President Trump has signed several Executive order On Tuesday, coal-fired power plants will stay online past their planned retirement date, identifying coal resources on federal land and increasing the reliability of their electrical grids. This order may help the United States face an unpleasant truth. Wind turbines and solar panels cannot cost-effectively meet the growing US electricity needs.
Coal provides a critical source of reliable fuel section energy needed to maintain the light. Our organization’s research shows that it is more affordable than wind or solar.
Trump’s executive order allows coal operators the flexibility to delay early closures, partly caused by President Biden’s policies. a May 2024 Rules The Biden Environmental Protection Agency would have forced the coal plant to spend billions of dollars on unproven technology to gain 90% of its carbon footprint. If coal plants do not comply by 2035, they will be forced to shutter by 2039. The Trump EPA has announced it. I’ll reconsider This rule, but the process can take years.
Coal needs to help keep the lights up, especially as US electricity demand is rising. North American Electric Reliability Council 2024 Long-term reliability assessment Warns that “additional resources are not keeping up with generator retirements and growing demand” in most regions of US coal 16% production US electricity, along with coal, natural gas and oil, together produced 60% in 2023. The nuclear accounted for an additional 18%. It is foolish to believe that the United States can meet the demands of its growing power.
Not only is reliable baseload power an essential for the grid, but the power generated by coal is cheaper than intermittent resources such as wind and solar. It’s easy to understand why. The cheapest power sources are from plants already built. Most of the US coal fleet is like a home where mortgages are paid off. With no loans or interest remaining in repayment, the operating costs of existing coal plants typically consist of property taxes, insurance, labor, maintenance and fuel.
Our organization models the total cost of building ample wind, solar and battery storage to replace coal, natural gas and nuclear power plants. Power sources for wind, solar and battery grids are more expensive than coal, as connecting wind turbines and solar panels to the grids involves system-wide costs such as the construction of new transmission lines. Wind and solar intermittent requires more plant capacity to generate the same amount of electricity. As the power plant infrastructure increases, property taxes increase. Weather-dependent resources mean that the cost of managing the grid is increased, such as turning off wind turbines and solar panels when the grid is producing too much electricity for it to absorb.
Ours the study It incorporates the overall system cost, indicating that a realistic midpoint estimate for a wind turbine is $72 per MWH. Electricity from the new solar is in the range between $50 per mwh to $85 per mwh. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission data shows that the average coal plant generated electricity at just $34 per megawatt hour (MWH) in 2020 (the last year of available data). If states and utilities allow coal plants to operate more frequently, it could be even cheaper for coal plants to generate electricity. In 2024, the coal fleet generated only electricity Approximately 43% Time. If that approaches 80%, the cost could be as low as $29.
Maintaining America’s “beautiful, clean coal” plants online is the right thing for the country, and it’s good news for consumers that the US has recognized the reliability holes in the electric grid and decided to stop drilling.
Isaac Orr is Vice President of Research and Mitch Rolling is the research director at Always Energy Research, a non-profit energy modelling company.
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