By Rich Nolan
The United States needs more adjustable electricity, and we need it right away. As the country's grid reliability swept the brink of disaster, electricity demand across the country is exploding.
The redesign of heavy industry and the unprecedented AI-driven data center boom collided with the Biden administration’s efforts to eliminate the coal fleet and made it impossible to build new basic coal and gas plants.
President Trump is already resolving the crisis. On his first day of his tenure, he declared an energy emergency, issued the Executive Order of “Release U.S. Energy”, and since then, the National Energy Steering Committee was established to re-adjust U.S. energy policy. Reliability and affordability are once again at the center stage.
But the challenges facing the government are enormous. It is expected that by 2050, the U.S. electricity demand will completely double, and the demand growth has seen significant growth. Recent forecasts are that demand has increased by 128 GW (GW) over the next five years, which equates to an increase of 80 million homes in our already overstretched and undersupplied grid.
Underutilized coal fleets are the hidden answer when governments seek reliable, immediate power generation capacity.
The capacity factor of the coal fleet (measures the frequency of power supply to the grid) was hit by a relentless regulatory agenda and unfair competition, at just 40%. The fleet has more capabilities. This is the moment when our strategic electricity reserves await it. That moment is now.
How much more power can the fleet provide? Consider its performance in key high demand weeks and months. Coal fleets often add one generation, usually reaching over 60% of the capability factor. By 2021, the fleet's capacity factor will exceed 65%.
With months of fuel and the world's largest coal reserves, the coal fleet is the country's trump card, aiming to support reliability and distributable fuel diversity.
As electricity demand grows, building new power generation capacity and energy infrastructure drives electricity prices and threatens the economy, the greater use of the questions we have achieved is the clear answer.
The Industrial Energy Consumer of the United States (IECA) represents a manufacturer with more than 12,000 facilities and more than 1.9 million employees nationwide – already warned: “Due to insufficient natural gas pipeline capacity, economic growth in the manufacturing sector has never faced such an increasingly serious crisis as we are today.”
The IECA told Congressional gas supply on the East Coast has been restricted and it is nearly impossible for manufacturers to consider expanding existing operations or investing in new facilities.
Semiconductors and battery factories, and even data centers, have urban energy demands, and if they can’t find affordable energy, just sit on the table and leave countless jobs and tax revenues.
While reducing barriers and timelines to adding new energy infrastructure is an important answer, IECA requires an important, different role: “Don’t shut down coal-fired power units too early.”
Utilities are already answering calls, canceling national planned coal-fired power plants retired from Georgia to Indiana to Utah and Wyoming. But in this energy emergency, federal operations not only protect the fleet, but also make more use of it.
Energy abundance is the key to winning today's global industrial arms race. There are more worlds than ever before. In the past, the United States recognized that its coal fleet and coal mine industry were not the problems to be solved, but the answer to today’s most pressing challenges. The coal fleet can and should support the government's energy abundance agenda.
Rich Nolan is President and CEO of the National Mining Association
This article was originally published by RealClearenergy and is provided by Realclearwire.
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