The Reality Blog

Things we don’t need any more of

Corporate executive bonuses, monthly bills, and income tax deadlines — all things that we have plenty of already. And according to the new Annual Energy Outlook report released by the US Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA), there’s one more item we can add to the list: dirty coal-fired power plants.

There are dozens and dozens of new coal plants being proposed without technology to capture and store their carbon dioxide pollution. But the EIA’s latest Annual Energy Outlook finds we will need very few of them to meet our electricity demand in the next 10-20 years.

The report — which doesn’t even include the impacts from the recent economic recovery bill or any proposed policies for energy efficiency and new clean energy supplies — assumes only very limited additions of new coal plants over the next 20 years. What does this really mean? With the stimulus’ new investments and policies supporting our transition to clean energy currenty being considered in Washington, we could eliminate the need for those new coal plants entirely, and reduce our existing use of dirty coal.

The EIA outlook on electricity flies in the face of coal industry claims that dozens of new, dirty coal plants are immediately essential to meet our energy demand — claims they’ve made recently to justify efforts in Kansas and Michigan to build more coal plants that will spew global warming pollution into the air for decades to come.

Looks like the coal industry can stop worrying about fighting for new, dirty plants, and start investing in the technologies that will help generate electricity without releasing CO₂ — something we could actually use more of.