Can Old Coal Plants Be Replaced With Energy Efficiency?

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://theenergycollective.com/aceee/63761/how-avoid-train-wreck-replacing-old-coal-plants-energy-efficiency

Can Old Coal Plants Be Replaced With Energy Efficiency?

Posted August 22, 2011 by Neal Elliot

Over the past year, the utility industry has experienced significant angst over pending http://www.wri.org/stories/2011/01/electric-reliability-under-new-epa-power-plant-regulations-field-guide">updates to utility environmental regulations. Of particular concern is the question of whether to invest in plant updates to comply with these regulations or to retire these plants altogether and replace this capacity with new (and most likely natural-gas fueled) power plants. Many inside and outside the utility industry have painted this situation as a crisis in the making. These effects will likely be felt most acutely in a crescent from the Great Plains through the Midwest and down the Appalachians, where utilities rely heavily on coal to generate electricity. Utilities are indicating that they will need to invest billions of dollars in these http://theenergycollective.com/glossary/9#term609">supply-side assets, resulting in significant increases in electric rates for customers. Source: http://www.ingaa.org/File.aspx?id=10371">ICF 2010

Responding to these changes does not have to be a crisis, however. As a new ACEEE white paper http://aceee.org/white-paper/avoiding-a-train-wreck">How to Avoid a Train Wreck: Replacing Old Coal Plants with Energy Efficiency explains, expanded investments in energy efficiency and combined heat and power (CHP) can meet much of this lost capacity at a fraction of the cost of upgrading old power plants or building new ones. These customer-side investments will have the added benefit of enhancing communities by creating more efficient, modern infrastructure that can result in http://nicholasinstitute.duke.edu/economics/climatechangepolicy/estimating-employment-impacts">more jobs and a more robust economy. Achieving this level of energy efficiency investment will not be easy. Enabling these investments will require significant changes in the utility regulatory business model to allow utilities to make customer-side investments and be allowed to earn a preferred rate of return. ACEEE will shortly release another white paper that explores the details of this changed business model.

It has often been observed that crisis and opportunity are inextricably linked, as a crisis encourages us to push the envelope of innovation and accomplish feats we didn’t think we were capable of. The so-called “coal train wreck” may afford just such an opportunity to modernize our electric utility regulations to reflect a new century of different economic and energy markets, creating opportunities for the utility industry to define a new path to sustained profitability by selling efficiency services not just electricity, while ensuring reliable and affordable power to their customers.

http://www.aceee.org/blog/2011/08/how-avoid-train-wreck-replacing-old-c">Original article

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[TheWraith]

1. No, they can't.

You cannot realistically reduce national energy consumption by 50%. Period. We need new plants.

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. Wrong question

The question was “Can Old Coal Plants Be Replaced With Energy Efficiency?” not “Can All Coal Plants Be Replaced With Energy Efficiency?”

http://aceee.org/files/pdf/white-paper/Avoiding_the_train_wreck.pdf

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Aging Fleet

Most of the coal-fired U.S. electric generation fleet was built between the 1950s and 1980s. These coal plants were originally designed to operate for 30 years, although through-life extension measures have enabled them to operate far longer than originally anticipated. The median coal generation plant was built in 1966, and most of the existing coal capacity is over 25 years old, with the last major additions occurring in 1980–1984 (Source Watch 2011). Until recently, many of these older, smaller plants were exempted from provisions of the Clean Air Act. As a result, many of these plants have not been modernized or updated with current emissions control technologies (Hsu 2006). Many of these older plants have not seen the level of modernization investment that some of the newer plants have received, so that their cost of operation may be higher due to deferred maintenance.

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CAPACITY AT RISK FOR RETIREMENT

Estimates of the total capacity of electric generation at risk for retirement range from 6,000 to 65,000 MW by 2015 (most of the studies have some overlap in the range of 25,000 to 35,000 MW) (Tierney 2011). Table 2 below describes one of the major study’s projections of coal plant retirements by 2015. The capacity of power plants at risk for retirement varies greatly by state. Some states in the South-Central, West, and Northeast made a major shift to natural gas during the past twenty years. In contrast, many states from the North-Central through the Midwest and into the Southeast remain dependent upon coal as a base-load fuel (CRS 2010). The potential impacts of complying with these new regulations fall predominantly on these coal-dominant states (see Figure 2). While significant natural gas capacity was constructed in these regions, it was overwhelmingly peaking capacity rather than intermediate or base- load combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) facilities. As a result, many of these states are not in a position to shift to existing natural gas capacity, as can be done in other regions.

Most of the at-risk plants lie in the Ohio Valley, Upper Midwest, Southeast, and Mid-Atlantic, as can be seen in Figure 2, which shows one of the medium-range estimates for capacity retirements. This pattern of possible closures is preserved across all the major studies reviewed in our research. Table 2 compares the forecasted capacity at risk with actual summer capacity (EIA 2010), suggesting that the Midwest and central Southeast are the most at risk of capacity shortages.

ROLE FOR ENERGY EFFICIENCY

Energy efficiency represents a low-cost energy resource that could be called upon to meet a significant portion, if not all, of the electricity capacity that could be lost due to coal plant closures. Significant energy efficiency resources are available in the at-risk states. These resources are less expensive than investments required to bring existing coal plants into compliance or to construct new generation capacity, and can be deployed much more quickly. As a result, including efficiency as part of the utility resource plans for at-risk states will minimize the costs of meeting future electricity needs.

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[One_Life_To_Give]

2. Power Co going to own your appliances??

Allowing the Utility to make "Customer-Side Investments and be allowed to earn a preferred rate of return"? So this means the Utility is going to "Invest" in new Major Appliances/Heating/Cooling systems and charge me a premium for the "rental"? Are these the new appliances for which 30yrs is five lifetimes?

[Fledermaus]

4. Yes!

[Archaic]

5. One of my coal plants is supplied by truck

It is so old, that it was built nowhere near a rail spur, so coal is trucked in constantly. It is so depressing.

One of the others is so clean that you can eat off the floor in any room in the plant. It's modern, and very nice.

Some plants need to be decommissioned, and just buried. I know it is bad for jobs in the area, but it really needs to go.

Efficiency will be huge, but slow to happen. Industrial power use is so inefficient. I had a customer whose electric bill was thousands a month, and nobody's making better spot welders, metal machining equipment. So I cut my electrical usage by 50% of what the previous folks used, and it counts for 10 minutes worth of a metal shop.

A huge huge huge help would be hyper efficient water pumps for irrigation. Something like 70% of the gigawatts we generate is used for irrigation. (BIG AREA)

We could probably shut down the nasty plant if much better irrigation systems were available, and assistance was available to the farmers.

Solar and wind will be a big help, but it needs to happen in a much bigger way.