
Will the U.S. Ever Build Another Big Coal Plant? - artsandsci
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/will-the-u-s-ever-build-another-big-coal-plant/
======
epistasis
What really struck me from the article:

>"To me, the biggest impediment for a company going out today and building a
coal-fired power plant is regulatory uncertainty," Begger said. "Until you can
find some sort of carbon agreement, if that's legislation or regulatory,
technology, whatever, until there is some way to take that off the table,
you're not going to have a lot of interest from utilities."

The US government's plan of inaction on carbon regulation is clearly hurting
industry here.

Many (most?) energy companies are including the cost of a carbon tax in their
future projections and planning, and in their investor communications.

The energy industry is willing to impose a carbon tax in the US in exchange
for immunity from lawsuits from emissions up until now:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/science/exxon-carbon-
tax....](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/science/exxon-carbon-tax.html)

That's how certain everybody is about the need for legislation, that an
industry would invite a tax that amounts to $0.36/gallon of gas.

The lack of political leadership, led by the desire to deny widely accepted
science, is hurting business and planning.

This uncertainty probably helps in the deployment of less-risky resources like
wind, solar, and storage. But I think that clear carbon taxes, at
$40-$120/ton, would help _both_ the environment and the proper structuring of
our economy.

Uncertainty about regulation can be worse than the regulation itself.

~~~
ams6110
Reducing coal usage is a goal of environmentalists. Government inaction,
creating uncertainty, is achieving that goal. Why do we need to tax the
industry and raise rates on consumers when coal usage is falling and
renewables are on the rise without it?

~~~
epistasis
Because coal isn't the only problem, carbon in general is one of coal's
problems. Coal also causes tons of premature deaths from other non-CO2
emissions as well, but the long term problem is the CO2.

An economic system is more efficient and overall wealth increases if
externalities are priced closer to their costs.

------
labster
TL;DR version: no.

The only coal plant being built is a tiny one for a university in Alaska.
Three more have been in regulatory hell for so long that they're no longer
profitable compared to every other energy source, especially natural gas. Coal
is dying but no one told Trump.

~~~
ItsDeathball
One of the mentioned cancelled projects was a coke plant with a small
electricity co-generation component. Do steel mills still need coke? If so,
the decline of coal in America could be due as much to the decline of American
steel processing as to emission regulations on power plants.

~~~
fencepost
A better question might be whether US steel plants have an increasing need for
coke beyond current production levels. Also, do current coal-fired power
plants also produce adequate coke for future increases in demand?

~~~
hwillis
If coke became particularly more expensive (unlikely despite falling demand
for electricity) then US steel (such as it is) would move to direct-reduced
iron[1] using natural gas. Almost all steel in India is made this way.

It's also worth mentioning that steel can theoretically be produced
electrolytically[2] (like aluminum). It's... essentially vaporware, but who
knows. It's one of the Big Dreams: more energy efficient and pure oxygen as a
byproduct.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_reduced_iron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_reduced_iron)

[2]: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cleaner-
cheaper-w...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cleaner-cheaper-way-
to-make-steel-uses-electricity/)

------
mjevans
What else could the coal be used for?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal#Production_of_chemicals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal#Production_of_chemicals)

On a hunch from playing a bit too much Factorio, I tried to look in to coal
and plastics, which seems to be a relatively recent (or at least recently
commercialized) use for coal. The most reliable thing I can find is a press
release.

[https://www.honeywell.com/newsroom/pressreleases/2016/05/new...](https://www.honeywell.com/newsroom/pressreleases/2016/05/new-
honeywell-production-capacity-in-china-to-support-breakthrough-coal-to-
plastics-technology)

~~~
georgecmu
Coal has plenty of uses. It can be used to make precursors for everything from
plastics to carbon fiber. In fact in the 19th century it was the original
source of chemicals and materials from dyes to aspirin to tarmac.

In the beginning of 20th century it started to be displaced by the cheap and
abundant oil.

Coal's major role in electric power generation is relatively recent. Although
coal continued to be a major source of important petrochemicals such as
benzene into the 60s, the coal industry underwent a major crisis in the
beginning of the 20th century and in the US in particular was saved by the
country's electrification.

I expect that this pendulum will swing the other way. Coal is posed to become
a major source of materials and chemicals once again.

