The U.S. Energy Information Administration today indicated that coal's share in the country's total power generation has hit a 30-year low. The report states that the slack from coal's slow-motion swan song is being made up by an uptick in natural gas. Coal prices are rising, while natural gas prices aren't. "Even the coal-rich Midwest is using less of its prized resource, although it still makes up nearly 70 percent of the electricity generation in the region," reports greentechmedia, which adds that wind and solar have a long way to go if they want to match coal's muscle. Nevertheless, the horizon looks sunny and windy for the clean-energy sector:
Renewables can't claim a win over coal by any stretch of the imagination, but generation from wind was up 25 percent from April 2010. Although California, Texas and Illinois have the largest gains, EIA said the gains were widespread across the U.S. As aggressive renewable portfolio standards are implemented in the next decade, renewables (and not just hydro) will continue to increase.
-- Brian Foley
This is good news, but, on the other hand, I find the free ride that natural gas tends to get in the mainstream media frustrating. It's pretty clear that extracting natural gas via fracking is an environmental disaster and it's fairly clear that if you include this extraction process in the CO2 equation, natural gas isn't much better than coal on CO2.
Posted by: Christof | July 29, 2011 at 10:06 AM
Its pleasing to see that the USA has been able to move ahead with these large scale solar plants. Coal market news and coal reports reflect that emerging countries are basing their futures around coal (thermal coal) fired power plants, especially in India & China. Cherry of www.coalportal.com
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