Solar & Wind Electric Plants Cost 2x-4x More than NatGas to Build
As you may have noticed, in today’s lineup of stories MDN covered news about two different natural gas-fired electric plant companies and the plants they are building in the northeast. Gas-fired plants are not only springing up everywhere in the northeast, but across the country. Why? Because a) Obama’s war on coal has forced many coal generating plants to close, and b) shale gas has made clean-burning natural gas as cheap as, sometimes cheaper than, burning coal to produce electricity. But coal and natgas aren’t the only sources that produce electricity. Solar, wind, biomass and others are also used to produce electricity. Radical environmentalists, who frankly don’t think for themselves and live in a false bubble, pretend that solar and wind could, “if we only had the will,” take over all electric production in this country. What a lark. There’s a reason natural gas is becoming the dominant fuel to produce electricity in this country–it costs less. Our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, is fresh out with an analysis of how much it costs to build new electric plants. Guess which source is the cheapest? Yep–natural gas. And guess which sources cost two-to-four times as much to build as natgas? Yep–wind and solar. Which is why the radicals want to force natural gas into oblivion. Their preferred sources just can’t compete economically…
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Last July MDN told you that Talen Energy, an electric generation company based in Allentown, PA, had cut a deal to acquire MACH Gen, LLC, the owner of three natural gas-fired electric generating plants (see 
It’s been a while since we’ve checked in on the proposed 549 megawatt, $615 million electrical generating plant to be built near Moundsville (Marshall County), WV. At last check almost a year ago, Moundsville Power was on schedule for an opening in 2018 (see 
Strong demand from electric power generators will push natural gas demand this summer up by an estimated 4 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d), according to a new report from the Natural Gas Supply Association (NGSA). However, even though there’s more demand, because supplies are so bountiful, the price of natural gas over the summer is actually expected to go down, not up. Using published data and independent analyses, NGSA evaluated the combined impact of weather, economic growth, customer demand, storage inventories and production activity on the direction of natural gas prices for the summer of 2016 compared to last summer. The NGSA says summer 2016 will see a “remarkable growth in demand.” Even so, NGSA expects “downward pressure on prices compared to last summer.” Bummer. It’s great news for consumers and power generating plants. But not so good news for drillers. Below we have a full copy of the NGSA report…
We’ve written plenty about President Obama’s draconian, so-called “Clean Power Plan” (
If you happen to believe in the fairy tale of man-made global warming, you no doubt know all about CO2–carbon dioxide. CO2 is the stuff you exhale with every breathe you take, as every mammal does on God’s green earth. Somehow CO2 has been twisted into becoming a dreaded “greenhouse gas”. Go figure. At any rate, aside from breathing, when we burn fossil fuels it creates CO2–which is at the core of the neurosis of anti-drillers. Their kindergartenish solution to “solving” the “problem” of “global warming” is to stop burning fossil fuels. But the thing is, not all fossil fuels are created equal. Natural gas burns relatively clean and produces far less CO2 than other fossil fuels. You might think people who really care about the planet would welcome more natgas–but you would be wrong. The U.S. Energy Information Administration has just published an analysis of the biggest non-breathing cause of CO2 generation–burning fossil fuels to generate electricity. The EIA says in 2015 CO2 emissions were down 12% from baseline levels in 2005. With more population and more electricity being generated, how can that possibly be? Because of the shale revolution–that’s how. So-called renewable forms of electric power generation are still minuscule compared to burning fossil fuels to generate electricity. Because we now use more natgas instead of coal to generate electricity, the amount of CO2 being produced has dropped dramatically. Thanks to the miracle of fracking…
In February MDN brought you the good news that Laclede Group (St. Louis-based natural gas utility) wants to build a 60-mile pipeline from St. Louis through southwest Illinois and connect to the Rockies Express (REX) and Panhandle Eastern Pipeline to grab low-cost Marcellus/Utica Shale gas for Midwestern markets (see