New Coal-fired Boilers was the Hot Topic for January 29, 2009
Participants from suppliers, utilities, government organizations and consulting firms discussed the future of coal. Bob McIlvaine reviewed forecasts for new coal-fired boilers for each country as displayed in World Coal-fired Boilers Analysis and Forecast. More than 800,000 MW of new units will be added through 2020 and less than 100,000 MW will be retired. Since the U.S. has only 300,000 MW it can be said that the increased capacity is more than double the U.S. total. As a result, anything the U.S. does about CO2 reduction will be overshadowed by the new construction. This new construction is primarily in Asia. Chinese coal-fired power plant capacity is pegged at 900,000 MW in 2020 or three times the present U.S. capacity.
The remainder of the discussion dealt with the value of replacing the fleet of old U.S. coal-fired plants with new ones. If all the existing coal-fired power plants are replaced by new ultra-supercritical plants, there would be a reduction in coal use and greenhouse gases of 30 percent. So the U.S. could easily meet the 2020 goals. If coal-fired power plants co-fire 15 percent biomass, the total reduction would be 45 percent. If the waste heat is efficiently utilized (ethanol production or other combined heat and power applications) there is another 20 percent gain. This is even before you consider the use of electricity to replace gasoline in cars or carbon capture and sequestration. When you add it all together there is a strong case that coal can contribute to a big reduction in CO2. It can be part of the solution and not the problem.
But even though a strong argument can be made for new coal-fired power plants based just on greenhouse gases, a stronger argument can be made based on environmental burden. A 60 percent reduction in the environmental burden from coal would be achieved by switching to new ultra-supercritical units with BACT. The key to obtaining the support of the environmental industry is to convince them that the construction of a new coal-fired power plant does not mean that this plant will be operating in 2050. The U.S. could build a whole fleet of new coal-fired power plants and retire them in 30 or 40 years. If new coal-fired power plants are conceived as temporary replacements for the old dirty plants rather than as a way to perpetuate coal, then the environmentalists should see that this is a great solution.
The power points can be accessed at Replace_Old_Coal_Plants_with_New_Ones.pdf