More Than 40 Percent of World Coal Plants Are Unprofitable, Says Report (reuters.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: More than 40 percent of the world's coal plants are operating at a loss due to high fuel costs and that proportion could to rise to nearly 75 percent by 2040, a report by environmental think-tank Carbon Tracker showed on Friday. London-based Carbon Tracker analyzed the profitability of 6,685 coal plants around the world, representing 95 percent of operating capacity and 90 percent of capacity under construction. It found that 42 percent of global coal capacity is already unprofitable. From 2019 onwards, it expects falling renewable energy costs, air pollution regulations and carbon pricing to result in further cost pressures and make around 72 percent of the fleet cashflow negative by 2040. In addition, by 2030, new wind and solar will be cheaper than continuing to operate 96 percent of today's existing and planned coal plants, the report said.

Comments

Misleading: coal being killed by natural gas

[XXongo]

The summary is a little misleading. A portion of the competition for coal is indeed the "falling cost of renewables", but that ignores the other competition that's the main reason coal is not profitable: the low cost of natural gas, and the low cost of building turbines that produce electrical power with natural gas.

Natural gas power plants also spin up and spin down more quickly than old coal plants, allowing them to track the short-term changes in the demand curve better.

Here's a graph. Notice that the drop in coal is mirrored by a rise in gas. https://www.eia.gov/energyexpl...