Don't Celebrate the Death of Coal Power Quite Yet

Now that the EPA has finally been forced to acknowledge CO2 as a pollutant, plans for new coal plants are in limbo, and clean energy backers are happily talking up ideas to replace dirty fuels with wind, solar and other renewables. But wise greens might wait to start counting their victories until the eggs they’ve laid hatch; abruptly killing coal might not be as beneficial as many assume.

The problem is that renewables need a long runway to begin replacing the lost capacity from coal, a massive supplier of the energy pie. Take a look at this Department of Energy report, which tracks coal plants in the planning and construction phases. As the report notes, the bulk of those projects already had an uncertain future, due to regulatory worries. Even in the beginning of 2008, only 29 plants, of a total 110 listed, were actually under construction.

If built at all, those 29 plants will provide 16,534 megawatts (16.5GW) of electricity; if all 110 were built, we’d have 64.3GW of new generation. But given the combination of regulatory hurdles, court challenges, and the ongoing debt contraction,  it’s reasonable to assume most of those won’t be built. Let’s be optimistic and say only half are nixed. Fudging the actual numbers a bit, we can now see 32GW of capacity left unfulfilled.

Will wind and solar, the only two renewables that can be quickly deployed for now, be enough to fill the void? If it were up to solar alone, the answer would be: Not even close. New solar capacity, whether panels for your roof or solar thermal plants out in the desert, is still being measured in tens and hundreds of megawatts, not to mention that some of the best areas for solar are far from the areas that need power.

Wind power isn’t good for all areas, but it certainly has the potential to provide gigawatts of power. However, wind projects are a recession victim as well, including megaprojects at home like T. Boone Pickens‘ Texas wind farm, as well as some overseas ventures like the United Kingdom’s joint Statoil/Ecoconcern project.

The trouble is that unless another form of energy like natural gas, or a sudden conservation fad among consumers, steps in to fill the gap created by old plants shutting down and new demand growth, we’ll soon be the victim of power outages equal to or worse than the Northeast Blackout of 2003.

While members of the Sierra Club and Greenpeace may be willing to pay that price, the average person — and the economy — likely won’t. Renewables, like anything else, can suffer a public relations disaster — greens should not assume that because it hasn’t happened yet, it never will.