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United States

US Renewable Energy Farms Outstrip 99% of Coal Plants Economically (theguardian.com) 222

Coal in the US is now being economically outmatched by renewables to such an extent that it's more expensive for 99% of the country's coal-fired power plants to keep running than it is to build an entirely new solar or wind energy operation nearby, a new analysis has found. From a report: The plummeting cost of renewable energy, which has been supercharged by last year's Inflation Reduction Act, means that it is cheaper to build an array of solar panels or a cluster of new wind turbines and connect them to the grid than it is to keep operating all of the 210 coal plants in the contiguous US, bar one, according to the study.

"Coal is unequivocally more expensive than wind and solar resources, it's just no longer cost competitive with renewables," said Michelle Solomon, a policy analyst at Energy Innovation, which undertook the analysis. "This report certainly challenges the narrative that coal is here to stay." The new analysis, conducted in the wake of the $370bn in tax credits and other support for clean energy passed by Democrats in last summer's Inflation Reduction Act, compared the fuel, running and maintenance cost of America's coal fleet with the building of new solar or wind from scratch in the same utility region. On average, the marginal cost for the coal plants is $36 each megawatt hour, while new solar is about $24 each megawatt hour, or about a third cheaper. Only one coal plant -- Dry Fork in Wyoming -- is cost competitive with the new renewables. "It was a bit surprising to find this," said Solomon. "It shows that not only have renewables dropped in cost, the Inflation Reduction Act is accelerating this trend."

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US Renewable Energy Farms Outstrip 99% of Coal Plants Economically

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    What about when you take away the subsidies on renewables? Do the economics still beat coal?

    • by youngone ( 975102 ) on Monday January 30, 2023 @03:50PM (#63251797)
      What happens when you force the coal mining companies to pay to clean up their pollution? Do the economics still beat renewables?
      • by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Monday January 30, 2023 @05:33PM (#63252103)
        Hell, no cleanup required. Just shut the coal plant down, bulldoze/bury everything flat, and put solar panels over the land. Even with no mitigation, the pollution will at least stop GETTING WORSE. That’s not how solar farms are put up, but I’m just sayin. You don’t keep a coal plant operating cause shutting it down will be a headache. That’s like saying you’re not gonna go on a diet because hunger pangs are worse than the diabetes and heart disease.

        I’m guessing very few people in this forum have actually driven past a large coal plant. They’re frikkin enormous. Not only is the main facility the size of a borg cube, but the land required to stage and process the massive piles of coal, and then deal with the ash, stretches for MILES and MILES and MILES. There’s a reason for the name “coal town” cause it requires a townfull of people to maintain and run something that large.

        Compare that to putting up a few square miles of solar panels on poles, stringing a bunch of wires, and having three employees to fix things and squeegee off the bird poop.

        Can’t imagine why coal is losing that fight. Complete mystery.
        • I was thinking about making the coal companies pay for the damage caused by acid rain and smog, as well as cleaning up the actual mining sites.
          Americans don't really travel so as you say most of them probably haven't seen the damage coal has done to West Virginia or South Wales.
          If the coal companies were forced to clean up their mess there would be no coal mining.
        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by dbialac ( 320955 )
          I've driven by a number of coal power plants and none of them have had anything close to that much land. Obvious argument about solar panels and daylight. I have seen an effort in the past to turn CO2 exhaust into algae and then turn the algae back into fuel creating somewhat of a closed cycle using less coal. The example I saw was in Arizona IIRC. I don't think we're going to be able to go completely away from fossil fuels or other sources of CO2. Fossil fuels do have a big advantage, though, which is you
          • by Pascoea ( 968200 )
            I used to work out in ND, spent quite a bit of time at a place called Coal Creek Station. This isn't even a particularly large plant, two units at 600MW each, but it's the biggest in North Dakota. (I think. It's been a while) Here's the map [google.com] The general border of the plant and ancillary equipment/land starts in the bottom left, should say "Dakota Mo Valley & Western Railroad", follow that North to the east/west road just South of Falkirk Mining Co. The Western border is just past the two rectangular s
        • What happens when you force the coal mining companies to pay to clean up their pollution? Do the economics still beat renewables?

          no cleanup required. Just shut the coal plant down, bulldoze/bury everything flat, and put solar panels over the land. Even with no mitigation, the pollution will at least stop GETTING WORSE.

          Moving the goalposts. The coal plants' pollution has been distributed across the planet, including more radioactive isotopes emitted every year than all the nuclear tests and accidents combined (or at least it used to be, coal is down a lot.) It would cost $INFINITY to clean it up.

