Coal capacity will decline by up to 27 gigawatts as a direct result of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan (CPP), according to a new report published Thursday by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC).
The EPA rule, currently in the midst of an enormous legal battle, requires states to develop action plans to meet federally set state-specific emissions reduction goals.
“NERC’s assessment shows that significant changes to the resource mix are occurring regardless of the CPP, but that the CPP accelerates some of these changes, underscoring a potential reliability challenge,” said Thomas Coleman, NERC’s director of Reliability Assessment, in a press release accompanying the report.
According to the report, combined wind and solar capacity will increase 10-20 gigawatts over the next 15 years as a direct result of the Clean Power Plan. Natural gas, which is expected to increase dramatically regardless of the Clean Power Plan, is expected to be affected very little by the rule, the report says. “[N]atural gas capacity will experience significant growth between now and 2030, but remains relatively flat when considering direct results of the CPP,” according to the report.
