More Good CO Energy News: Xcel Will Retire Old, Dirty Coal Plants

Coal corporations have been running ads in the Denver, CO TV market trashing natural gas for the past couple of weeks.  The reason?  The state government wants to replace antiquated, dirty coal plants with newer, cleaner natural gas plants.  The coal commercials point out a fact that I won’t deny: coal is up to 3X cheaper than natural gas in some markets; but that I will provide more detail on: because coal corporations successfully externalize their costs to every other industry.  Instead of charging customers for the real-world costs associated with the dirtiest of all fuels, coal corporations let the health and environmental industries pay for the bad effects of their product.

The good news is enough citizens have recognized coal’s costs to them and have done a better job of organizing and fighting back against the powerful coal lobby in forming public policy.  Take a look around – stories of coal plants that utilities have wanted to build but have instead been scrapped for other power plants are beginning to populate the news.  Additionally, as older coal plants near the end of their serviceable lives, utilities will be faced with the prospect of either retrofitting them, building new ones, or replacing them with cleaner alternatives.  In Colorado, the fate of old plants that generate 900MW of electricity is being decided.

If those plants end up going offline and are succeeded by natural gas plants by 2017, almost 1/3 of Colorado’s coal generation will have been replaced.  5 million tons per year of carbon pollution will be avoided, making a not-so insignificant stride toward a cleaner energy future.

Even better is, as I alluded to above, Colorado isn’t alone in this effort.  The piece I link to above also points out that Nevada has decided that instead of building a new 750MW coal plant, officials have decided to build a 750MW natural gas plant and combine it with a 50- to 100-MW solar PV plant.  One-half of the CO2 pollution that coal plant would have generated will be avoided by building the natural gas plant.   A much higher percentage of the CO2 pollution will be avoided by incorporating the utility-scale solar PV plant.  Eventually, even the natural gas plants under consideration today will need to be replaced with solar (PV or more likely thermal) and wind plants.  Emitting one-half the pollution in the near-future is a good idea.  But we need to emit even less if we are to avoid the worst-case climate crisis that we’re hurtling towards today.

China Corners Its Renewable Energy Market; US Won’t Do The Same

China has taken enormous strides in developing its renewable energy sector, recognizing in ways the U.S. has so far failed to do, that renewable energy is of strategic importance.  As one piece of evidence, China passed the U.S. this year as the world’s largest market for wind energy, despite the massive imbalance in per capita energy utilization.  China has already achieved the status of having the world’s largest solar panel manufacturing industry.  All of this comes with massive government support for the renewable energy industry.  China, unlike the U.S., is protecting their domestic industries, thereby laying the foundation to be the dominant market forces when they’re mature.

Contrast that with the insane approach we’re taking in the U.S. up until this year: force the nascent renewable energy industry to fight uphill battles against mature, dirty energy industries.  Renewables in the U.S. have been purposefully kept immature for as long as possible so that the established industries can continue to enjoy their record profits.  There was a way those dirty industries got there though: through government interference!  Decades of subsidies and tax breaks and incentives helped grow those industries – the same kinds of activities that have been denied renewable energy industries in the U.S., but not in China.

Here’s what’s going to happen without a fundamental change in the way we fund research in the U.S.: the dirty energy industry is going to get its wish and remain the dominant player for a long time to come.  In the meantime, the Chinese renewable energy industry will become more adept and mature.  Once it is, it will be able to compete for projects here in the U.S. as it become more and more obvious that renewables are the way to power our country.  Since their industries will have more efficient economies of scale to work with, Chinese industries will win contracts in the U.S.  U.S. companies will not be able to compete either in China (due to their protectionist policies) or here in the U.S.  We’ll send billions of more U.S. dollars overseas, growing the Chinese economy instead of the U.S. economy.  All because the U.S. looks at energy as a monthly profit engine, not strategically important.  Yay for us.