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New Report Reveals Coal Vegetation Earned $1 Billion for Working Whereas Wind Was Accessible, Cheaper in MISO Territory
Including to a rising discipline of analysis, the brand new report, The Client and Environmental Prices from Uneconomically Dispatching Coal Vegetation in MISO, reveals new particulars concerning the affect of ageing, uncompetitive coal vegetation benefiting from utility and market guidelines to run at a loss for prolonged durations of time whereas crowding out cleaner, cheaper sources within the nation’s largest geographic grid area.
“Customers shouldn’t have to pay higher bills to keep dirtier, more expensive coal plants online,” stated Dana Ammann, coverage analyst on the Sustainable FERC Undertaking at NRDC. “Grid operators need to stop this inefficient practice and make these plants compete on a level playing field.”
For years, specialists have drawn the identical conclusion: costly coal routinely runs whereas dropping cash, saddling clients with extra prices within the course of. Uneconomic dispatch occurs for numerous causes that every one come again to coal homeowners’ capability to provide energy to the grid kind of at their very own discretion — no matter value or guidelines.
The brand new analysis, performed by Grid Methods for NRDC and primarily based on publicly out there energy plant information, exhibits for the primary time that uneconomic coal not solely runs when it shouldn’t, however cuts the road to push cleaner, cheaper sources out of the market. The surplus prices hurt shoppers all through the MISO energy grid — a 15-state territory operating from by way of the center of the nation — however are most important in Louisiana, Indiana, and North Dakota.
“Power markets should ensure the cheapest resources are used first, but these loopholes increase profits for coal companies and utilities at the expense of energy consumers,” Ammann stated. “These decisions have ripple effects. When uneconomic coal plants displace wind and solar power, it sends a signal to reduce future development of those projects. Coal plant operators shouldn’t get a bailout from customers.”
Courtesy of NRDC (Pure Sources Protection Council), a global nonprofit environmental group with greater than 3 million members and on-line activists. Established in 1970, NRDC makes use of science, coverage, regulation and folks energy to confront the local weather disaster, shield public well being and safeguard nature. NRDC has places of work in New York Metropolis, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Beijing and Delhi (an workplace of NRDC India Pvt. Ltd).
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