Tag: Four
RWE Will Close Wales Plant, Leaving UK With Four Operating Coal Units
German utility RWE on August 1 announced it will close its last coal-fired power plant in the UK. The closure of the Aberthaw B power station in south Wales, scheduled by the end of March 2020, means just four coal plants will be operating in the UK. The plant originally was scheduled to be shuttered in 2021.
Roger Miesen, chief executive of RWE’s generation business, said in a statement Thursday: “This is a difficult time for everyone at Aberthaw power station. However, market conditions made this decision necessary.”
The UK has been moving on from coal-fired generation over the past few years, and less than 5% of the country’s power came from coal last year. The UK earlier this year went a week without using any electricity from coal.
The UK government has said all coal-fired generation in the country must end no later than 2025 to help meet climate targets. Several plant closures have been announced in recent months; EDF Energy, the London-based utility, in February said it would close its Cottam coal plant in September.…
Four Things That Are Killing Coal
Although President Trump has been promoting a pro-coal energy agenda, there are four things killing coal that the administration may not be able to remedy.
That was the message Bill Ritter Jr. delivered to American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Power and Energy Conference & Exhibition attendees during his keynote address on June 27. Ritter is the former governor of Colorado, founder of the Center for the New Energy Economy at Colorado State University, and author of Powering Forward: What Everyone Should Know About America’s Energy Revolution.
“In the United States of America, our power system—our power portfolio—is changing in a fairly dynamic way,” Ritter said. “I would argue, in spite of our November election . . . that transition is still happening.”
The four things Ritter said are likely beyond Trump’s control: state-level actions, municipal-level responses to climate change, corporate power-purchasing activities, and bipartisan cooperation outside of Washington, D.C.
1. State-Level Actions
Although Ritter noted that Congress has not passed a single piece of comprehensive energy legislation in the past 10 years, he said about 4,000 pieces of energy legislation get introduced annually on the state level, of which as many as 600 have gone on to become law each year.…