Thank you for pushing back against the misleading aspects of the Texas clean energy narrative. Please keep it up!
There's a small detail here that sounds a little off to me. You say "In most cases, power plant owners didn’t voluntarily shut down their coal plants; they were forced to by regulations and policies aimed at mitigating climate change and improving public health." I think this downplays the role of economic factors. Gas really has become cheaper than coal in recent decades. Cheap wind has added more competition in some parts of the country, and cheap solar and batteries are now coming into play. Obviously regulations also play a big role, and I suppose we could imagine a world in which totally unregulated coal power is much cheaper than coal power with emissions controls. So it's complicated. But in order to eliminate coal, one needs an affordable alternative.
Yes, economics and alternatives definitely play a role. But my point is that it's hard to become truly coal-free without regulations and policies that encourage retirements.
I think the biggest thing driving coal plants offline is less the current regulations and more the fear of future pain to come. Investing money in existing coal plants became riskier because everyone knows they are in the crosshairs.
>The primary reason that the Texas grid pollutes so much more than California’s is due to its reliance on coal.
I thought it was because of California's reliance on imported power from Washington, which happens to be blessed with abundant hydropower. Not to mention California's own abundant hydropower.
The issue here is that the point of comparison is wrong. The issue isn't to compare hypothetical ideal Texas against current Texas, but to compare current Texas against *most likely alternate Texas.* I live in Houston, which is one of the biggest oil cities on Earth. If people tried to do some sort of forced conversion to clean energy that demonized fossil fuels, you would not get a cleaner grid. You would get a massive rebellion that blocked clean energy projects and adopted a sort of rolling coal state policy out of spite. Emissions are falling. Take what you can get.
Also pointing out that Texas is dirty won't make Texas change. The majority of Texans want the oil and gas jobs more than they want to reduce emissions. All this will do is make other states with terrible permitting regimes less likely to change their permitting system. It won't do anything about coal in Texas, but it might make it harder to build solar in California.
Comparing raw numbers isn't always the best way to look at these things. I sincerely doubt that Texas burns more coal per person than any other state. If we are going to compare Texas to Arkansas, per capita numbers are important.
Also it's the change in fossil fuel consumption that matters. Texas has a growing population so it's no surprise that they wouldn't be taking existing power plants offline, but have they built any new coal plants in the last ten years? My state is almost completely coal free, but that's because most of our electricity has always come from Dams. We haven't done anything to deserve praise for our low carbon footprint, while Texas is truly achieving something extraordinary. I get what you are trying to say here, but Texas is doing fine.
There are two additional items I would have included in your piece: (a) Poor public affairs. It’s impossible to “unsee” offshore wind blades which break and wash up onshore on beaches. This very thing happened in Summer, 2024 off of Nantucket Massachusetts. (B) The relationship between the need for Black Start/Peaker plants and Fossil fuels. Massachusetts just sited an oil based electricity plant in Peabody Massachusetts. Hmmm…What do those two things mean for offshore wind?
I think there is going to be a big divide between what I call Phase 1 of the electrical system transition and Phase 2. Mostly Stopping at the end of phase 1 / shortly into Phase 2 is what I call the 'Default Plan'.
Phase 1 is adding VRE when almost all the output is effectively absorbed by the system, by reducing fuel consumption in fueled generation, but not really lowering the marginal price setter (still fueled).
Phase 2 starts when some hours become VRE marginal as price setting. This may only be a small % of actual curtailed output, but it zeros out the revenue potential for a *much* larger % of the total output.
While batteries will help, they are still far to expensive for arbitrage only service to save fuel costs in NA pricing. The battery we get for other services will get used for that when available, of course.
Phase 3 would be when the % curtailment increases the cost of the output to higher than the saved fuel value.
Texas is on track to speed run through Phase 1, but has next to no incentive to push through Phase 2.
There is another aspect of Texas not being a clear cut green energy champion. The electric grid in Texas is reliably unreliable, it is guaranteed to have failures every year. In this unforgiving climate both residential and business customers equip themselves with automatic standby generators. Now all these generators kick in, start and test themselves every one to two weeks with associated inefficiencies of small to medium sized engines running at idle from cold start and with slippages of natural gas. Every month, every year, more and more of them. The consumed electricity may be coming from solar, but there is a roar of standby generator running on idle in the background.
Thank you for pushing back against the misleading aspects of the Texas clean energy narrative. Please keep it up!