Some helpful links:

[https://web.anl.gov/PCS/acsfuel/preprint%20archive/Files/37_...](https://web.anl.gov/PCS/acsfuel/preprint%20archive/Files/37_2_SAN%20FRANCISCO_04-92_0524.pdf)

[https://web.anl.gov/PCS/acsfuel/preprint%20archive/Files/39_...](https://web.anl.gov/PCS/acsfuel/preprint%20archive/Files/39_1_SAN%20DIEGO_03-94_0113.pdf)

[http://www.ogc.co.jp/e/products/carbon-f/](http://www.ogc.co.jp/e/products/carbon-f/)

[https://eic.rsc.org/section/feature/feture-pain-relief-
from-...](https://eic.rsc.org/section/feature/feture-pain-relief-from-coal-
tar-to-paracetamol/2020140.article)

~~~
c12
I seem to remember gas works in England would convert coal into gas too. No
that this is something that would be done today given natural gas being
cheaper.

------
dsfyu404ed
There's a chance (like there is with every technology that isn't actively
developed for a long time) that just when you think coal's dying someone's
gonna come along and figure out how to apply an innovation from some other
field that makes it so much cheaper/cleaner/whatever that it sticks around for
a long time.

~~~
epistasis
There's a chance of that, but up until now all such attempts have been
_stupendous_ failures. The Kemper plant in the article was a $7.5B failure.

Much more likely is an innovation in the battery sector. Utilities are finally
waking up to the huge value proposition of batteries on the grid. They can be
used instead of upgrading transmission and distribution infrastructure. They
can be somewhat easily relocated to new sites if projections of electricity
demand were wrong.

There are a ton of flow technologies that are on the cusp of being really
useful. Lithium ion tailored for the grid is already the cost winner for
several applications.

I _do_ hope that we come up with some carbon sequestration innovations, but I
doubt that they'll be tied to coal in any way. Possible, but extremely
unlikely. If there was any horse to back in the race, there's more than enough
money for horse to get out of the gate. There are a lot of people with assets
that are close to getting stranded.

~~~
hwillis
>Much more likely is an innovation in the battery sector. Utilities are
finally waking up to the huge value proposition of batteries on the grid. They
can be used instead of upgrading transmission and distribution infrastructure.

Back of the envelope math: the electric grid would cost ~5 trillion to
replace[1]. At $200/kWh that's 25,000,000,000 kWh. The US uses 11,152,000,000
kWh per day- that's 2.24 days of storage. Doubling the effective power of the
grid using a day's worth of storage is trivial AND cost effective (at
$200/kWh). Add in renewables and that storage gets several times more
valuable, too.

[1]: [http://www.businessinsider.com/replacing-us-electrical-
grid-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/replacing-us-electrical-grid-
cost-2017-3)

~~~
epistasis
The flip side of storage directly connected to the grid is demand response:
consuming electricity at times lower than peak. This serves nearly an
identical function to storage that's permanently fixed to the grid, as long as
it's truly dispatchable.

The numbers you posted there are remarkably similar in the amount of storage
in passenger cars as we shift to an EV fleet. 260 million vehicles in the US
with 50 kWh batteries on average is 13,150,000,000 kWh.

With smart charging at the cheap times, passenger vehicles can serve as
fantastic time-shifters as demand increases on the grid. Just some of those
pesky logistics and coordination tasks to solve...

~~~
hwillis
The average residential consumer uses 29.6 kWh per day so 2.24 days of storage
is 66.3 kWh- pretty close to 50 kWh! Also worth noting that the average daily
power consumption for electric cars would only be ~8.5 kWh per person.

>With smart charging at the cheap times, passenger vehicles can serve as
fantastic time-shifters as demand increases on the grid. Just some of those
pesky logistics and coordination tasks to solve...

Yeah... and being actively fought against, annoyingly. Variable rates aren't
even available to most people.

~~~
greglindahl
There's plenty of time for that to change -- there aren't that many electric
cars yet.

~~~
hwillis
You're talking about variable rates? Hawaii is a good example of what the
future might look like, unfortunately. The power companies there are fighting
very hard against variable rates because it would make solar way, way more
feasible. It's kind of an extreme example because solar power could virtually
eliminate Hawaiian power companies at a very substantial cost savings and a
very short timescale, but the same principal elements are present everywhere
in the mainland US too.

Australia has a lot of variable rates though, so that's nice for them.

~~~
greglindahl
Yes, I was talking about variable rates. Australia is a slam-dunk for solar
because of the great weather/insolation plus the high cost of electricity.

Hawaii's economics are midway between Australia and the mainland US, they
won't be able to resist for very long. At the least, the utility companies
there can't resist buying solar for themselves! [http://fortune.com/tesla-
solarcity-battery-solar-farm/](http://fortune.com/tesla-solarcity-battery-
solar-farm/)

------
vermontdevil
The article talks about the gasification projects and the high costs.

So how would any new tech not end up like the coal gasification attempts?

Seems we bette off putting money into research at university levels for across
the board energy projects then transfer to commercial sector after.

------
debacle
I don't really know about our natural gas reserves - is cheap natural gas
looking like a thing for the next several decades?

~~~
Synaesthesia
The world has more than enough coal and natural gas for centuries, even
petroleum won’t be running out any time soon. This is actually an unfortunate
fact.

------
sxates
No.

~~~
dang
Could you please not post unsubstantive comments to HN?