      • by mysidia ( 191772 )

        What happens when you force the coal mining companies to pay to clean up their pollution? Do the economics still beat renewables?

        Same question... Coal-based electricity producers being allowed to externalize the cost of their pollution in the past is also a subsidy.

      • are stripped of all THEIR subsidies (direct infusions of billions of dollars from government), and forced to clean up THEIR messes? Do strip mines in Africa and China ring any bells? How about vast fields of chopped-up and buried windmill blades which have exceeded their service lives and, being carbon fiber, are not recyclable?

        What happens when you apply an equal load of artificial costs to them (government regulations + lawsuits) matching what has been getting applied to coal and oil (and certainly nuclea

    • The hilarious thing is that such subsidies, and the immense volume of laws, regulations, regulatory bodies, and watchdogs to regulate the regulatory bodies, are all created by governments that lose no opportunity to bray about the wonders of "free enterprise capitalism" and the "free market economy".

      Neither of which have ever existed in an advanced industrial nation.

      • In a completely free market, workers are slaves. Without the evil democratic government forcing competitivity rules the markets converge to a monopoly. Companies take away freedom from living human beings, they do not create new freedom. Liberty is a zero sum system.
      • by ctilsie242 ( 4841247 ) on Monday January 30, 2023 @06:22PM (#63252237)

        I don't think we want to live in a company that has 100% free capitalism. At best, it would be a hellscape, with a few people with a decent standard of life, everyone else having to deal with polluted air, unclean water, no sanitation... and eventually that nation would collapse once the population loses all hope and some extremist firebrand gives hope.

        The best countries have regulated capitalism, and some "socialism" as a safety net. Mazlow's Pyramid. If people are not worried where they are going to get their next meal, or if they will be carjacked, they will be a lot more productive as workers, and businesses can thrive. Governments win at economies of scale, and the benefits gained from government provided services will almost always be cheaper in the long run than trying to do that alone. For example, running one's own generator as opposed to a power grid.

        I put "socialism" in quotes. Too many people believe that roads, clean water, clean air, and such are traits of "socialism". A society without those isn't a place they would want to live, which is ironic.

    • Black lung disease health care costs the tax payer $10 billion not covered by the premiums. This does not include the fact that a significant number of the people in the Appalachia are on government health care.
      • The govt threw 37 years of black lung expenses into renewable energy, and its doing it in ten years - but that makes renewables cheaper?

        I don't understand your comment about Appalachian people having government healthcare? There's a significant number of people in New York that rely on public healthcare, what does that have to do with anything? If you've got actual numbers for gov't healthcare in Appalachia versus other regions, or is it somehow bad that they use it, but ok that others in US use govt health

    • by mspohr ( 589790 )

      When you take away the subsidies on coal, the economics for coal get even worse.

    • by Smidge204 ( 605297 ) on Monday January 30, 2023 @04:34PM (#63251965) Journal

      > What about when you take away the subsidies on renewables? Do the economics still beat coal?

      If only there was some kind of report you could read that might tell you if subsidies of some sort were considered. To bad there's... OH WAIT IT'S LINKED IN THE ARTICLE!

      This research shows all but one of the countryâ(TM)s 210 coal plants are more expensive to operate than either new wind or new solar. If the IRAâ(TM)s new energy community tax credit is included in the equation, 199 of the 210 plants are more expensive to operate compared to local solar resources sited within 45 kilometers of the plant.

      With solar industry subsidies: 209 out of 210 coal plants (99.52%) lose economically. Without subsidies, 199 of 210 of coal plants (94.76%) lose economically.

      So there's the answer to your question: "Yes."
      =Smidge=

      • by bkmoore ( 1910118 ) on Monday January 30, 2023 @04:55PM (#63252023)

        > What about when you take away the subsidies on renewables? Do the economics still beat coal?

        If only there was some kind of report you could read that might tell you if subsidies of some sort were considered. To bad there's... OH WAIT IT'S LINKED IN THE ARTICLE!... =Smidge=

        This wouldn't be /. if people actually read the article before positing.

      • by Orgasmatron ( 8103 ) on Monday January 30, 2023 @11:48PM (#63252851)

        Just FYI, the report says nothing of the sort. You clearly didn't even read the summary.

        No effort is made to figure out the non-subsidized costs of solar. The 209 and 199 out of 210 figures are all subsidized - the distinction is geographic proximity to the coal plants.

        • No effort is made to figure out the non-subsidized costs of solar. The 209 and 199 out of 210 figures are all subsidized - the distinction is geographic proximity to the coal plants.

          No effort is made to figure out the non-subsidized costs of coal. If they had to clean up their pollution it would cost $INFINITY since it is distributed across the landscape and literally cannot be cleaned up with any technology which we possess.

