A new report by the NC Waste Awareness & Reduction Network (NC WARN) makes a strong case that my native state of North Carolina can manage its population growth without adding new coal-fired power plants like the 800 MW Cliffside project which just began construction. Report authors John Blackburn and John Runkle even suggest we can phase out many coal plants in the years ahead.
The Details
North Carolina currently has an electrical capacity of ~28 GW, as reported by the US Energy Information Administration State Energy Profile. The bulk of the state’s electricity comes from coal (~60%) and nuclear (~35%). The remaining ~5% is mostly hydropower, then some natural gas and a little renewable electricity (mostly biomass, since there is no significant wind capacity installed to date and only a trace of solar (~5 MW)).
Recently, electricity consumption has been falling due to efficiency and the recession. For instance, last December demand was 2.5% below year-ago levels. With federal and state leaders focused on energy efficiency, there is a significant possibility that electricity consumption may not need to grow from now on. And that scenario is what the NC WARN report is based on.
Blackburn, the former chair of Duke University’s Economics Department, and Runkle, a NC attorney, put forth an electricity demand future based on 1% per year efficiency progress through 2023. Their scenario also has an acceleration of renewable energy deployment as called for in the state’s Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard (REPS) of 12.5% (7.5% renewables and 5% efficiency). They highlight the growing opportunities to take advantage of solar’s falling price and the state’s significant wind potential (located in the mountains, along the coast, and offshore). Coupled with a few co-generation retrofits and policies to shave peak electricity demand, these advances allow the retirement of 3.7 GW of older coal plants or as many as 7 to 9 existing plants.
The Costs
Since the plan is based on efficiency that is proven to cost less than 5-6 cents per kWh of demand reduction, this would save North Carolinians a great deal of money in the years ahead. Instead of spending tens of billions of dollars on proposed new coal and nuclear plants (potentially lifting electricity rates 50+% above today’s 7.5 cents per kWh), North Carolina can put those resources into becoming a leader in climate-friendly energy resources and thus reap the benefits of green jobs and a strengthened economy.
Energy Security: Putting NC’s Resources to Use
North Carolina has more powerful solar potential than Germany, the world leader that has over 5 GW installed to date (1,000X current NC capacity). And Interior Secretary Salazar recently bragged of the 1,000 GW wind potential offshore in the Atlantic, of which North Carolina has a sizable chunk. Harvesting these vast North Carolina resources would create many thousands of jobs and can help lead an economic recovery.
North Carolina is not a significant producer of oil, coal, or natural gas. So it’s time we begin to free ourselves of these volatile energy sources and rely more on our own resources. Within a few years, Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) can help to free us from a dependence on oil, which brought much transportation to a halt last Fall after the Gulf hurricanes.
The Climate Needs Us to Say No to New Coal
To keep our lovely coastline mostly intact, North Carolina will have to do its climate part — including avoiding new non-CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage) coal capacity. Construction at Cliffside is more than 10% underway, but the project should be re-examined with a carbon constraint lens.
Our climate can’t take any more coal plants. Thanks to efficiency, we don’t need more electricity. And thanks to renewable resources available to us, we can begin to phaseout greenhouse gas emitting fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) in the years ahead.
This Sustainable Energy Transition won’t happen in a matter of months. But we all have a role to play to make it happen through smart energy policy and habits over the next few decades as the NC WARN report begins to lay out.
Kudos to NC WARN and everyone involved in sharing this important information with us.
Tags: Cliffside, climate change, Coal, Electricity, North Carolina, power
Although solar PV is still expensive, another type of solar is fast becoming competitive with traditional energy production, and has a huge potential for adding significant amounts of clean energy: Concentrating Solar Power (CSP, also called solar thermal electricity).
An example is the Nevada Solar One project in Boulder City, NV that became operational in June 2007. It is a 64 MW CSP plant using just 2% natural gas backup. Another example is a Florida Power and Light project, which broke ground at the end of 2008 on a 75MW CSP plant in southeast Florida on 500 acres adjacent to their “regular” power plant.
Why doesn’t Duke Energy do something similar, instead of building another coal plant?