.
- dang 9y ago
  Could you please not post unsubstantive comments to HN?
labster 9y ago
TL;DR version: no. The only coal plant being built is a tiny one for a university in Alaska. Three more have been in regulatory hell for so long that they're no longer profitable compared to every other energy source, especially natural gas. Coal is dying but no one told Trump.
- ItsDeathball 9y ago
  One of the mentioned cancelled projects was a coke plant with a small electricity co-generation component. Do steel mills still need coke? If so, the decline of coal in America could be due as much to the decline of American steel processing as to emission regulations on power plants.
  - fencepost 9y ago
    A better question might be whether US steel plants have an increasing need for coke beyond current production levels. Also, do current coal-fired power plants also produce adequate coke for future increases in demand?
    - hwillis 9y ago
      If coke became particularly more expensive (unlikely despite falling demand for electricity) then US steel (such as it is) would move to direct-reduced iron[1] using natural gas. Almost all steel in India is made this way. It's also worth mentioning that steel can theoretically be produced electrolytically[2] (like aluminum). It's... essentially vaporware, but who knows. It's one of the Big Dreams: more energy efficient and pure oxygen as a byproduct. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_reduced_iron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_reduced_iron [2]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cleaner-cheaper-way-to-make-steel-uses-electricity/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cleaner-cheaper-w...
  - philipkglass 9y ago
    Only ~15% of coal production, historically and presently, is coking coal. The declines in American coal production/use over the past decade are dominated by declines in thermal coal used as fuel.
  - delazeur 9y ago
    Yes, they still need coke, but much if not all of that demand can be met by oil refineries. Even if the steel industry got all its coke from coal that would be a pretty small percentage of the coal market.
- throwaway7645 9y ago
  I'm sure he's aware (maybe not), but knew the voters in coalmining towns would vote for him and other conservatives are generally coal neutral.
- digitalzombie 9y ago
  > no one told Trump With his track record of not listening and blaming FBI, NSA, and CIA, I think Trump is just too lazy to listen. Also I think he lives in an alternate reality, his tweets are riddle with lies and also anger.
- ZeroGravitas 9y ago
  Trump knows coal is dying. He also knows that by being the one guy who promises to prop it up with government support, he can gain the support of groups that might otherwise vote Democrat. The people who care about the environment and efficient running of the economy based on facts weren't going to vote for him anyway.
dsfyu404ed 9y ago
There's a chance (like there is with every technology that isn't actively developed for a long time) that just when you think coal's dying someone's gonna come along and figure out how to apply an innovation from some other field that makes it so much cheaper/cleaner/whatever that it sticks around for a long time.
- epistasis 9y ago
  There's a chance of that, but up until now all such attempts have been stupendous failures. The Kemper plant in the article was a $7.5B failure. Much more likely is an innovation in the battery sector. Utilities are finally waking up to the huge value proposition of batteries on the grid. They can be used instead of upgrading transmission and distribution infrastructure. They can be somewhat easily relocated to new sites if projections of electricity demand were wrong. There are a ton of flow technologies that are on the cusp of being really useful. Lithium ion tailored for the grid is already the cost winner for several applications. I do hope that we come up with some carbon sequestration innovations, but I doubt that they'll be tied to coal in any way. Possible, but extremely unlikely. If there was any horse to back in the race, there's more than enough money for horse to get out of the gate. There are a lot of people with assets that are close to getting stranded.
  - hwillis 9y ago
    >Much more likely is an innovation in the battery sector. Utilities are finally waking up to the huge value proposition of batteries on the grid. They can be used instead of upgrading transmission and distribution infrastructure. Back of the envelope math: the electric grid would cost ~5 trillion to replace[1]. At $200/kWh that's 25,000,000,000 kWh. The US uses 11,152,000,000 kWh per day- that's 2.24 days of storage. Doubling the effective power of the grid using a day's worth of storage is trivial AND cost effective (at $200/kWh). Add in renewables and that storage gets several times more valuable, too. [1]: http://www.businessinsider.com/replacing-us-electrical-grid-cost-2017-3 http://www.businessinsider.com/replacing-us-electrical-grid-...
    - 9y ago
mjevans 9y ago
