Longtime backbone of energy now taking more of a back seat

IN announcing several energy initiatives recently, President Trump said his administration would work to see that new coal plants are built overseas — a strategy that’s becoming a necessity as coal consumption continues to decline domestically.

The Obama administration exacted its pound of flesh, and then some, from the coal industry during Barack Obama’s eight years in the White House. The former president touted an all-of-the-above approach to energy but clearly favored renewables over energy sources tied to fossil fuels. As a result, the coal industry lost about 83,000 jobs and 400 mines, according to federal data.

Trump promised on the campaign trail to put coal miners back to work, and some jobs have returned. However, continued growth may be wishful thinking.

Trump said June 29 that the Treasury Department would try to “address barriers” to financing highefficiency coal plants abroad. Yet as CNBC noted, the prospects for new plants in many locales “is murky because prices for cleaner-burning natural gas are cheap and most countries are aiming to reduce carbon emissions in order to mitigate global warming.”

In this country, meanwhile, coal continues to lose ground to natural gas, wind and solar energy. The

Oklahoman’s Paul Monies noted in a recent story that coal accounted for 47.5 percent of the electricity generated in the Southwest Power Pool region last year, with natural gas at 22 percent and wind at 17 percent (nuclear, hydropower and other sources made up the remainder).

Oklahoma is now No. 3 nationally in wind capacity, according to the American Wind Energy Association, after adding nearly 1,200 megawatts of capacity in the last quarter of 2016. One megawatt can power about 250 houses. Wind provided 24.5 percent of Oklahoma’s electricity from November 2015 to October 2016, the AWEA said.

The Wall Street Journal wrote last week about shifts away from coal in other areas. The utility Minnesota Power released a plan in June to generate 44 percent of its electric power from renewable sources. A much larger utility, Duke Energy Corp., generated 32 percent of its power from gas and renewables in 2016, compared with 7 percent a decade earlier. Duke expects that percentage to grow to 44 percent by 2026. In Oregon, PacifiCorp wants to spend $13.6 billion on wind and solar generation.

Nationwide, the Journal wrote, wind, solar and natural gas combine to meet 40 percent of U.S. power needs, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That total was 22 percent in 2006.

Coal and nuclear have provided baseload power for decades, generating consistent electricity around the clock. A concern as these sources give ground to renewables, which produce power intermittently, is whether the electricity grid can retain its stability.

Abundant and inexpensive natural gas has the potential to provide an anchor. Many utilities, including in Oklahoma, have turned to natural gas as they retire their coal plants.

As a Minnesota Power executive told the Journal, “The combination of flexible natural gas and renewables really work well together.” She made no mention of coal, once the backbone of the U.S. electricity supply but now, more and more, taking a back seat.