There's a small detail here that sounds a little off to me. You say "In most cases, power plant owners didn’t voluntarily shut down their coal plants; they were forced to by regulations and policies aimed at mitigating climate change and improving public health." I think this downplays the role of economic factors. Gas really has become cheaper than coal in recent decades. Cheap wind has added more competition in some parts of the country, and cheap solar and batteries are now coming into play. Obviously regulations also play a big role, and I suppose we could imagine a world in which totally unregulated coal power is much cheaper than coal power with emissions controls. So it's complicated. But in order to eliminate coal, one needs an affordable alternative.
Will I ever please you, Dan!?!?
Yes, economics and alternatives definitely play a role. But my point is that it's hard to become truly coal-free without regulations and policies that encourage retirements.
I think the biggest thing driving coal plants offline is less the current regulations and more the fear of future pain to come. Investing money in existing coal plants became riskier because everyone knows they are in the crosshairs.
Nuclear nuclear nuclear please God nuclear I would love to see a cooling tower right outside my town
>The primary reason that the Texas grid pollutes so much more than California’s is due to its reliance on coal.
I thought it was because of California's reliance on imported power from Washington, which happens to be blessed with abundant hydropower. Not to mention California's own abundant hydropower.
The issue here is that the point of comparison is wrong. The issue isn't to compare hypothetical ideal Texas against current Texas, but to compare current Texas against *most likely alternate Texas.* I live in Houston, which is one of the biggest oil cities on Earth. If people tried to do some sort of forced conversion to clean energy that demonized fossil fuels, you would not get a cleaner grid. You would get a massive rebellion that blocked clean energy projects and adopted a sort of rolling coal state policy out of spite. Emissions are falling. Take what you can get.
Also pointing out that Texas is dirty won't make Texas change. The majority of Texans want the oil and gas jobs more than they want to reduce emissions. All this will do is make other states with terrible permitting regimes less likely to change their permitting system. It won't do anything about coal in Texas, but it might make it harder to build solar in California.
Comparing raw numbers isn't always the best way to look at these things. I sincerely doubt that Texas burns more coal per person than any other state. If we are going to compare Texas to Arkansas, per capita numbers are important.
Also it's the change in fossil fuel consumption that matters. Texas has a growing population so it's no surprise that they wouldn't be taking existing power plants offline, but have they built any new coal plants in the last ten years? My state is almost completely coal free, but that's because most of our electricity has always come from Dams. We haven't done anything to deserve praise for our low carbon footprint, while Texas is truly achieving something extraordinary. I get what you are trying to say here, but Texas is doing fine.
Why not be a YIMBY about nuclear?
There are two additional items I would have included in your piece: (a) Poor public affairs. It’s impossible to “unsee” offshore wind blades which break and wash up onshore on beaches. This very thing happened in Summer, 2024 off of Nantucket Massachusetts. (B) The relationship between the need for Black Start/Peaker plants and Fossil fuels. Massachusetts just sited an oil based electricity plant in Peabody Massachusetts. Hmmm…What do those two things mean for offshore wind?
Do the Texas coal plants have retirement dates? A lot of plants have announced retirement dates sometime before 2035.
I think there is going to be a big divide between what I call Phase 1 of the electrical system transition and Phase 2. Mostly Stopping at the end of phase 1 / shortly into Phase 2 is what I call the 'Default Plan'.
Phase 1 is adding VRE when almost all the output is effectively absorbed by the system, by reducing fuel consumption in fueled generation, but not really lowering the marginal price setter (still fueled).
Phase 2 starts when some hours become VRE marginal as price setting. This may only be a small % of actual curtailed output, but it zeros out the revenue potential for a *much* larger % of the total output.
While batteries will help, they are still far to expensive for arbitrage only service to save fuel costs in NA pricing. The battery we get for other services will get used for that when available, of course.
Phase 3 would be when the % curtailment increases the cost of the output to higher than the saved fuel value.
Texas is on track to speed run through Phase 1, but has next to no incentive to push through Phase 2.
There is another aspect of Texas not being a clear cut green energy champion. The electric grid in Texas is reliably unreliable, it is guaranteed to have failures every year. In this unforgiving climate both residential and business customers equip themselves with automatic standby generators. Now all these generators kick in, start and test themselves every one to two weeks with associated inefficiencies of small to medium sized engines running at idle from cold start and with slippages of natural gas. Every month, every year, more and more of them. The consumed electricity may be coming from solar, but there is a roar of standby generator running on idle in the background.