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“I think we will end up with a slightly smaller U.S. coal fleet, but it’s a cleaner fleet,” says says Ken Humphreys, chief executive of the FutureGen Alliance, at the EnergyBiz Leadership Forum. FutureGen is a public-private partnership to build a potentially zero-emissions coal-fired facility that is capable of capturing and burying carbon. 

 

Roughly, 540 coal plants exist in the United States and are responsible almost half of electricity generated here. That’s coming from an asset base in which 15 percent of the facilities are older than 50 years, says Humphreys. And, another 20 percent of that is older than 40 years. 

 

While those plants have been upgraded over the years, they are candidates to be retired, particularly in an environment with regulations pending that touch on mercury, coal ash, water, hazardous air pollutants and potentially carbon. All-in-all, Humphreys goes on to say that anywhere between 5-20 percent of the existing generation fleet will be lost over two decades. To replace that will require money -- $50 million to $100 million, which won’t just materialize. 

 

“I think it really gives you a sense of the regulatory freight train that’s coming down the tracks at the coal industry,” says Humphreys. “It really is a daunting amount of complexity that the average coal-fired executive in the U.S. faces.”