The Least Threatened Coal Plants

Coal plants have been under pressure for over a decade from low gas prices and increased renewable generation. The acceleration of renewable energy development only raises the competition for traditional thermal generation sources. Often, renewable developers place new wind and solar plants close to coal plants to take advantage of existing transmission infrastructure. However, despite these headwinds for coal generation, several coal plants still achieve high-capacity factors. Here we examine the high utilization coal plants to determine which plants are under the least pressure going forward from renewable development.

Current State of Coal Plant Operations

As of July 2021, there are 596 coal units operating in the U.S. lower 48 states (L48), with 287 coal plants representing 233 gigawatts (GW) of capacity. The 12-month trailing average capacity factor across all these plants is 45% through April 2021. There are 115 plants that have a capacity factor higher than the L48 average. Plants with a higher-than-average utilization create the foundation of the least threatened coal plants. Additionally, any coal plant with a total capacity of fewer than 250 megawatts (MW) was discarded to focus on large coal plants.

Coal Plants and Renewables Resources Development

From there, coal plants are then benchmarked against each other based on the development of nearby wind and solar resources. BTU Analytics aggregated the proposed wind and solar capacity within a 100-mile radius of each plant from BTU Analytics’ renewable tracking available in the Power View platform. This sum is the total renewables development as shown above in the table. The coal plant capacity was then subtracted from the total renewables development to calculate the delta between the plant’s capacity and proposed projects.

By this metric, the Jim Bridger plant in Sweetwater County, Wyoming is the least threatened coal plant. Total new renewable development within a 100-mile radius of the Jim Bridger plant only represents 245 MW or just 10% of the existing plant capacity at 2,442 MW.

The bar chart above presents the data in a slightly different way. Even within the top 10 list of the least threatened coal plants the Labadie plant located in Franklin County, Missouri, has 1,564 MW of proposed wind and solar within a 100-mile radius of the plant representing 66% of total capacity at 2,389 MW. In fact, there are only 27 plants that have a positive delta out of the 115 plants screened, meaning the coal plant capacity is greater than the amount of renewable development occurring within a 100-mile radius of the plant.

Conclusion

In a previous BTU Analytics’ Energy Market Insight, we highlighted the fact that the James H. Miller plant in Jefferson County, Alabama was the top CO2 emitting plant in the U.S. Ironically, if the mantra is to develop renewables to displace coal out of the generation stack thereby reducing CO2 emissions, the renewables developers have yet to threaten the James H. Miller at it ranks in the number three spot as the least threatened coal plant as shown above.

To further track coal vs. solar and wind development, request more information about BTU Analytics’ Power View.

This article was originally published on the BTU Analytics website.

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