Yes. The University of Tennessee-Martin school is considering funding a new research boiler that would be used to generate steam to fuel a new facility. The university has identified two sites for the new boiler: a former nuclear power plant site (which is not near campus) and a former coal power plant site (not on campus).
Should we worry that coal is in danger of becoming a scarce commodity in the U.S.?
The answer is no. Coal is a very inexpensive fuel for electric power plants, and U.S. consumption of coal does not show signs of having peaked. The Department of Energy reported in 2012 that coal use will continue to rise as the economy continues to grow and global demand increases.
There are three types of coal power plants: coal-fired electric generators (coal-fired ones that burn fuel, such as coal); coal-fired gas plants (also called coal-fired boilers); and coal-fired biomass boilers. All three types of coal are considered low-carbon fuels. And all three types of coal generate more carbon than natural gas.
The DOE’s latest Energy Information Administration (EIA), which measures emissions and includes carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants and coal-fired gas plants, estimates that U.S. coal use will continue to grow by 4% over the medium term to reach 3,633 million tons in 2060. That would be up from 3,565 million tons in 2012. EIA reported in June that natural gas use would decline over the same period, declining 5% in 2014 to nearly 2,150 million tons.
The question is whether you should care. The answer is clearly “no.”
In 2010, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released a final rule on the carbon intensity—the amount of carbon dioxide-to-energy emissions each power plant emits—of existing coal power plants. At the time, the EPA was estimating that as many as 90 coal-fired power plants were generating carbon emissions on average at a rate of about 5 million tons of carbon dioxide per year. But now the EPA estimate is down to 4 million tons. But it’s worth noting that the EPA’s latest estimates are based on a survey of about 1,000 power companies rather than the actual number of existing coal-based power plants. As the DOE itself points out, the number of power plants has declined significantly over time, with only about 40 coal-fired power plants operating in 2010 but the DOE now estimates that fewer
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