Category Archives: Politics

Energy Secretary Perry
 Badly Misses Mark
 In Grid Study Memo

Coal, Department of Energy, Politics, Utilities, , , , , ,

Energy Secretary Rick Perry clearly has bought into the fact-challenged approach to governing perfected by President Trump and now practiced almost daily by White House spokesman Sean Spicer: In a speech last week to the National Coal Council, Perry told the group that one of key problems from the Obama administration’s energy policies is “that we’re seeing this decreased diversity in our nation’s electric generation mix.”

Unfortunately for Perry, the fact is that the nation’s electric generation mix actually is much more diverse today than it was eight years ago. According to data from EIA, the independent statistics arm of his new agency (the same one, of course, that he forgot he wanted to eliminate back in the 2012 presidential campaign), the U.S. grid is demonstrably, provably and irrefutably more diverse now, as the chart below demonstrates.

Coal’s share of the market, as everyone knows, has fallen, dropping from roughly 50 percent of the total in 2008 to just under a third today. In its place, the amount of gas generation has shot up, and now accounts for about a third of the nation’s generation total as well. The rest of coal’s lost market share has been gobbled up by the wind and solar industries, with nuclear largely unchanged. Objectively, a system where two sources account for roughly 33 percent of the total, a third 20 percent and a fourth 15 percent is significantly more diverse than one with a single resource accounting for almost 50 percent of the total, and the next two at roughly 20 percent each.

Secretary Perry may not like the changes, but to say that something is not what it is, indeed, to say that it is the opposite of what it is, borders on the irresponsible. Worse, the secretary is using this and a number of other questionable assumptions as the basis for a department study looking into issues surrounding the “long-term reliability of the electric grid.”

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 Badly Misses Mark
 In Grid Study Memo →

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King Coal Still Rules
 In Trump Team’s
 Alternate Reality

Coal, Environment, Global Warming, Politics, Utilities, , ,

“You’re going back to work.”

With that rhetorical flourish, President Trump signed his much-ballyhooed and loftily-titled executive order “to create energy independence.”

The president’s words—directed to a group of coal miners at the signing ceremony—may have made for great TV (and the president certainly has a knack for that), but that’s about it. The coal mining jobs aren’t coming back, and anyone willing to take a factual look at the current trends in the U.S. electric power sector knows that.

The order, essentially the new administration’s effort  to undo any and all climate change-related plans put forward by the Obama administration (the Clean Power Plan in particular), is chock-full of assertions about the U.S. energy industry that are, at best, little more than wishful thinking. Let’s take a look.

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 In Trump Team’s
 Alternate Reality →

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 Green Power Revolution
 Grinds Forward,
 An Unstoppable Glacier

Environment, Politics, Solar, Utilities, Wind, , ,

Webster’s defines revolution as “a sudden, radical or complete change.”  The ongoing revolution in the United States electric utility industry fits that definition to a T. The changes have been unbelievably quick (at least by company standards, if not by activists’ desires), and the long-term impacts are going to be both radical and complete. Importantly, particularly in today’s political climate, I would add that the transition is unstoppable—like the inexorable forward advance of a glacier.

What got me thinking about this were two short news releases from the National Electrical Manufacturers Association earlier this week regarding shipments of LEDs during the third quarter of 2016 (the latest data it has available). In one, NEMA said that shipments of A-type LEDs (the most commonly used bulb for residential applications) topped 30 percent of the total for the first time, continuing a surge that has seen its market share climb from essentially zero just two years ago.

In the second, NEMA pointed out that it had added so-called T-LEDs to its statistics tracking shipments of the linear fluorescent tubes (marketed largely as T5, T8 and T12, which denote their diameter in eighths of an inch) that dominate the commercial and big box retail markets.  In the third quarter, NEMA said, T-LEDs accounted from 12.8 percent of all shipments in this category—almost double the 1st quarter results, the first time NEMA even included the segment in its quarterly report. As with the A-line LEDs, sales of T-LEDs were essentially nonexistent in 2014.

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 Green Power Revolution
 Grinds Forward,
 An Unstoppable Glacier →

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EIA 2017 Outlook
 Shows Energy Transition
 Will Trump Trump

Coal, Environment, Forecasts, Nuclear, Politics, Utilities, , , ,

The Energy Information Administration’s Annual Energy Outlook is always chock full of interesting data, and the 2017 version, released uncommonly early last week, is certainly no exception. For its part, EIA highlighted the prospect of the U.S. becoming a net energy exporter in the near future, a far cry from the import-dependent years that drove policymakers crazy in the late 1900s and early 2000s. But from my perspective, the key takeaways can be found in EIA’s analysis of electric sector market shares in a reference case including the outgoing Obama administration’s climate change-fighting Clean Power Plan and a second case assuming the CPP is withdrawn, as the incoming president and his team have said they intend to do.

For starters, regardless of its assumptions, EIA sees no growth going forward for the nuclear power industry. In both its reference case, which incorporates the CPP and should, as a result, favor the construction of non-carbon emitting generation resources, and its no-CPP case, EIA comes up with the same results. Nuclear generation is expected to decline slowly from now through 2040—falling from 797 billion kilowatt-hours in 2016 to 701 billion kwh in 2040 as units are retired (either due to economic or age-related reasons) and no new reactors (save the four currently under construction in Georgia and South Carolina) are brought online.  [Charts showing the generation outlook in both cases are included below; the complete EIA Outlook can be found here.]

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 Shows Energy Transition
 Will Trump Trump →

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New Cheerleader In Chief Can’t Change Coal’s Fall, Rise In Gas, Renewables

Coal, Environment, Forecasts, Politics, Solar, Utilities, Wind, , ,

The bright shiny package the coal industry unwrapped Christmas morning—the one it hoped was filled with rising and lasting demand for the black rock—is actually little more than a pretty box filled with empty promises delivered by the country’s new cheerleader in chief.

Just 10 years ago, coal was the clear top dog, accounting for just under 50 percent of the electricity generated annually in the U.S. (Coal’s total in 2006 was 48.9 percent, the last year it actually topped the 50 percent level was 2003.) This year, coal is likely to play second fiddle to the surging natural gas sector; the Energy Information Administration’s latest Short Term Energy Outlook (released Dec. 8) estimates that coal will account for 30.4 percent of the nation’s electric generation this year, below the 34.1 percent stake controlled by natural gas. And no amount of industry wishful thinking or presidential conceit is going to change that—the markets have changed.

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