Clean Power Plan Projection: Coal Use Would Drop Sharply and Quickly

Production of coal in the United States would drop by one-fifth in the next five years and almost one-third by 2025 under the Obama administration’s regulatory crackdown on carbon emissions from electric power plants, the Energy Department’s statistical branch said on Friday.

Retirements of coal-fired power plants would double, with about 50 gigawatts more in lost capacity compared with business as usual, the new analysis by the department’s Energy Information Administration found. At first, power plants would mainly switch to natural gas, but over time, solar and wind capacity would soar.

The agency emphasized that there is "considerable uncertainty" in any such analysis, not only because of market surprises and innovation, but also because the EPA’s plan gives extraordinary leeway to the states in determining how best to meet the clean-power goals.

In the end, this analysis, based on sophisticated modeling by the government’s leading experts, reached exactly the conclusion that everyone expected: eliminating carbon pollution means walking away from coal.

The Clean Power Plan, as the administration’s proposed rule governing emissions from existing fossil-fuel-fired power plants is known, is the centerpiece of the Obama administration’s climate policies, aimed at cutting emissions to 30 percent below the 2005 level by 2030.

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