What else could the coal be used for? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal#Production_of_chemicals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal#Production_of_chemicals On a hunch from playing a bit too much Factorio, I tried to look in to coal and plastics, which seems to be a relatively recent (or at least recently commercialized) use for coal. The most reliable thing I can find is a press release. https://www.honeywell.com/newsroom/pressreleases/2016/05/new-honeywell-production-capacity-in-china-to-support-breakthrough-coal-to-plastics-technology https://www.honeywell.com/newsroom/pressreleases/2016/05/new...
- fencepost 9y ago
  Coal as a dense carbon source may be useful for plastics or other high-carbon production, but producers may also be looking at whether they can get incentives by sourcing carbon in ways that may qualify as sequestration.
- philipkglass 9y ago
  It makes economic sense to produce olefins (building blocks for plastics and many other chemicals) from coal in China, because China's domestic fossil fuel resources are mostly coal. Gaseous and liquid hydrocarbons are better feedstocks to start from if they're affordable/abundant, like in North America. If fracking output stays high, it won't make sense to invest in new American facilities for power-from-coal or chemicals-from-coal.
- hwillis 9y ago
  Coal is used to make synthetic graphite and that's about it- coal is basically used to make more coal. And that's only extremely high quality coal that isn't far off from natural graphite already. Even carbon fiber is made from propene and ammonia instead of coal. Hell, (char)coal can be made from regular organic material, with the bonus that the process of driving off non-carbon atoms produces flammable energy-containing gases.
- stevenwoo 9y ago
  The initial scenarios IIRC for the known reserves of the USA, Saudi Arabia and Russia were to run out in about 50 years, at that point if we haven't found a better power source our grandkids could use coal to make petroleum like Germany in WW2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_to_oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_to_oil On the otherhand fracking probably changed that timeline for Canada and the USA with the tradeoff of freshwater for oil so we'll have to wait and see how that turns out and moves the end date for our estimated petroleum reserves.
epistasis 9y ago
What really struck me from the article: >"To me, the biggest impediment for a company going out today and building a coal-fired power plant is regulatory uncertainty," Begger said. "Until you can find some sort of carbon agreement, if that's legislation or regulatory, technology, whatever, until there is some way to take that off the table, you're not going to have a lot of interest from utilities." The US government's plan of inaction on carbon regulation is clearly hurting industry here. Many (most?) energy companies are including the cost of a carbon tax in their future projections and planning, and in their investor communications. The energy industry is willing to impose a carbon tax in the US in exchange for immunity from lawsuits from emissions up until now: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/science/exxon-carbon-tax.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/science/exxon-carbon-tax.... That's how certain everybody is about the need for legislation, that an industry would invite a tax that amounts to $0.36/gallon of gas. The lack of political leadership, led by the desire to deny widely accepted science, is hurting business and planning. This uncertainty probably helps in the deployment of less-risky resources like wind, solar, and storage. But I think that clear carbon taxes, at $40-$120/ton, would help both the environment and the proper structuring of our economy. Uncertainty about regulation can be worse than the regulation itself.
- ams6110 9y ago
  Reducing coal usage is a goal of environmentalists. Government inaction, creating uncertainty, is achieving that goal. Why do we need to tax the industry and raise rates on consumers when coal usage is falling and renewables are on the rise without it?
  - epistasis 9y ago
    Because coal isn't the only problem, carbon in general is one of coal's problems. Coal also causes tons of premature deaths from other non-CO2 emissions as well, but the long term problem is the CO2. An economic system is more efficient and overall wealth increases if externalities are priced closer to their costs.
  - wisty 9y ago
    Because a tax is more efficient than wild, emotional guess-work.
vermontdevil 9y ago
The article talks about the gasification projects and the high costs. So how would any new tech not end up like the coal gasification attempts? Seems we bette off putting money into research at university levels for across the board energy projects then transfer to commercial sector after.
gwbas1c 9y ago
No
debacle 9y ago
I don't really know about our natural gas reserves - is cheap natural gas looking like a thing for the next several decades?
- Synaesthesia 9y ago
  The world has more than enough coal and natural gas for centuries, even petroleum won’t be running out any time soon. This is actually an unfortunate fact.

