Coal facts

摘要

In "President Obama's War on Coal? Some Historical Perspective" (Issues, Winter 2018), Charles Herrick offers some helpful insight, but he misses a key set of developments. In 1987, Congress passed the Powerplant and Industrial Fuel Use Act, repealing an existing federal ban on the use of natural gas for new power generation-a ban that had been instituted in part to promote coal. This repeal, combined with natural gas price deregulation, the advent of wholesale electric competition, improvements in gas generation technology, and finally the onset of unconventional gas exploitation through fracking, opened the floodgates for inexpensive natural gas-fired power generation. Today, natural gas fuels over a third of US power generation, roughly equal to coal's share, which is down from roughly 50% a decade ago.