It’s quite the American success story. Replacing coal-fired power generation with natural gas has lowered emissions and reduced energy costs, all while maintaining reliability of the electric grid.
In fact, the shift to natural gas in the U.S. power sector was directly responsible for reducing about 500 million metric tons of CO2 from 2005 to 2022. That’s about 60% of total power sector reductions since 2005.
But we aren’t done yet.
There is still an opportunity to continue to switch the remaining 200-plus operating coal plants in the U.S. to gas-fired generation. Doing so is equivalent to removing 80% of all the gasoline powered cars off the road in the U.S. for a year.
According to the EIA, several factors have accounted for reductions in coal-fired generation since 2021:
- Coal capacity has decreased because operators have retired about 37 gigawatts, or 17% of the coal-fired fleet, since the beginning of 2021.
- Natural gas-fired and solar generating capacity has increased.
- Utilities or grid managers generally select the lowest cost power available at a given point, which in recent years has usually been wind, solar, and natural gas rather than coal.
Natural gas provides grid reliability on peak days or when the sun isn’t shining, or the wind isn’t blowing. That’s critical to meet surging demand from electrification, electric vehicles and large-load data centers powering AI.
“This is an incredible solution to reduce emissions right here, right now and an opportunity for Williams to continue to expand our infrastructure into gas-fired power generators switching from coal to gas in the future,” said Williams President and CEO Alan Armstrong. “And importantly, these power generation investments will be needed to provide load following generation to back up renewables at a price we can afford.”
There is an even larger opportunity to replace coal with natural gas across the globe.
2023 was a record year for coal-fired power generation across the globe. China was responsible for half of the world’s coal demand for power generation. That country emitted about 38% of the world’s total power sector CO2 emissions.
In fact, China consumed 10.7 times as much coal as the U.S. across all sectors last year.
There is a huge opportunity to reduce global emissions by replicating the progress we’ve made in the U.S., Armstrong said. “Through expanding U.S. LNG exports, we can make the most significant dent in global emissions the world has ever seen.”