By Joe Salas, New Atlas, July 21, 2024
Data shows wind produced about 25.8 GWh in March 2019 and 29 GWh in April 2019, jumping to 45.9 and 47.6 GWh in March and April of this year, respectively. In that same period, coal-produced electricity has dropped from about 80 and 60 GWh in March and April of 2019, respectively, down to roughly 38.3 and 37.2 GWh in 2024.
That’s a whopping 28% more wind power than coal power for those two months in 2024 compared to 2019. And charting monthly data from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) over the last 22 years shows a remarkable drop in coal-fired energy to accompany a steady rise from wind:
Mind you, once you include other energy sources the picture’s a lot less pretty; the decline in coal has been taken up largely by natural-gas-fired plants. Natural gas burns a lot cleaner than coal, and thus has been viewed as a kind of “diet fossil fuel” in the race to decarbonize.
Unfortunately, this view oversimplifies the issue. Natural gas is mostly methane, and it has plenty of chances to exert an extremely powerful greenhouse effect (more than 80 times stronger than CO2 over a 20-year timespan) on the atmosphere before it gets burned. It leaks into the open air at the drill site, and at poorly-sealed pipeline joints. And it’s deliberately vented or flared into the atmosphere during the practical operation of wells, pipes and other infrastructure. We’re not talking small amounts, either – it’s around 8% of all methane produced, according to some estimates.
On the other hand, many natural-gas-fired plants can eventually be converted to burn various percentages of green hydrogen as fuel, up to 100% in some cases, so there’s a potential pathway to decarbonization there, where no such pathway exists for a coal-fired plant.
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