The Facts About Getting America Off Coal.

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Monday April 12, 2010 · 4:12 PM PDT

2010/04/12 · 16:12

We all know the story by now. Flags across the country are at half mast, and in West Virginia 25 miners are dead. We depend on coal to keep the lights on, and as the chart below shows we got nearly half of our electricity from it in 2009.

While coal is the big dog, it always seems to surprise people how much of our electricity comes from natural gas fired plants. One of the reasons that prices have jumped in recent years is because we are increasingly using to keep the lights on. In 1990, the nation generated 372,765 Gwh (12.7%) from natural gas. By 2009, this had increased to 920,328 Gwh, or 23.3%. In the same period, the volume of natural gas ballooned, from 3,691,562,664 Mcf in 1990 (17.2% of total US production), to 6,895,842,999 Mcf (26.8% of US production) in 2008. The other surprise is how little hydro and other renewables contribute to the pie. And, of course, the energy profile of every state isn't the same.

Over a quarter of the electricity produced by coal in the US, can be traced back to 4 states (Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana.) A similar pattern emerges looking at the states which get their electricity from sources that don't emit CO2. This shouldn't be taken to seriously, because many of these states import coal-fired power from out of state, and many of the coal-fired states have large industrial sectors that use a disproportionate amount of electricity.

Looking at the map, we can see that the states of the Pacific Northwest are largely carbon-free, while Connecticut and Vermont also pop up high on the list. In the case of the Pacific Northwest, it's abundant hydropower that makes this possible, while in the Northeast it's nuclear power that allows them to get along without fossil fuels. The story is different, when we look where coal is important in power production.

As you can see on the map, coal generated electricity is concentrated in the Ohio Valley. Even more clearly, you can see in the line of coal-fired plants alongside the river in the map below.

Coal also places a large role in the Mountain West, but the truth of the matter is that one of the consequences of trying to get plants off of coal has been increasing use of natural gas. I've made a map below that shows the percentage of fossil fuel-fired electricity production that comes from natural gas. Look at California and the Northeast. Coal maybe the Midwest's dirty little secret, but natural gas is keeping the lights on in those states. Not to mention electricity imports.

It all may look a little hopeless at this point. We know that burning coal produces CO2 which leads to global warming. We know that coal mining is dirty, dangerous business that has pushed safety to the sides to keep prices down. And we should know the true cost of coal includes a cancer plume in Southeast Ohio, where even the cows have cancer.

It isn't realistic to think that we can start decommissioning these coal fired plants any time in the near future. The only option in that case would be a switch to natural gas, which would lead to massive price hikes in that commodity. Not only would a price hike create to conditions for poor people to freeze to death, but the total dependence of US agriculture on fertilizers created natural gas would mean that many would starve as food prices followed heating costs.

There is an option though, and that involves being pragmatic. While the legacy of coal and natural gas-fired electrical capacity is a burden, it is also a blessing. If we focus less on silver bullet solutions that lead these plants to be decommssioned, and look to using them to integrate renewables into the electric grid, there's a bright future. Thinking of renewable electricity as conserving coal and natural gas, so that every MW of power produced from renewables is used to keep a MW of coal or gas fired capacity offline when it's available, we can start cutting into the the mountain of carbon we emit to keep the lights on. The key is to think of renewables as conserving coal and natural gas, not replacing them.