According to a report from the Energy Information Agency, American coal use for electricity dropped 29 percent in 2015, compared to its peak usage in 2007. That means consumption hit 1,045 million short tons in 2007, and dropped fairly steadily to 739 million short tons last year.
The report said that electricity sales either stayed flat or saw slow growth in most states, so there was little opportunity for coal to grow its share of powering the grid. Meanwhile other fuels, particularly natural gas as well as solar and wind, saw strong growth as their prices dropped precipitously.
This reflects the broader international decline in coal consumption, with even electricity-hungry China banning new coal mines and curbing new coal plants. Scotland shut down its last coal-fired power plant this year.
U.S. coal giants can’t keep up, with Alpha Natural Resources, Arch Coal, and Peabody Energy filing for bankruptcy within the last nine months.
In an open letter to the coal industry and its investors, Mary Anne Hitt, director of Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign, and Bruce Nilles, the campaign’s senior director, said last week that “with the bankruptcy of Peabody Energy, it’s clear that the coal industry is in decline, and that a massive shift in the global market favoring clean energy sources like wind and solar is underway.”
This chart shows exactly how much steam coal each state consumed in 2007, and within each bar there is a smaller blue bar which shows its current usage. The only outliers are Nebraska and Alaska, which saw 18 percent and 134 percent increases in coal use compared to 2007. Alaska in particular uses so little coal compared to other states that any swing would make an impact in a comparison like this. California and many New England states have nearly zeroed out their coal use, and Vermont and Rhode Island aren’t even on the chart because they had no coal plants in 2007 and added none since then.
Other states dropped anywhere from 2 percent (Wyoming) to 96 percent (California). While that seems predictable, with Wyoming being a huge coal state and California being, well, California, the real action is apparent in states that have depended on coal for more of their energy needs. Ohio’s drop of 49 percent is hugely significant given how large an aggregate drop it actually represented. Texas’ 16 percent drop may be a smaller number, but as the largest coal consumer in the country, it represents a lot of coal not being burned into the atmosphere.
we have retired or secured retirement of 232 coal plants totaling 99 gigawatts, and are working hard on the next 50 gigawatts
The presence of Ohio and Texas on this comparison should set off a few alarm bells for climate advocates, however. Both states are epicenters of the fracking boom and much of the power replacing the coal-fired plants coming offline is fueled by natural gas, which burns cleaner than coal but poses climate threats via methane leaks. A similar drop occurred in Pennsylvania, and while Indiana had a significant cut in coal use, the report credited the state’s Energy Portfolio Standard which not only incentivized renewable fuels but also natural gas that replaced coal power. Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania’s natural gas consumption for electric power rose from 219 billion cubic feet in 2007 to 777 in 2015. Similar trends manifested in the Southeast, as well.
Should natural gas prices rise again, don’t expect coal to rush back in to fill the void, though.
“Coal will never come back because we are not building new coal plants and there is a nationwide campaign to systematically retire the existing fleet of 523 coal plants,” the Sierra Club’s Nilles told ThinkProgress. Nilles noted that while there are still 300 coal-fired plants and over a thousand natural gas plants, “we have retired or secured retirement of 232 coal plants totaling 99 gigawatts, and are working hard on the next 50 gigawatts.”
Methane Leaks Erase Climate Benefit Of Fracked Gas, Countless Studies FindClimate CREDIT: AP Photo/Eric Gay, File Fracking is not good for the climate. Or, to put it a tad more scientifically,…thinkprogress.orgWhile many of these plants have closed because of other environmental regulations targeting the dirtiest, most inefficient emitters of pollutants like mercury, other plant closures have happened as a result of state policy shifts and grassroots campaigns.
Indeed, Nilles said “the decline in coal tracks very nicely the rise in citizen advocacy working to close the existing coal fleet with clean energy.”
The Clean Power Plan, finalized by the Obama administration last year, would cut coal usage by capping carbon emissions in each state under the 25-year-old Clean Air Act. New York and Oregon set ambitious renewable energy goals this year, leaving no room for coal. And in January, President Obama announced that his administration would halt new coal leasing on public lands.