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That has nothing to do with steam turbines. 1 Ton of coal produces 1979 kWh of electricity, which at the current $179/ton is $0.094/kWh just for the fuel, then
by jjk166 4y ago
That has nothing to do with steam turbines. 1 Ton of coal produces 1979 kWh of electricity, which at the current $179/ton is $0.094/kWh just for the fuel, then you have capital costs, labor, profit margins, and that still only gets you to wholesale.
For comparison, fusion fuel is $0.00014/kWh, equivalent to coal at $0.27/ton. There's no where on Earth where coal is that cheap. You couldn't move it from the mine to the powerplant for that cheap even if they were next door to one another. Even if all the costs got subsidized away, you couldn't count on the fuel remaining cheap for the lifetime of a powerplant.
And of course there's that pesky CO2 issue that makes investment in coal unattractive even if it could be economically competitive.
- rgmerk 4y agoNot all coal costs that much. There are places where there is abundant brown coal, which cannot be economically transported long distances and is therefore basically loaded on a conveyer belt directly into power stations. New-build brown coal isn’t economically viable either.
- jjk166 4y agoFind me one place where coal is cheaper than 27 cents per ton.