This is part one of a two-part report from a conference held by the Virginia Coal and Energy Alliance exploring efforts to reinvigorate coal use. Part one examines the U.S. Department of Energy’s efforts to develop smaller, modular coal-fired power plants. Part two will take an inside look at a coal committee meeting of the Southern States Energy Board, a coalition of state lawmakers who want to boost the coal industry.
President Donald Trump's leader on fossil energy research and development said he envisions "coal-based power plants of the future" that, like in the 1970s, will again enable the United States to spread coal technology to developing countries around the globe.
The U.S. Department of Energy is seeking information about the potential for a pilot project to test the commercial viability of a small, modular coal power plant capable of highly efficient and low-emitting operations. The DOE's Office of Fossil Energy is focused on improving the nation's existing fleet and spurring development of new coal-fired power plants to replace retiring generation domestically and export the technology abroad, Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy Steven Winberg told a coal conference in mid-May.
"We have the opportunity to make great strides in efficiency and cost improvements to not only the existing fleet but also accelerate the development of transformational technology that will pave the way for the plants of the future," Winberg said at the Virginia Coal and Energy Alliance conference.
The DOE has also opened requests for information on improving the efficiency, reliability and flexibility of existing coal-fired power plants and improving steam-based power cycles for coal boilers.
The majority of today's coal fleet was built in the 1970s, and facilities such as the Pleasants power plant in West Virginia are facing an early retirement, Winberg noted.
"I cut my teeth on starting up some of those power plants," said Winberg, a former director of research for a natural gas and coal company. "They have years of life in them, but we're talking about retiring them instead of talking about upgrading them to make them more efficient and lower-emitting."
Taking cues from competitors
The next generation of coal-fired plants would presumably look a lot more like the natural gas plants and renewable energy sources that are pushing coal plants out of the marketplace. The pilot project calls for a facility that improves the current 33% average efficiency of the coal fleet to above 40% while maintaining near-zero emissions and is compatible with carbon capture technology.
While some operating coal plants have capacities of over 2,000 MW, the imagined plants would have much smaller generating capacity, between 50 MW and 350 MW, and be able to ramp up and down to follow the demand for electricity.
Winberg said the U.S. has "pretty much lost" its ability to build coal-fired power plants domestically. Instead of coal plants being designed and built overseas, he envisions smaller-scale coal technology as an exportable product for destinations such as India or sub-Saharan Africa where he said there is no need for large power plants, but smaller plants might be deployable.
"We're asking for your help," Joseph Giove, director of coal business operations at the DOE, said in separate remarks before multiple state lawmakers the same day as Winberg's presentation. "Help us to produce something with your taxpayer dollars that are going to then come back and help the coal industry as the ultimate goal."
When the program was announced, John Coequyt, the global climate policy director for the Sierra Club, told S&P Global Market Intelligence that the idea was not likely to go very far and suggested the money was better spent on utility-scale batteries or renewables projects.
"I just don't believe the industry, utilities, communities — I don't think there's anybody looking for smaller coal plants as a solution to our energy problems," Coequyt said.
But at least one utility has expressed interest in the new coal technology.
Sticking with coal or moving on
American Electric Power Co. Inc.'s Appalachian Power Co. subsidiary generates more than three-fourths of the power it supplies to customers from coal and is interested in the DOE's concept, its president and COO, Chris Beam, said at the Virginia coal conference.
"We think there's a future here," Beam said, specifically pointing to a need for metals that could withstand higher heat and pressure. "We need some engineering breakthroughs to make it happen, but we're behind supporting that effort."
He added that while others "have walked away from coal," AEP has spent $8.6 billion from 2000 to 2017 to keep its coal fleet in compliance.
"We're dependent on coal now, we've been dependent on coal for a while and we're going to be dependent on it for decades to come," Beam said. "These small, modular coal plants, we envision them to be no different than a wind turbine or a battery or even a solar [energy] system. We believe we can move them around so that we can deploy them closer to the customer to help with grid stabilization and grid resiliency."
The company's commitment to coal contrasts with Southern Co. President and CEO Thomas Fanning's recent statement that the company is "really moving away from coal in a big way." Southern was behind the Kemper power plant, a large-scale carbon capture project supported by the DOE that cost the company billions before it was scrapped. While Southern continues to research carbon capture technology, Fanning said the company is moving toward renewables and natural gas.
"We're the only company in our industry still invested in a robust way in proprietary research and development," Fanning said on a May 23 call. "And so much of our work in the past, before I became chairman, R&D-wise, was focused in protecting coal. No longer."
