[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/28949.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Coal-Fired Power Plant Retirements in the U.S

Author

Listed:
  • Rebecca J. Davis
  • J. Scott Holladay
  • Charles Sims
Abstract
We summarize the history of U.S. coal-fired plant retirements over the last decade, describe planned future retirements, and forecast the remaining operating life for every operating coal-fired generator. We summarize the technology and location trends that are correlated with the observed retirements. We then describe a theoretical model of the retirement decision coal generator owners face. We use retirements from the last decade to quantify the relationships in the model for retired generators. Our model predicts that three-quarters of coal generation capacity will retire in the next twenty years, with most of that retirement concentrated in the next five years. Policy has limited ability to affect retirement times. A $20 per MWh electricity subsidy extends the average life of a generator by six years. A $51 per ton carbon tax brings forward retirement dates by about two years. In all scenarios, a handful of electricity generators remain on the grid beyond our forecast horizon.

Suggested Citation

  • Rebecca J. Davis & J. Scott Holladay & Charles Sims, 2021. "Coal-Fired Power Plant Retirements in the U.S," NBER Working Papers 28949, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28949
    Note: EEE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w28949.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H40 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - General
    • L10 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - General
    • L50 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - General
    • L94 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Electric Utilities
    • Q4 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28949. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.