Killer Coal Continues Crashing

Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis:

Despite hotter summer temperatures and increased power demand to run air conditioning in some parts of the country this summer, the use of coal has fallen. This is a result of lower prices for gas—coal’s primary fossil-fuel competitor—and a surge in utility-scale solar generation, which was up 20% in July from July 2022, and up 23% in August from a year ago.

The EIA’s current outlook suggests even more deterioration for coal power in the coming months. The energy agency not only sees coal’s November market share returning to the record-low market share in the spring, but also dropping even more in 2024, to as low as 10 to 13% in both the spring and fall. 

The decision by plant owners to scale back their use of coal can be seen in at least two measures. First, power generation at coal plants has fallen every single month in 2023 compared to the same months in 2022, both at those owned by utilities and those owned by independent power producers (IPPs)—and by a lot. Through August, utility coal generation has dropped an average of 19.7%. At IPP coal plants, which are more sensitive to competitive pressures, generation has fallen even more—declining an average of 29.7%, a sign that the economics of selling coal-fired power have deteriorated significantly this year.

At the same time, coal stockpiles have surged, to almost 130 million tons in June, and remain high. That’s enough to run coal plants for 113 days, or almost four months, based on the average amount of coal used over the previous year. This measure, called “days of burn,” is more useful than simply looking at the size of the coal piles, since there are fewer coal plants than in the past, and the ones that are still operating are running less. In fact, the amount of coal used each day in the U.S. has fallen from about 2.8 million tons a day in 2008 to roughly  1.1 million tons a day this year—a 62% drop.

Harvard School of Public Health:

Exposure to fine particulate air pollutants from coal-fired power plants (coal PM2.5) is associated with a risk of mortality more than double that of exposure to PM2.5 from other sources, according to a new study led by George Mason University, The University of Texas at Austin, and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Examining Medicare and emissions data in the U.S. from 1999 to 2020, the researchers also found that 460,000 deaths were attributable to coal PM2.5 during the study period—most of them occurring between 1999 and 2007, when coal PM2.5 levels were highest.

The study was published on November 23, 2023, in Science.