Emissions rise from the smokestacks at the Jeffrey Energy Center coal power plant as the sun sets, near Emmett, Kan., Sept. 18, 2021.
BY RACHEL FRAZIN – 04/28/24 6:00 AM ET | The Hill
The Biden administration’s crackdown on power plants’ planet-warming emissions will accelerate a shift away from coal, and potentially speed the U.S.’s adoption of renewable energy sources.
The administration this past week announced a new rule that will require coal plants and new gas plants to install carbon capture technology to mitigate 90 percent of their emissions — or find another way to achieve the equivalent climate protections.
But experts say that rather than try to meet these requirements, more coal plants may just retire — and some power companies may opt to invest in renewables over keeping existing coal plants or putting costly carbon capture on new gas ones.
“What we’ve seen, even without these rules, is that coal generation is falling,” said Christopher Knittel, a professor of applied economics at MIT, noting that “the writing’s kind of on the wall” because of fracking driving down natural gas prices.
“But,” Knittel added, “these new rules will certainly push to speed that transition up.”
The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) analysis shows that the rule could increase the amount of coal power that comes offline between 2028 and 2035 by nearly 25 percent.
It projects that without the rule, 84 gigawatts of coal power would have retired during that period. But under the rule, that number is expected to jump to 104 gigawatts of power.
Research firm BloombergNEF reached similar findings for this decade.
Julia Attwood, an industrial decarbonization specialist with the firm, estimated that around 44 gigawatts of coal power was due to retire by the end of 2030 anyway, but the rule will cause an additional 30 to 40 gigawatts to go offline during that period.
Attwood said BloombergNEF models an average coal plant as being equivalent to about 0.65 gigawatts, so this would amount to around 46 to 62 additional plant closures during that period.
“A lot of coal plants are just going to be pushed to retirement because of the expense of using [carbon capture and storage],” she said.