"Like the years before, U.S. utilities kept on retiring coal-fired power plants in President Donald Trump's first year in office even as the administration proclaimed an Obama-era "war on coal" was over. In 2018, they doubled their pace.
Despite presidential efforts to repeal regulations or otherwise boost coal consumption, power generators in the U.S. are set to retire a total of 14.3 GW of coal-fired power plant capacity in 2018, up from 7.0 GW of capacity retired in 2017, according to an S&P Global Market Intelligence analysis. This year will mark the highest level of coal retirements since 2015, when the U.S. power companies included in the analysis retired 14.7 GW of coal-fired capacity.
Another 23.1 GW of coal plant retirements have already been announced or received regulatory approval for 2019 to 2024, marking 71.9 GW of coal retired or scheduled to be retired between 2014 and 2024. The analysis shows about 245.6 GW of current operating coal plant capacity in the U.S. and does not include more recent retirement announcements from Entergy Corp. and a city-owned coal plant in Michigan."
Taylor Kuykendall and Ashleigh Cotting report for S&P Global November 28, 2018.
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