Coal

The Sierra Club has reached a rare settlement with Talen Energy that would require the power generator to burn only natural gas at one of its plants in southeast Pennsylvania during the summer months when ozone is at its highest and stop burning coal completely beginning in 2029.

Now that its separation from the coal business is complete and with full control of its midstream assets, CNX Resources Corp. plans to “go on offense” and target the Appalachian Basin’s stacked pay potential to drive growth, CEO Nicholas Deluliis said on Tuesday.

New England’s electric generation stack will increasingly rely on natural gas, with accompanying risks associated with access to firm supplies, and the region will likely say goodbye to coal-fired power by 2025, according to Morningstar Commodities Research.

FERC has set aside the Department of Energy’s (DOE) controversial notice of proposed rulemaking (NOPR) that would have subsidized the coal and nuclear industries, but the debate about electric grid reliability, resiliency and fuel mix continues.

In a case in which oil interests clash with coal development, the Wyoming Supreme Court has remanded the issue for federal agencies to resolve.

Concurring opinions from two commissioners supported FERC’s unanimous rejection Monday of a controversial proposal by the Department of Energy (DOE) to subsidize the coal and nuclear industries, but a third, Commissioner Neil Chatterjee, still sought an end-around to keep the idea alive.

A local utility board in Michigan has announced plans to construct a 250 MW natural gas-fired power plant that would help fill a void in the coming years when two coal-fired units are scheduled to retire.

The ongoing shift away from coal and nuclear power generation and toward natural gas and renewables brings with it “a unique set of challenges and opportunities to maintain the system’s inertia and other essential reliability services,” according to the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC).

Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Rick Perry has granted FERC Chairman Kevin McIntyre’s request for a one-month extension to study DOE’s controversial notice of proposed rulemaking (NOPR), despite the “urgency” of the proposal.