Coal is Returning To Favor as Electric Generation Fuel
A drumfire of recent project announcements has anticipated the energy-policy task forces call for more reliance on coal for powerplant fuel. Shaking off two decades of bad press, the long-time standard of U.S. power-generation fuels has cleaned up its act and is getting good reviews for being price competitive and widely available.
In 1999, even after years of environmental backlash and market-share loss to natural gas, coal-fired powerplants still generated 51% of all U.S. electricity, says the Dept. of Energys Energy Information Administration. Just five coal-fired electric generating plants totaling 1,170 Mw are now under construction in the U.S. and Canada, according to Washington, D.C.-based Platts udi, like enr, a unit of The McGraw-Hill Cos. But plans for 40 other plants, totaling 15,300 Mw, have been announced (see table).