{"id":31302,"date":"2013-09-20T08:30:40","date_gmt":"2013-09-20T13:30:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=31302"},"modified":"2013-09-20T12:54:58","modified_gmt":"2013-09-20T17:54:58","slug":"a-changing-market-and-dim-future-for-coal-in-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2013\/09\/20\/a-changing-market-and-dim-future-for-coal-in-texas\/","title":{"rendered":"A Changing Market and Dim Future for Coal in Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by REUTERS\/Mike Stone \/Landov<\/p>

A stream of workers leave the TXU Monticello power plant near Mt. Pleasant, Texas February 26, 2007.<\/p><\/div>\n

Amid the continued decline in coal power in the state, Texas’ largest power generator is asking the state for permission to idle another of its coal power units this winter. And new federal regulations proposed today<\/a> make it unlikely that many new coal power plants will be built in the\u00a0foreseeable\u00a0future.<\/p>\n

Luminant, a division of the financially-troubled<\/a> Energy Future Holdings, is asking operators of the Texas grid if it can suspend one unit at its Martin Lake coal plant in Northeast Texas.\u00a0It’s similar to another request by the company — already granted last year<\/a> and again this year — to suspend two other units at the large Monticello coal power plant in the same region.<\/p>\n

While there’s been plenty of talk over the last few years of a regulatory “War on Coal<\/a>,” the culprit behind coal’s slowdown in Texas is something far different: the free market.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to operate as much of our generation as we can,\u201d says Brad Watson, a spokesperson for Luminant. \u201cBut it just doesn\u2019t make sense, economic sense, to operate a unit at a financial loss.\u201d Citing “persistently low prices” for power in the deregulated Texas market, Luminant has decided its better to just close these coal units for a large part of the year, a decision Watson says the company “doesn’t like.”<\/p>\n

Coal power faces an uphill battle in Texas. On top of a market friendlier to cheap natural gas, new carbon rules<\/a> from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today will sharply limit the development of new coal projects in the country. Plants will be required to capture some or all of their carbon emissions<\/a>, a step that would likely prove too costly and lead generators to opt for natural gas (which will have a much easier time meeting the new standards) or renewable energy instead.\u00a0Coal is more carbon-intensive than any other fuel, and has been the\u00a0top culprit of carbon dioxide emissions in the world<\/a>\u00a0for the last ten years.<\/p>\n

The EPA is also considering new carbon rules for existing power plants, which could have a big impact on the state’s coal power fleet. “That’s really where the rubber hits the road,” says\u00a0Jonas Monast<\/a>,\u00a0Director of the Climate & Energy Program at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions. “Because relatively there are a small number of new power plants built every year in this county. But there are a large number of existing power plants that, depending on the program design, could be affected by the rulemaking.”<\/p>\n

But market forces may have already had a more significant impact than new regulations, some of which Luminant has been fighting in court<\/a>.\u00a0The decision to suspend the coal units now, however, is “totally market-driven,” Watson of Luminant says. The company also maintains that the idling has nothing to do with an expected bankruptcy declaration by their parent company, Energy Future Holdings, this year. The suspension of the plants will not cause any layoffs, the company says, and coal mining will continue.<\/p>\n

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