“Old King Coal Just Keeps Going and Going and Going...” By DAVID BLACKMON
“Despite decades of predictions of the death of coal by the climate alarmist left and all manner of international agreements designed to kill it off, Old King Coal just keeps growing….”
Old King Coal Just Keeps Going and Going and Going...
Lots happening on the coal front this week that deserves noting here. Despite decades of predictions of the death of coal by the climate alarmist left and all manner of international agreements designed to kill it off, Old King Coal just keeps growing as a preferred fuel for power generation around the world.
First, take a look at the latest projection for the growth of coal usage published Tuesday by the shameless wind and solar boosters at the International Energy Agency:
Shell’s Peter Wood says the IEA forecast shows “modest growth” for coal demand through 2027, and that is accurate as compared to growth in years past.
But Javier Blas, the excellent energy and commodities columnist at Bloomberg, says in a reply that, “To me, the 500 million metric tons upward revision is more important that whether 2024-27 is a fairly level plateau or a small increase.”
Wood then replies that, “Yes big upward revision on coal when you consider both renewables AND LNG are on a tear.”
Blas and Wood are both right.
This recognition of continued growth in coal demand by the IEA is quite significant, especially considering the rapid growth in both renewables and LNG capacities. Plus, if IEA is admitting to additional growth of 500 million metric tons, it’s a safe assumption that the real growth in coal demand will end up being significantly higher than that in the coming years.
Many readers here will have already guessed that one big driver of this rising coal demand stems from AI and data centers, which require affordable, reliable streams of power supply that runs 24 hours each day, 365 days every year. The simple fact is that no power generation fuel satisfies these key criteria quite as completely as coal does.
Writers at Bloomberg Green grudgingly concede this energy reality in Tuesday’s Green Daily Newsletter in a story headlined, “Coal-Black Swans Threaten the Green Transition.”
That story somewhat hilariously kicks off with possibly the most obvious observation in energy media history:
“Something strange is happening with utilities.”
Oh, you don’t say? So, what, in the view of Bloomberg Green’s writers, is “strange” in the utility world?
Well, the thesis holds that demand for electricity is now rising so rapidly in the US that it is outstripping offsets in new efficiencies and build-out of heavily subsidized renewables. Thus, after decades of overall power demand remaining relatively flat, power grids are suddenly seeing significant upticks, due mostly to major new demand centers like EV charging, crypto-mining, and the demands of AI and data centers.
Now, I’m not a genius, but these are all things I’ve personally been writing about for half a decade now. You could literally see this all coming from miles away, yet it all seems to be a bit of a surprise at Bloomberg Green. Go figure.
Here’s the money excerpt from the Bloomberg Green piece:
And when faced with this sudden increase of load on the power grid, utilities are going to rely heavily on natural gas, and even coal.
“It will be a struggle to meet load growth,” said Rob Gramlich, president of Grid Strategies, a Washington-based research company that’s been tracking this trend. He expects US demand to for electricity to climb almost 16% over the next five years, more than triple his estimate from a year ago. Utilities are expecting customers to need as much as 128 gigawatts of new capacity in 2029. [Emphasis added]
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Yes, it’s going to be a struggle for utilities and grid managers to satisfy these rapidly rising demands, but no one should think that’s due to any lack of resources or ability by the business community to build the new power stations required.
Bloomberg Green won’t admit it, but the main limiter faced by power providers comes from idiotic government policies and based on the globalist obsession about the trace element of human carbon emission in the atmosphere. If allowed to do it, the US power industry could easily build all the reliable baseload power generation fired by coal and natural gas needed to meet this rising demand. It would be a no-brainer.
But all these onerous restrictions and permitting requirements enacted during the Biden and Obama presidencies will dramatically restrict such growth.
But the authors of the Bloomberg Green story want you to believe it’s all due to voluntary carbon reduction commitments made by the companies themselves:
That’s really going to disrupt the green transition. Power providers that have made pledges to cut back or eliminate carbon emissions are now starting to reverse course. Duke Energy Corp. is extendingthe life of its largest coal-fired power plant, abandoning its plan to exit coal by 2035. FirstEnergy also will operate a pair of coal plants, stepping back from an earlier pledge to stop using the fuel by 2030. And energy companies in the US are planning new gas plants at the fastest pace in years.
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To be clear: Duke Energy, FirstEnergy and other power providers were bullied into making those commitments by ESG investment firms like BlackRock and Vanguard, and by federal regulators in the Biden and Obama administrations. Those commitments would never have been made if those companies had been left to make their business decisions based on real business considerations, and everyone knows it.
I first predicted about 14 months ago that we would see grid operators and state regulators in the US not just moving to extend the lives of existing coal-fired power plants but sanctioning the building of new ones by the end of 2026 in response to the magnitude of growth in these new demand centers. This Bloomberg Green story perhaps unwittingly chronicles the first steps in the inevitable journey down that path.
The simple truth is that wind and solar cannot meet the real needs of these rapidly rising new demand centers, even when backed up by stationary batteries. That’s because lhe laws of physics are laws, not just suggestions to be waived away by clever regulators. Eventually, considerations of markets and profits will always prevail over government efforts to pick winners and losers, mainly because the alternative leads inevitably to economic catastrophe.
Old King Coal just keeps going and going like the proverbial Energizer battery for the simple reason that it remains the power generation fuel with the highest level of energy density on the planet. It really is that simple, whether the writers at Bloomberg Green understand it or not.
That is all.