    • by ody ( 100079 )

      To be fair, you may want to also factor in subsidies the US Government has given the fossil fuel industry, about $5B/year for (checks notes) the last 105 years (including $20B last year)

      • Define subsidy.

        Typically, renewable energy advocates think deducting business expenses (like every other company/industry) is some how a subsidy, compared to literally writing government checks for:

        Renewable energy research
        Renewable energy device plants
        Renewable energy device installer training
        Renewable energy purchase
        And forcing public utilities to pay above-market rate for surplus electricity generated by residential devices (solar panels)...

        In comparison, I've never heard of the government funding resear

    • What about when you take away the subsidies on renewables? Do the economics still beat coal?

      I had the same question. I didn't have time to study the entire thing but page 11 of the report shows the price range for coal and corresponding ranges for solar with and without tax credits.

      If I'm reading the chart right, median solar without the credit is a bit more expensive than the median for coal (about $42 to $35 per MW-hour). Solar with the subsidy is about $24. Thus, a more nuanced headline might be "Renewable subsidies make them cheaper to operate than existing coal plants." This is not too surpri

      • I'm fine with letting the prices float as long as the costs aren't socialised and the profits privatised. In the case of coal, a lot of external and long time costs are for the taxpayers, while the profits go to shareholders.

        Make them pay for all disease caused by the extra pollution and the cleanup of the radioactive waste and CO2 they dump in the atmosphere, and it's going to be fine. But they'll be even worse off than they already are now.

        • No argument from me, so long as we also let the price of renewables include the full lifecycle cost (e.g. repairing rare earth mining damage and health effects on the miners).

          My one quibble is to point out that based on Coase's Theorem [investopedia.com], we don't need to assume that requiring power companies to clean up pollution is the most efficient way to deal with the issues. It's possible the most economically efficient way to deal with it is for power companies to just pay people to move out of the polluted areas. Or f

      • The cost of the facility is included in the prices of each, for renewable it's new construction, for coal the infrastructure is largely paid for.

        • The cost of the facility is included in the prices of each, for renewable it's new construction, for coal the infrastructure is largely paid for.

          As I said, I didn't read the report carefully. I'm not sure if they're including the cost of new renewable plants in the operating cost, or are they just looking at the day to day cost to operate.

          Since they talk about spurring close to $900 billion in infrastructure investment, I sort of expect they're not including the construction costs. But I could be wrong.

    • by Bert64 ( 520050 )

      And what about once you factor in some form of energy storage plus the oversupply to charge the storage, so that you can keep supplying power at night or in periods of low wind, like a coal plant can?
      How do the economics look then?

  • From what I've seen, both solar and wind take a lot more space than a similar-capacity coal plant. Not to mention the availability of solar vs. either wind or coal.

    So the argument being presented isn't equal, at present. An existing coal plant is much smaller in area than an equivalent wind plant, and certainly less than an equivalent solar plant.

    But that doesn't matter to matter to some people.

    • by smap77 ( 1022907 ) on Monday January 30, 2023 @03:56PM (#63251823)

      If you include the mine's footprint, the hilltop loss, and the long-term concerns about mine collapse, how do they factor in, now? Do you include land and rivers spoiled by tailings and ash release in your footprint calcs?

      Have you seen a solar availability maps? Here, let me help you. It appears there is more sunlit-land availability than coal-mine land availability.:
      https://www.nrel.gov/gis/solar... [nrel.gov]

      FUD is easier than answers. Congrats!

    • You have to include the ground occupied by the coal mine to make an honest comparison.

  • Ok, but.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Junta ( 36770 ) on Monday January 30, 2023 @03:48PM (#63251779)

    My understanding is that Coal would not be the choice in fossil fuels, that mostly they would go for natural gas.

    Coal is a health and safety nightmare to deal with, with large overhead for transport and leaves behind problematic waste.

    I want this to be unambiguously good news, but I suspect natural gas enjoy an advantage still yet economically, particularly when it comes to trying to make dispatch-able energy production.

    • Look up "Levelized Cost Of Electricity" (LCOE),
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
      You see that gas, wind, solar are lowest cost, and of these, gas is the only one whose output you can control....

  • Sounds great (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mobby_6kl ( 668092 ) on Monday January 30, 2023 @03:48PM (#63251783)

    And I'm all for renewables.

    But it's not exactly the same product. How much is a MWh of solar during the night? Or wind when it's not blowing for 10 days [imgur.com] (teal)? It's cheap when it's available, which will drive out other possibilities (like geothermal, hydro or nuclear) but when it's not available, something still has to step in or we're in trouble.

