America’s use of coal for electricity dropped to its lowest point in the historical record in 2015, delivering a new blow to an industry already in painful decline.
The dirtiest of fossil fuels and America’s biggest single source of climate pollution, coal accounted for just 34% of US electricity generation last year, according to the Sustainable Energy in America handbook on Thursday.
It was the smallest share for coal in the electricity mix since 1949, the first year in which Energy Information Administration records were kept.
Coal made up 39% of electricity supply in 2014, the annual report said.
The changes in the US electricity system last year also produced milestone benefits for the climate, the report found.
Greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector – the largest single source of climate pollution and the target of Barack Obama’s clean power plan – fell 18% below 2005 levels last year, the report found.
That was halfway to Obama’s goal of a 32% cut in greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector by 2030, and on a relatively short time frame.
The drop in coal use for electricity appeared set to seal the fuel’s long and slow decline in the US, with crashing prices, thousands of miners laid off work, and big coalmining companies forced into bankruptcy.
But the report found the biggest threat to coal last year remained cheap natural gas. There was also a spike in new wind and solar power. By the end of last year, wind and solar accounted for 5.4% of the energy mix, up slightly on 2014, the report found.
Some power companies opted to shut down old, coal-fired power plants, in advance of the clean power plant rules.
Coal was expected to remain a significant part of the US power mix for some years.
West Virginia and Kentucky, which have been hit hardest by the decline in coal prices, are projected to continue burning coal. Other states close to the vast reserves of cheap coal in the Powder river basin are expected to remain on coal as well.
According to BNEF forecasts, coal would still account for about 24% of electricity use in 2030. (The Guardian)
PHOTO: A plume of steam billows from the coal-fired Merrimack Station in Bow, New Hampshire. A number of coal-fired power plants were closed down in 2015 and are unlikely to reopen.
CREDIT: Jim Cole/AP.