49 points by artsandsci 9y ago

sxates 9y ago

No.

dang 9y ago
Could you please not post unsubstantive comments to HN?

labster 9y ago

TL;DR version: no. The only coal plant being built is a tiny one for a university in Alaska. Three more have been in regulatory hell for so long that they're no longer profitable compared to every other energy source, especially natural gas. Coal is dying but no one told Trump.

ItsDeathball 9y ago
One of the mentioned cancelled projects was a coke plant with a small electricity co-generation component. Do steel mills still need coke? If so, the decline of coal in America could be due as much to the decline of American steel processing as to emission regulations on power plants.
- fencepost 9y ago
  A better question might be whether US steel plants have an increasing need for coke beyond current production levels. Also, do current coal-fired power plants also produce adequate coke for future increases in demand?
  - hwillis 9y ago
    If coke became particularly more expensive (unlikely despite falling demand for electricity) then US steel (such as it is) would move to direct-reduced iron[1] using natural gas. Almost all steel in India is made this way. It's also worth mentioning that steel can theoretically be produced electrolytically[2] (like aluminum). It's... essentially vaporware, but who knows. It's one of the Big Dreams: more energy efficient and pure oxygen as a byproduct. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_reduced_iron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_reduced_iron [2]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cleaner-cheaper-way-to-make-steel-uses-electricity/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cleaner-cheaper-w...
- philipkglass 9y ago
  Only ~15% of coal production, historically and presently, is coking coal. The declines in American coal production/use over the past decade are dominated by declines in thermal coal used as fuel.
- delazeur 9y ago
  Yes, they still need coke, but much if not all of that demand can be met by oil refineries. Even if the steel industry got all its coke from coal that would be a pretty small percentage of the coal market.
throwaway7645 9y ago
I'm sure he's aware (maybe not), but knew the voters in coalmining towns would vote for him and other conservatives are generally coal neutral.
digitalzombie 9y ago
> no one told Trump With his track record of not listening and blaming FBI, NSA, and CIA, I think Trump is just too lazy to listen. Also I think he lives in an alternate reality, his tweets are riddle with lies and also anger.
ZeroGravitas 9y ago
Trump knows coal is dying. He also knows that by being the one guy who promises to prop it up with government support, he can gain the support of groups that might otherwise vote Democrat. The people who care about the environment and efficient running of the economy based on facts weren't going to vote for him anyway.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago

There's a chance (like there is with every technology that isn't actively developed for a long time) that just when you think coal's dying someone's gonna come along and figure out how to apply an innovation from some other field that makes it so much cheaper/cleaner/whatever that it sticks around for a long time.

epistasis 9y ago
There's a chance of that, but up until now all such attempts have been stupendous failures. The Kemper plant in the article was a $7.5B failure. Much more likely is an innovation in the battery sector. Utilities are finally waking up to the huge value proposition of batteries on the grid. They can be used instead of upgrading transmission and distribution infrastructure. They can be somewhat easily relocated to new sites if projections of electricity demand were wrong. There are a ton of flow technologies that are on the cusp of being really useful. Lithium ion tailored for the grid is already the cost winner for several applications. I do hope that we come up with some carbon sequestration innovations, but I doubt that they'll be tied to coal in any way. Possible, but extremely unlikely. If there was any horse to back in the race, there's more than enough money for horse to get out of the gate. There are a lot of people with assets that are close to getting stranded.
- hwillis 9y ago
  >Much more likely is an innovation in the battery sector. Utilities are finally waking up to the huge value proposition of batteries on the grid. They can be used instead of upgrading transmission and distribution infrastructure. Back of the envelope math: the electric grid would cost ~5 trillion to replace[1]. At $200/kWh that's 25,000,000,000 kWh. The US uses 11,152,000,000 kWh per day- that's 2.24 days of storage. Doubling the effective power of the grid using a day's worth of storage is trivial AND cost effective (at $200/kWh). Add in renewables and that storage gets several times more valuable, too. [1]: http://www.businessinsider.com/replacing-us-electrical-grid-cost-2017-3 http://www.businessinsider.com/replacing-us-electrical-grid-...
  - 9y ago

mjevans 9y ago

What else could the coal be used for? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal#Production_of_chemicals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal#Production_of_chemicals On a hunch from playing a bit too much Factorio, I tried to look in to coal and plastics, which seems to be a relatively recent (or at least recently commercialized) use for coal. The most reliable thing I can find is a press release. https://www.honeywell.com/newsroom/pressreleases/2016/05/new-honeywell-production-capacity-in-china-to-support-breakthrough-coal-to-plastics-technology https://www.honeywell.com/newsroom/pressreleases/2016/05/new...

