{"id":231330,"date":"2010-01-26T10:51:58","date_gmt":"2010-01-26T15:51:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greenenergyreporter.com\/?p=5839"},"modified":"2010-01-26T10:51:58","modified_gmt":"2010-01-26T15:51:58","slug":"does-coal-make-economic-sense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/231330","title":{"rendered":"Does Coal Make Economic Sense?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.greenenergyreporter.com\/wp-content\/themes\/v1\/img\/cat\/policy.png\" width=\"8\" height=\"8\" alt=\"\" title=\"Policy\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Kate Mackenzie at the Financial Times&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.ft.com\/energy-source\/2010\/01\/25\/the-death-of-us-coal\/\" >EnergySource<\/a> blog has an\u00a0 interesting take on the future of U.S. coal. Citing a report by Bernstein Research analyst Hugh Wynne, she writes that the recent proposal by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to\u00a0tighten sulfur dioxide emissions could actually push coal into a &#8220;secular decline.&#8221;<span id=\"more-5839\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Existing SO2 standards were implemented nearly 40 years ago and cap emissions at 140 parts per billion as part of a\u00a024-hour \u201cprimary standard.\u201d\u00a0 They also include a \u201csecondary standard\u201d for three-hour periods that cap SO2 emissions at 500 parts per billion. The EPA&#8217;s proposes a one-hour standard of up to 150, parts per billion, which according to Bernstein Research&#8217;s Wynne, could cut SOE emissions by 50 percent by 2015.<\/p>\n<p>The new SO2 regulations, Wynne writes, could convince power utilities to retire old coal-fired power plants at a faster pace because SO2 scrubbers are expensive, costing about $100 million to install on a 350-megawatt power plant.<\/p>\n<p>In a recently issued report, Wynne writes:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>We estimate that over the next five years approximately 12 percent of U.S. coal fired generation capacity (equivalent to some 4 percent of total U.S. generation capacity) will be retired.&#8221; He adds stricter SO2 emissions rules would accelerate the retirement of older power plants.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>To curb the EPA&#8217;s regulatory reach Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) <a href=\"http:\/\/greenenergyreporter.com\/2010\/01\/lisa-murkowski-the-power-utilities-woman-in-washington\/\" >has drafted an amendment<\/a> that would block the agency from regulating CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions. According to Wynne that amendment is unlikely to pass.<\/p>\n<p>Mackenzie does give credence to Wynne&#8217;s arguments, noting that the growing popularity of natural gas could indeed lead to a decline in the use of coal. But she also notes\u00a0that these new EPA regulations might turn out to &#8220;be a boon&#8221; for regulated utilities, as they will have to increase their rates to pay for\u00a0SO2 scrubbers.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/GreenEnergyReporter\/~4\/qJu97cDz6Zs\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kate Mackenzie at the Financial Times&#8217;s EnergySource blog has an\u00a0 interesting take on the future of U.S. coal. Citing a report by Bernstein Research analyst Hugh Wynne, she writes that the recent proposal by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to\u00a0tighten sulfur dioxide emissions could actually push coal into a &#8220;secular decline.&#8221; Existing SO2 standards were [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2814,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-231330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2814"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231330\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}