Replacing coal plants with renewables is cheaper 80% of time

Bloomberg

About 80% of US coal plants are now more expensive to keep running than to swap out for new wind and solar capacity, according to a report from Energy Innovation, a non-partisan climate and energy think tank.
While renewables cost more than fossil energy for much of the last century, prices for new wind and solar have dropped so quickly in recent years that they were already cheaper than new coal. This report shows that the price differential holds true for a growing amount of existing coal, as well. “This is becoming true for more and more plants moving forward—and at an
accelerating pace,” said Eric Gimon, a senior fellow with
Energy Innovation and a co-author of the report.
Coal has been steadily declining as a fixture of the US energy mix for more than a decade due to combined pressure from activists and market forces. The Sierra Club, which runs the Beyond Coal campaign aimed at eliminating coal power in the US, says that 339 plants have either been retired or are on their way to retirement since 2010, leaving just 191 still operating indefinitely.
Coal use has dropped so precipitously that it’s no longer the leading stationary source of air pollution, according to another new study out on Wednesday. The report from researchers at Harvard University found that as of 2017, burning biomass and wood for energy led to more detrimental health effects than coal. That same year, burning gas caused more deaths than coal in at least 19 states.
Still, coal plants produce about a billion tons of carbon emissions annually. President Joe Biden has committed the US to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50% compared to 2005 levels by the end of the decade, and energy modelers say that almost all remaining coal plants would need to be shuttered for the US to meet this goal. The analysis from Energy Innovation should be an encouraging sign for those following the country’s progress.