Natural gas surpassed coal in September as the leading U.S. power source for the fourth time in history, according to federal energy data – with all four milestones being hit this year.
Gas overtook coal as a power source in April, July, August and September because gas prices were lower than those for coal, making it cheaper to burn gas to produce power.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said generators produced 123,248 thousand megawatt hours (MWh) of electricity with gas in September versus 118,489 thousand MWh with coal.
Coal, however, has remained the nation’s leading source of electricity so far this year, producing about 34 percent of the country’s power versus about 32 percent for gas.
The next biggest sources of power production during the first nine months of the year were nuclear, at 19 percent, and non-hydro renewables such as wind and solar at 6 percent, the EIA said.
Cheap gas has kept power prices low for the past few years, making it uneconomic for generators to upgrade their older coal plants to meet increasingly strict federal and state environmental rules.
Hence, U.S. power companies have already shut or converted over 11,000 megawatts (MW) of coal-fired plants so far this year and expect to stop burning the fuel at another 3,000 MW by the end of 2015, according to Thomson Reuters data.
Since peaking in 2007, the amount of U.S. electricity produced by coal has declined during most of the past eight years.
Over the past 12 months coal-fired generators produced 1,436,182 thousand MWh, or 35 percent of the nation’s total generation. That puts coal on track for its weakest year for power production since the late 1980s, EIA said.
Gas, meanwhile, is on track to have its biggest year ever for U.S. power production with 1,284,506 thousand MWh generated over the past 12 months, according to federal data. That would top the current record for gas of 1,225,894 thousand MWh set in 2012.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-natgas-coal-idUSKBN0TK52K20151201#J0VZJ6ICUBBp6732.97