The Renewable Energy Reality Check

[Archaic]

10. I will admit that I haven't read the article.

But I will throw out there that there are a good number of coal fired plants that are going to shut down way earlier in the USA than people expected.

I know of one that looks like it's going to lose the fuel supply that was inexpensive enough to keep it online. Basically the locals are blocking further blasting for coal. If they have to bring it in from further, it'll close.

I know of another one that was almost shut down because of a state regulation change that if it had passed, would have made it financially impossible to operate.

And I know of a 3rd nearby that has had one of its units down for unscheduled maintenance like 4 times in the last 12 months. At some point it'll be too expensive to run it, and would allow that company to improve their mandated fossil/renewable mandate ratio. Some of the coal companies want to get rid of a lot of union folks too, and if they close the older unionized plants to comply with the big bad government, and fire workers very publicly, it'll serve their purpose of unloading union folks as well.

So some things are happening on the other side of that ratio, not just the uptick in usage of the good stuff.