EPA Rolls Out Final Regs Attacking Coal & Gas-Fired Power
The Bidenistas attacked coal and gas-fired power plants yesterday, threatening to destabilize the existing electric power grid. Under 1,020 pages of new regulations, which will go into effect this year, all coal-fired plants that are slated to remain operational in the long term and all new gas-fired power plants will be required to control (capture) 90% of their carbon emissions. Plus other hoops to jump through. According to the Energy Information Administration, at least 20 natural gas-fired power plants (some in the M-U) are expected to come online in 2024 and 2025, with a total capacity of 7.7 gigawatts, enough to power millions of homes. All 20 of those plants are now in jeopardy under the EPA’s onerous new regulation.
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EQT Corporation, the largest natural gas producer in the U.S. (100% focused on the Marcellus/Utica), released its first quarter 2024 update yesterday. The company produced 5.87 Bcf/d (billion cubic feet per day) of natural gas in 1Q. Executives said they will continue the current curtailment (reduction) of 1 Bcf/d, in place since late February, until at least the end of May. A major focus of CEO Toby Rice’s comments is the coming demand for natgas from gas-fired power plants in the Southeastern U.S. Among the bigger pieces of news is that once EQT buys out and merges back in Equitrans (which it used to own), EQT plans to expand the Equitrans-owned Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) by another 0.5 Bcf/d.
Following yesterday’s conference call with analysts to discuss EQT’s first quarter performance, CEO Toby Rice appeared on CNBC to answer questions (watch the segment below). As he did during the quarterly update call, Rice once again zeroed in on new demand markets coming from gas-fired power plants in the Southeastern U.S. He also said the market is currently oversupplied with natural gas, but he sees two catalysts to help lower the excess gas in inventory: hot summer weather and gas-fired powergen. And the powergen doesn’t just come from homes running AC to keep cool. He’s talking about new data centers appearing that operate artificial intelligence and need huge new amounts of electricity to operate all those computers.
Yesterday the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) published a post to announce that U.S. natural gas consumption set annual and monthly records during 2023. In 2023, some 89.1 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of natural gas was consumed in the United States, the most on record. Since 2018, U.S. natural gas consumption has increased by an average of 4% annually. Why the significant increase in gas usage? It wasn’t due to residential, commercial, or industrial usage — all of which stayed even or decreased last year. It was (as you may have guessed) a huge increase in the use of natural gas to feed gas-fired power plants.
As we outline today in another post, the PJM electric grid, which covers 13 states including Pennsylvania, reports emissions of all the nasty things (carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide) have decreased radically thanks to the change from coal-fired power to natural gas-fired power (see Marcellus Fracked Gas Leads to Record Low Emissions in PJM Grid). We also report today that in 2023, the country as a whole increased its usage of natural gas specifically because the country (including the M-U) is adding more low-carbon gas-fired power plants (see NatGas Grew Its Share of Electric Power 7% in 2023, New Record High). So what does the “brilliant” Governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, do? He signs up PA government agencies (sentences them) to use unreliable solar energy.
LS Power, headquartered in New York City, has developed or acquired 47,000 megawatts (MW) of power generation, including utility-scale solar, wind, hydro, battery energy storage, and natural gas-fired facilities. We’ve previously mentioned LS Power in a number of MDN articles (
Welcome to Paradise, where natural gas is the fuel of choice to generate electricity. In 2017, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) held a dedication ceremony for the Paradise Combined Cycle Gas Plant in Drakesboro, Kentucky (see 
Once a month, the analysts at the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) issue the agency’s Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), their best guess about where energy prices and production will go in the next 12 months or so. We sometimes poke good-natured fun at the EIA because their predictions go up in one month, and in the next month, they go down, etc. What about the latest STEO dart board, published on Tuesday? EIA predicts the average spot price for natural gas will be $2.20/MMBtu in 2024. That’s down significantly (17%) from the $2.65 it predicted just two months ago in February’s report (see 
Wisconsin Electric Gas Operations, doing business as We Energies, proposes to spend $1.2 billion dollars at its Oak Creek Power Plant (Oak Creek is a suburb of Milwaukee) to convert the facility from a coal-fired power plant to a natural gas plant that will generate 1,100 megawatts of electricity. Last Friday, We Energies filed a formal application with the Wisconsin Public Service Commission (PSC), revealing more details about the project and its projected timeline. We hopes to have the project built and online by the summer of 2028.
In September 2022, MDN told you about a relatively modest-sized gas-fired power plant planned for Superior, Wisconsin, called the Nemadji Trail Energy Center (see 
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro traveled to Scranton, PA, in mid-March to announce a proposal to “immediately pull Pennsylvania out of a multi-state carbon cap-and-trade program” (the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI) and instead enroll PA in its very own RGGI-like carbon tax program (see 
South Carolina House Bill H.5118, sponsored by S.C. House Speaker Murrell Smith, addresses the pressing need for more power generation in the Palmetto State in the wake of explosive population growth. H.5118 would establish specific timelines for the S.C. Public Service Commission (SCPSC) and other permitting agencies to rule on applications for all future projects, including gas-fired power plants. The legislation would also establish a streamlined process by which all future appeals go straight to the S.C. Supreme Court (which happens about 99% of the time). Yet radicalized leftist groups like Conservation Voters of South Carolina (CVSC) are having a heart attack, trying to defeat this commonsense bill.