Good news from the Energy Information Administration’s latest electricity update: in Washington and Oregon, generation of coal-fired power fell sharply over the past two years, even as wind has taken flight. By the end of 2012, wind handily outstripped coal in the two states’ generation mix:
This makes me happy—but probably requires at least two pieces of context.
First, there’s a chance that coal generation could have fallen even further, except that the coal-fired power plant in Centralia, Washington has long-term contracts that will likely keep at least one of the plant’s two boilers humming until 2025. There’s an irony here: if it weren’t for an agreement between the Washington Department of Ecology and Centralia’s owner to shut down the plant’s coal burners by 2025—an agreement that also allowed Centralia’s coal generators to enter into long-term power contracts, which previously had been forbidden—the plant might actually have been on track to close much sooner!
And second, the West Coast is unique in its generation mix: it’s the only part of the country in which wind power outstrips coal, and that’s largely because of the abundance of hydropower. Nationally, coal power is on the decline—but still provides more than ten times as much total electricity as wind does.
Still, this is good news for the Northwest—and I’ll take my good news where I can get it!
Chart by GoodMeasures.biz.
Steve Gelb
This is good news. I wonder what the same chart looks like with regards to power consumption given that some our power is generated from coal outside of Washington and Oregon.
Alan
You ask the right question. As EIA users know their databases count MWH generated in a particular state. A huge portion of the growth in Oregon especially (2012 still had more coal MWH in WA than wind, but wait for 2013) is dedicated for California. That will ease off now that the Golden State has come close to or exceeded its portfolio standards.
Add in the coal just from Montana and it will be a while before we can claim to be using more wind energy than coal energy. Both states have Fuel Mix Disclosure requirements that paint a more accurate picture of out-of-region sources utilities use to meet their loads; 2012 data will not be available from those sources for a while.
And while anything that gets us off of coal is welcome, wind presents particular problems due in part to its seasonality overlapping with hydro in the spring but mainly due to the sweet deals wind energy producers get in terms of dispatch
Philip Blevens
Wind power is cute, but irrelevant. A parlor trick with no lasting impact. Efficiency and conservation are the only things that will have an effect over the next 20 years.
Clark Williams-Derry
I agree that efficiency & conservation should remain the top electricity priority, for lots of reasons. We’re not going to get where we need to go without them.
But wind an irrelevant parlor trick? Look at the numbers, please. Wind is showing up in small but significant numbers in the national generation mix. And it’s the only form of non-fossil energy that’s growing in a meaningful way — solar is still tiny, biomass is small and flat, hydro is variable but hasn’t grown in 40 years, nuclear is flat or down.
Without wind, fossil fired generation would have gone up by 2.5 percent between 2004 and 2012. With wind, fossil fired power declined by 2 percent. Maybe you think that’s a parlor trick, but it’s (sadly) more absolute CO2 reductions than we’ve realized through conservation and efficiency.
Alan
Couldn’t disagree more. Wind is no panacea, but it is far from a parlor trick. Wind and cheap natgas will have more far more impact on efficiency and conservation in the next 10 years than the other way around, regionally and nationally. Wind makes some people a lot of new money, somehow a much more powerful incentive to some than saving money, and has PTCs that far outweigh the incentives offered for efficiency (if you don’t add in the oft-overlook “nega-money,” – money not spent on the energy you didn’t use, which is easy to model, hard to meter).
Tim
Wind also only works because of two factors: First, it has been given a dispensation from liability for birds it kills. On the surface this sounds silly, but it is a serious problem. When even a transmission company is fined for bird of prey that die coming into contact with power lines,it is serious business. Being held to the same standard would shut down most of the windmills. Second wind power is hugely subsidized. The current federal budget has over $12 billion of subsidies for wind. It is simply not an economically practical source of power,and if your tax dollars weren’t supporting it, it wouldn’t exist.