    • Re:Sounds great (Score:4, Informative)

      by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Monday January 30, 2023 @04:07PM (#63251865)

      Why do you think they call it a power grid?

      • Re:Sounds great (Score:4, Insightful)

        by cirby ( 2599 ) on Monday January 30, 2023 @04:24PM (#63251933)

        When the wind is down for extended periods, it's almost certain that the area is extensive, and the areas far outside of that area that do generate power can't make up for it unless you build the whole system to be several times larger.

        Note, for example, Germany. Over the last few years, there have been periods (weeks at a time) where it was cloudy, snowy, and with almost no wind. Extended periods of zero renewables for the entire country (other than hydro).

        • by Ichijo ( 607641 )

          Germany is about the size of Montana. And yes, a renewable grid should be at least several times the size of Montana.

          • by cirby ( 2599 )

            It wasn't just Germany that was becalmed in those cases - it was the surrounding countries, too. A big part of central Europe. The other countries weren't as invested in wind and solar as Germany though, so Germany could use some of their feeds, and Germany still has some nice dirty coal plants to use as reserves.

            A huge part of that was French nuclear power, too...

            Surprise!

    • by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

      But it's not exactly the same product. How much is a MWh of solar during the night? Or wind when it's not blowing for 10 days? It's cheap when it's available, which will drive out other possibilities (like geothermal, hydro or nuclear) but when it's not available, something still has to step in or we're in trouble.

      What steps in? -- the invisible hand of the free market... When the concerns you list become a problem, them the price we pay for energy at those problem times will go up sufficiently, until coal becomes economically competitive against the subsidized renewables. The fact that it's not competitive is proof that your concerns aren't currently a problem.

    • Talk about reading things that weren't stated. Just because solar/wind is more economical for given variables doesn't mean coal will just go away. Starting and stopping coal plants while not exactly easy is still something that could be done at say night time. So you get to reduce your usage of coal to nighttime loads which are significantly less.

      That means you get to maintain your infrastructure as well so you could bring it online during the day for bad weather events.

      No single solution is going to win

      • Re:Sounds great (Score:5, Informative)

        by Pascoea ( 968200 ) on Monday January 30, 2023 @08:01PM (#63252469)

        Starting and stopping coal plants while not exactly easy is still something that could be done at say night time.

        Coal plants don't work like that. It's takes DAYS to start a medium sized boiler from cold, they have limited operating capacity (IE, only able to run between 50-100%. I don't know the actual numbers, but you can't just idle them down to 10%), and frequent large changes in load significantly decrease the lifespan of the equipment. Baseload plants (coal plants) are designed to start up, run for a couple years within a fairly narrow band of output, shut down for overhaul, then rinse and repeat. Smaller coal units, and gas fired plants (generally smaller as well) can ramp up and down faster, somewhere around 5-10 percent/minute.

        • Re:Sounds great (Score:4, Informative)

          by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2023 @05:16AM (#63253177)

          Smaller coal units, and gas fired plants (generally smaller as well) can ramp up and down faster, somewhere around 5-10 percent/minute.

          Smaller gas plants, yes, but smaller coal plants no. We run a tiny little coal powered steam generating unit at one of our plants in China. It's used to generate steam required to start the rest of the chemical plant and is then shutdown (exothermic reaction from t he plant itself keeps it running). It takes well over a shift to start this little 25MW coal powered boiler. It does not ramp at 10%/minute more like 10% / 30minutes.

    • Re:Sounds great (Score:5, Informative)

      by Mspangler ( 770054 ) on Monday January 30, 2023 @06:58PM (#63252369)

      They really need to add the batteries needed to carry the night time loads through to the morning, and add on the extra capacity to recharge those batteries for the next night to get a fair comparison.

      By the way, for the local utility the solar panels only cranked out 6% of their rated capacity during the day on Dec 23 of last year. That day was only 8 hours thanks to proximity to the solstice. And the wind wasn't blowing either. Daytime high was 14 F, nighttime low was 6 F.

      Dunkelflaute.

      The average power demand that day was a bit over 9000 MW. Enjoy the math.

  • I donâ(TM)t know where anyone gets the idea that coal is competitive. The only reason coal got a life line in the US is because the Trump administration passed a rule, or tried to, saying any power plant had to keep months of fuel in reserve, which meant that only coal and nuclear would be legal,

    Most conventional plants are switching to natural gas. Most new construction is wind. Coal still provides twice the power as wind, but half as much as natural gas. Nuclear infinitesimal

    • by jwhyche ( 6192 )

      I donÃ(TM)t know where anyone gets the idea that coal is competitive. The only reason coal got a life line in the US is because the Trump administration passed a rule, or tried to, saying any power plant had to keep months of fuel in reserve, which meant that only coal and nuclear would be legal,

      Well, this is not true. Most coal plants barely stock more than 48 hours of fuel. The space required to months of coal on stock would be prohibitive. Natural gas no so much but no plant keeps months of fuel on stock. Also since most power plants are privately owned the executive branch has no power to regulate them in this manner.

