Coal-Fired

Low-cost natural gas pushed year/year average wholesale electricity prices down at major trading hubs across the United States in 2016 and encouraged more use by power generators, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said Wednesday.

With a statewide utility-environmental agreement and new state legislation to phase out coal in play, Portland General Electric (PGE) engineers are exploring the possibility of converting the state’s lone remaining coal-fired electric generation plant to burn wood waste biomass.

Drawing praise from its senior U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, Nevada’s sole large private-sector power utility has accelerated its move away from coal and to natural gas and renewable-based electricity supplies, it said Monday.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), the nation’s largest municipal utility, has accelerated its move away from out-of-state coal-fired electric generation, moving up to last Friday its discontinuation of supplies from the Navajo Generating Station in Arizona.

Natural gas, which surpassed coal’s share of domestic power generation for the first time ever last spring, is likely to make 2016 the first year that gas-fired generation exceeds coal generation in the United States on an annual basis, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Of the 18 GW of electric generating capacity retired in the United States in 2015, nearly 80% came from coal-fired units, according to a note published Tuesday by the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

The City Council of Bridgeport, CT, has scheduled a public hearing Feb. 1 to consider a Community Environmental Benefits agreement with PSEG Power Connecticut LLC that could shutter the state’s only coal-fired power plant by July 2021.

State legislative committees in Oregon planned to discuss on Thursday putting into law a landmark agreement to phase out coal-fired generation between 2030 and 2035.

Representatives from some of the nation’s leading power generators and one of its largest grid operators continue to tout the benefits of natural gas, but they cautioned that the fossil fuel faces challenges, and it won’t be the only fuel source for electricity in the coming decades.