Michelle Bloodworth is president and CEO of America's Power, which represents the U.S. coal fleet and its supply chain.
Utility Dive published an opinion piece on Feb. 9 titled “Congressional ‘grid reliability’ bill is like duct tape on a cracked dam.”
There’s a lot of stuff in it to unpack, but one of its claims is that we need to replace coal power plants with “cleaner, cheaper alternatives.” Another is that coal power plants are not reliable.
We at America’s Power could not disagree more.
The authors cite analysis by Grid Strategies as the basis for claiming that delaying the retirement of coal power plants could cost consumers “up to $6 billion” in 2028. This cost estimate is based on unrealistic assumptions, but we’ll leave that for another day.
In other words, their argument is that retiring coal power plants saves money. However, more recent analysis completed by Energy Ventures Analysis shows exactly the opposite: Ratepayers would be forced to pay considerably more if coal plants retired and were replaced by renewables.
The new analysis shows, for example, that replacing retiring coal plants with wind farms would cost $5 billion more per year than continuing to operate the coal plants. Solar panels would be even more expensive than wind farms.
The piece also claims that coal power plants are not reliable. This is also incorrect.
One way the nation’s grid operators determine reliability is by calculating the effective load carrying capability (ELCC), or capacity value, of different electricity sources. These include nuclear power plants, coal power plants, natural gas power plants, solar panels and wind farms. ELCC is a measure of how reliable different electricity sources are when power is needed the most, such as during winter storms like Fern.
Coal power plants rank very high in capacity value. Based on their ELCC class ratings in the PJM Interconnection’s 2026/2027 Base Residual Auction, coal power plants are more reliable than natural gas combined cycle power plants, twice as reliable as onshore wind farms, and almost eight times more reliable than solar panels.
Another way to think about reliability is to consider whether different electricity sources are able produce more power when extreme weather hits. U.S. Energy Information Administration data show that when Fern peaked, coal power plants supplied 30% more electricity than they did a week earlier. EIA went on to say, “Grid operators can call upon the coal fleet to increase electricity generation in extreme weather events and other times when demand surges or output falls from other generation sources.”
Capacity factors are yet another way to gauge reliability. To meet the greater demand for electricity during extreme weather, power sources must able to run harder, which means increasing their capacity factors. Fern was the latest test to see which plants can be counted on to run harder. Comparing capacity factors before Fern to capacity factors during Fern shows that coal power plants were able to run harder to keep homes warm, but wind and solar were not.
Our analysis of Energy Information Administration data shows that across the regions of the U.S. that have coal power plants, the average capacity factor for coal power plants increased from 43% before the winter storm to 78% when the storm peaked, the largest increase in capacity factor of any electricity source in any region. Large stockpiles of coal are one of the reasons for this impressive performance. On the other hand, wind’s average capacity factor dropped from 32% before Fern to 26% during Fern, and solar was unchanged.
We won’t take the time to dispute everything in the Utility Dive opinion piece. We simply want to highlight a few facts that are very inconvenient to its premise.
