Well that makes sense. By Eia: The capacity factor of coal has gone down from 75% to 50%. In 2010, the US produced 1,800TWh with coal. 2021, the US produced 900TWh with coal.

Hiya. That would suggest that one hell of a lot more coal needs to shut down then. If 6% has retired now, then even if that wasn't displaced by gas/RE, and directly lifted the remaining coal fleet, they'd only reach 53%cf. So in reality with RE expanding, the remaining coal fleet will see cf's continue to fall with a race to the bottom.
I wonder if they could actually shutdown fast enough to lift the fleet cf now, probably not? What a shame .... ;-)

Sadly we are seeing that renewables preferentially take out the other clean energy - the Palisades is all economic, not safety or end of life. That take a crapton of solar&wind to replace. As a solar designer/installer: I could use a break!

It looks like we might have reached peak fossil fuels in electricity.

A separate EIA report and CleanTechnica article estimates 9.6 GW of new gas and no new coal for 2022 vs 13.8 GW retired (12.6 coal, 1.2 gas).

Peak FF for transportation was probably reached in 2019.

I would be happier if it was zero new gas and zero new coal. That 9.6 GW of capacity with a half century life expectancy is depressing

I agree.

Worst: that nuclear plant expansion came in at 14 dollars per watt!

Yup nuclear is the ultimate waste of money that could be used so much better.

Well if you need amusement you can always try to bait some nuke cultists into trying to make excuses for that figure. Because they will. You can even make a bingo card with those excuses and try to win, because they never change.

I still think the best one is Nuclear never killed anyone.

"fusion" should get some interesting responses, too.

But at what point do we say "This crisis is s serious we have to do stuff that isn't profitable; kinda like the military" and throw everything at decarbonization?

I agree. States like Wyoming and West Virginia still use far too much dirty coal. We need to completely eliminate all dirty coal and natural gas plants in the USA. Wyoming with it's strong winds could easily power it's entire state with wind power if it ramped it up and invested in it. Other states could do the same except the Southeast which has bad wind resources and would require taller turbines which currently aren't available.

Unfortunately we have the only remaining coal plant in the north east here in NH. It is also very old and should be retired and replaced with renewable energy.

NH.?. What part?

The coal plant is in Bow NH just outside of Concord

That is about 1/2 hr from where I grew up....
I miss the snow....

I grew up in Salisbury NH when I wasn't up in Conway on the farm. But you need to look elsewhere for snow now it seems we don't get much anymore.

I remember the show storm series NE's, I think it was in 69. I saw snow fall rates of 6" per 1/2 hour. When all three storms were done over about 3 or so days, the total on the flat was close to 9'. We were snowed in for 3 days before the road grader and its 8' V plow made it up our drive. It was the only time we were ever snowed in over 13 years. We were in the New London area, a snow belt zone.
It makes me very sad that it is vanishing there, but not surprised. By 2050 snow will be probably confined to the Artic circle for the most part. GW is just going to keep accelerating...

Ya you don't get storms like that now they mostly hit at the Mass border. It fell apart about 92. I remember because I was a high senior and we where sitting around one day talking about how it was raining all winter with freezing rain and no snow. It was dystopian to me to see a group of high school kids talking about the good old days when it snowed. But that was a very warm spell for about a decade here.

Here in PA, it was 2005 when I saw all at once the loss of sub-zero overnight lows. For 13 years we basically didn't go below zero when the norm was to hit -10 or colder once or twice every Winter. 13 years later we finally hit -11, then back to the new above 0 lows. It is the loss of the cold at night that has outpaced the daytime highs, which makes sense.

You mean New England, the Northeast also includes NJ, NY, and PA.

Wyoming has 3 GW of wind installed, vs 1.67 GW a year earlier. So someone *is* investing in it. That works out to 5.2 kW per person in Wyoming, vs 1.15 kW/person in Texas, the state with the most wind installed. Proportionally they are doing great. In fact a lot of that wind energy is being exported to Washington State. The Southeast has fairly good sun and biomass to make up for our lack of wind.

13GW seems pretty low to me .. isn't there something like 250GW in total from coal?

Retirements equal 6% of 2021 coal fleet so it may be about that. At that rate it will effectively half in 10 years. I imagine it will go a bit quicker given utilisation is dropping faster.

Wow! I almost had a heart attack. I kept reading and re-reading the headline as "Requirements" instead of "Retirements. Glad I'm a dunce.

I think that might have been the objective...

I read it as 85% of coal plants reiterated and knew it was wishful thinking.

I do not now if you are dunce...but you have a good heart. I too rejoice and a little confused and worried.

Whoa, Nelly.
Some people want to bite the hand that feeds them the energy needed to overtake them...

This is gigantic opportunity to measure the health saving from averted pollution.

I hope the epidemiologists are amassing before and after data for asthma, bronchitis, respiratory hospitalizations and deaths. Then they should add the medical savings to the cost of electricity proving we were dunces not to do that a decade earlier.

Scared me; I first read the headline as "requirements", not "retirements"

First glance at the headline, I read "Coal Will Equal 85% Of U.S. Electric Generating Capacity REQUIREMENTS In 2022"

Story was better news than I expected!

About 95% of my electricity comes from solar on my roof. Solar panels belong on roofs. Not in an industrial field or on the roof of a car. Electricity needs to be decentralized.