      As for conversion to natural gas, in the last 10 years around a hundred plants have been converted, so not most. While most new construction is wind, nuclear still provide

      • by fermion ( 181285 )
        https://www.capito.senate.gov/... [senate.gov]

        âoe unanimously rejected a proposal in January that would have established rules allowing for the recovery of costs at facilities that a 90-day supply of fuel. Perry said the proposal was in order to ensure resilience and reliability in the nationâ(TM)s electricity system. The commissioners â" of which four were appointed by Trump â" ruled plant retirements do not appear to threaten the nationâ(TM)s electric infrastructure.â

        The attempt was m

        • by jwhyche ( 6192 )

          So, I'm not sure of what you are trying to say here. You said Trump was requiring coal plants to to store months of coal. I said it wasn't. Now you are saying that was the case all along.

          Then you implied that nuclear was insignificant part of energy production or coal and wind. I pointed out that it wasn't. Then you posted a article that said it was 20%, which is not insignificant by any means.

          Now you are saying without the government to force coal, nobody wants it. Which is also, clearly, not

          • > Unfortunately, coal is still producing most of the electricity in American people still want coal.

            As of 2022, Electricity from coal is 22%. Natural gas is the biggest slice of the pie at a bit over 38%.

            Contrast to 2012, where coal was 37% and natural gas 30%.

            Contrast to 2002, where coal was 50% and natural gas 18%.

            Nobody wants the coal except coal companies and the politicians they own...
            =Smidge=

  • ...is that Republican coal or Democrat coal? We all know there's a big difference, don't we.
  • typically coal is 10c to 25c a kilowatt hour. Especially for plants that have their project debts paid off, you only have to pay for maintenance and fuel. In some cases solar can beat coal, wind I am doubtful without fudging numbers. I'm all for switching to renewables as long as people don't fudge the numbers on costs, the burden isn't shouldered by taxpayers and it can be done economically
  • When they realized they had been used as a prop and then discarded when they were no longer of any use. Those were some bitter ass guys and for good reason.

    The other side didn't really have a solution either. There was money to retrain them and even for jobs they wanted to do... But the jobs weren't there in their communities. If they were going to retrain they were also going to move to another city or maybe even another state. For a lot of them with relatives stuck in the old city that didn't seem lik
  • What will all the black lung doctors do now?!

  • You still get some wind contributions, but solar yield goes to zero. Still need coal to keep the lights on.

    Cue some advert for batteries in 3... 2... 1...

  • by kenh ( 9056 ) on Monday January 30, 2023 @10:34PM (#63252737) Homepage Journal

    The new analysis, conducted in the wake of the $370bn in tax credits and other support for clean energy passed by Democrats in last summer's Inflation Reduction Act, compared the fuel, running and maintenance cost of America's coal fleet with the building of new solar or wind from scratch in the same utility region.

    Oh, that's how they did it!

    How much cheaper would todays coal power be if we injected $327BN into the coal industry?

    Also note, we're comparing current energy production via coal compared to (largely) future renewable energy plants...

    • How much cheaper would todays coal power be if we injected $327BN into the coal industry?

      Probably more expensive given how much more than that have been injected into the coal industry over the years.

  • by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Monday January 30, 2023 @10:50PM (#63252761) Journal
    Seriously, they have to either continue using the coal, add in nat gas, or add in weeks worth of battery storage and it is not even close.
  • by ishmaelflood ( 643277 ) on Monday January 30, 2023 @11:01PM (#63252777)

    Installing storage costs about as much as the windfalls and solar panels again. You also need additional power lines. So that $24 number is really more like $44

  • by aepervius ( 535155 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2023 @09:13AM (#63253517)
    Without physical (e.g. storage water then use hydro to extract)/chemical battery you have the issue that all renewable are intermittent power. So I am not sure we can compare coal with solar/wind easily. I am sure that in the average scenario, you can replace a huge percentage of coal with renewable, and have part of the intermittence covered by gas. But comparing the economics of MW of renewable versus MW of coal is stupid on price alone : coal provide what renewable cannot : stability. And that stability for certain economical and infrastructure is very important.

    Solve the storage problem and the world can (will) switch to renewable on a heartbeat : everybody can get independence from carbon provider rather than be dependent.

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