When hell freezes over, well actually this year!

Over the last 10 years, the United States will have moved from generating over 60% of its electricity from coal and about 2% from natural gas to natural gas and coal suppling about 33% each.

What caused this shift, the drivers include:

  1. Costs
    1. Coal is increasing
      1. Converting coal to electricity is increase (due to emission controls)
    2. Natural gas is decreasing
      1. Converting natural gas to electricity is cheaper than coal
  2. Meeting environmental emissions; natural gas produces much less carbon emissions and none of the mercury or metals of coal
  3. Cost of mining coal; mountain top mining has been nearly eliminated requiring more expensive underground mining
  4. Abundance of natural gas; proven reserve in the US have grown by 400%

03_18_2016_Bobby_Magill_CC_EIA_Chart_1050_526_s_c1_c_c

What may be lost in this process is over reliance on a single fuel supply. When the next polar vortex hits it will expose the fact that not only is our electric generation tied to natural gas but so is the majority of our heating.

And what really hasn’t increased in these past 15 years; pipelines into our major population centers. The majority of our urban areas still are served by natural gas pipelines that will be fully committed, without capacity for supplying more. So the law of supply and demand will be balanced; and costs will rise and rise dramatically.

Realgy Energy Services is a registered Retail Energy Marketer in the states of Illinois, Michigan and Indiana. We offer Service Plans that will provide electric and natural gas at wholesale pricing direct to customers without any utility markup. Our Service Plans work with the local utility to provide seamless service and annual energy savings. Service Plans include Guaranteed SavingsTM, ManagedPriceTM, ManagedGreenTM and Index, Fixed pricing.

Additional Information:

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/natural-gas-to-surpass-coal-for-electricity-20154