Basin Electric's proposed NextGen plant near Selby wasn't the only coal-fired electrical generating station to get the red light in 2010. For the second year in a row, no one in the United States started building a new coal-fired power plant.
The reasons? Well, yes, we hippies and that darned Environmental Protection Agency had something to do with it (hooray for successful environmental action!). But it's more complicated that that:
...[A] combination of low natural gas prices, shale gas discoveries, the economic slowdown and litigation by environmental groups has stopped - at least for now - groundbreaking on new ones.
"Coal is a dead man walkin'," says Kevin Parker, global head of asset management and a member of the executive committee at Deutsche Bank. "Banks won't finance them. Insurance companies won't insure them. The EPA is coming after them. . . . And the economics to make it clean don't work" [Steven Mufson, "Coal Burnout: Have Investors Moved on to Cleaner Energy Sources?" Washington Post, 2011.01.01].
The article goes on to note that coal is still our main source of electricity and that over the long-term, we'll still need more generating plants of some sort. For now, though, the economic downturn has killed energy demand, so utilities can take a breather from building more coal capacity. And one industry expert says that cleaner natural gas may remain at better prices than coal.
A breather... a nice, deep breather, with cleaner air. How nice.
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On the other hand, natural gas is challenging coal on availability and price thanks in large part to hydraulic fracturing, a process that may contaminate ground water. The economy has also delivered a hit to the wind power industry, with a 70% drop in the installation of new wind projects in the first half of 2010.
Update 17:01 CST: Farmers and pecan growers in Texas say that sulfur dioxide from the state's 19 coal-fired power plants are killing their crops. Utility officials and Texas environmental authorities deny any such connection.