US tax reform could make it easier for some generators to speed coal retirements
While several coal mining companies have cheered tax reform's effect on their bottom lines, it might give some U.S. utilities a path for closing coal-fired power plants in a way that softens the impact on ratepayers.
On a Feb. 27 earnings call, PNM Resources Inc. President and CEO Patricia Vincent-Collawn said the utility, which serves New Mexico and Texas, is passing the benefits of tax reform to customers with new rates. The move, she said, also allowed the company to begin a transition away from coal while holding the impact on customers' bills to just over 1%.
Replacing Clean Power Plan with efficiency focus may still challenge coal
Replacing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan with a policy emphasizing efficiency improvements to lower carbon dioxide emissions could still trouble some U.S. coal plants, industry supporters warned.
The EPA is seeking comments on a potential replacement for the Clean Power Plan and in early comments from coal supporters, several expressed concerns that efficiency standards may not be a workable solution. The variability of coal plants and their respective ability to achieve higher heat rates, one measure of plant efficiency, complicates other hurdles to using efficiency standards to consistently reduce emissions, such as the tendency for heat rate improvements to degrade over the life of a plant.
Coal group still pushing for market relief after DOE grid rule rejection
Despite federal regulators' rejection of a U.S. Department of Energy proposal to prop up financially struggling coal-fired power plants, the head of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, or ACCCE, still hopes that grid operators will change wholesale market rules to keep even more of those plants from retiring prematurely.
"We think there's a market-based way to value fuel security as well as maybe other attributes of the coal fleet," ACCCE President and CEO Paul Bailey said. "So we would like to see the wholesale markets develop ways to value those coal fleet attributes. You can say the same thing about nuclear, by the way."
Coal exec urges more 'clarity and certainty' in federal royalty valuation rules
A coal industry executive is recommending that the federal government provide more "clarity and certainty" in its rules for the payment of federal royalties.
"The best way to provide clarity and certainty, to avoid further appeals and costly litigation, is to request formal rulemaking around the coal valuation benchmarks," said Matthew Adams, vice president of taxation at Cloud Peak Energy Inc. and a member of the U.S. Department of the Interior's Royalty Policy Committee, at the committee's Feb. 28 meeting in Houston.
DOE laboratories sign agreement for innovative coal research
The U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory and National Energy Technology Laboratory signed a memorandum of understanding March 2 to pursue research on new ways to use coal to create innovative high-value products.
According to acting National Energy Technology Laboratory Director Sean Plasynski and Oak Ridge National Laboratory Director Thomas Zacharia, the MOU will lead to joint exploration of projects that use coal as a precursor for products such as pitches, fibers, nanocarbon catalysts, and other structural or functional materials.
BSNF joins lawsuit against Washington over stalled coal export terminal
BNSF Railway Co. is joining a lawsuit filed by Lighthouse Resources Inc. against Washington officials over the proposed Millennium Bulk Terminals-Longview.
In its complaint in intervention, filed Feb. 27 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, BNSF said Inslee and other state officials "have misused their state regulatory authority to prevent interstate and international commerce involving coal transport, because they oppose the use of coal."