fencepost 9y ago
Coal as a dense carbon source may be useful for plastics or other high-carbon production, but producers may also be looking at whether they can get incentives by sourcing carbon in ways that may qualify as sequestration.
philipkglass 9y ago
It makes economic sense to produce olefins (building blocks for plastics and many other chemicals) from coal in China, because China's domestic fossil fuel resources are mostly coal. Gaseous and liquid hydrocarbons are better feedstocks to start from if they're affordable/abundant, like in North America. If fracking output stays high, it won't make sense to invest in new American facilities for power-from-coal or chemicals-from-coal.
hwillis 9y ago
Coal is used to make synthetic graphite and that's about it- coal is basically used to make more coal. And that's only extremely high quality coal that isn't far off from natural graphite already. Even carbon fiber is made from propene and ammonia instead of coal. Hell, (char)coal can be made from regular organic material, with the bonus that the process of driving off non-carbon atoms produces flammable energy-containing gases.
stevenwoo 9y ago
The initial scenarios IIRC for the known reserves of the USA, Saudi Arabia and Russia were to run out in about 50 years, at that point if we haven't found a better power source our grandkids could use coal to make petroleum like Germany in WW2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_to_oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_to_oil On the otherhand fracking probably changed that timeline for Canada and the USA with the tradeoff of freshwater for oil so we'll have to wait and see how that turns out and moves the end date for our estimated petroleum reserves.

epistasis 9y ago

What really struck me from the article: >"To me, the biggest impediment for a company going out today and building a coal-fired power plant is regulatory uncertainty," Begger said. "Until you can find some sort of carbon agreement, if that's legislation or regulatory, technology, whatever, until there is some way to take that off the table, you're not going to have a lot of interest from utilities." The US government's plan of inaction on carbon regulation is clearly hurting industry here. Many (most?) energy companies are including the cost of a carbon tax in their future projections and planning, and in their investor communications. The energy industry is willing to impose a carbon tax in the US in exchange for immunity from lawsuits from emissions up until now: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/science/exxon-carbon-tax.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/science/exxon-carbon-tax.... That's how certain everybody is about the need for legislation, that an industry would invite a tax that amounts to $0.36/gallon of gas. The lack of political leadership, led by the desire to deny widely accepted science, is hurting business and planning. This uncertainty probably helps in the deployment of less-risky resources like wind, solar, and storage. But I think that clear carbon taxes, at $40-$120/ton, would help both the environment and the proper structuring of our economy. Uncertainty about regulation can be worse than the regulation itself.

ams6110 9y ago
Reducing coal usage is a goal of environmentalists. Government inaction, creating uncertainty, is achieving that goal. Why do we need to tax the industry and raise rates on consumers when coal usage is falling and renewables are on the rise without it?
- epistasis 9y ago
  Because coal isn't the only problem, carbon in general is one of coal's problems. Coal also causes tons of premature deaths from other non-CO2 emissions as well, but the long term problem is the CO2. An economic system is more efficient and overall wealth increases if externalities are priced closer to their costs.
- wisty 9y ago
  Because a tax is more efficient than wild, emotional guess-work.

vermontdevil 9y ago

The article talks about the gasification projects and the high costs. So how would any new tech not end up like the coal gasification attempts? Seems we bette off putting money into research at university levels for across the board energy projects then transfer to commercial sector after.

gwbas1c 9y ago

debacle 9y ago

I don't really know about our natural gas reserves - is cheap natural gas looking like a thing for the next several decades?

Synaesthesia 9y ago
The world has more than enough coal and natural gas for centuries, even petroleum won’t be running out any time soon. This is actually an unfortunate fact.