Hey, all:

Sorry, Sunflower, I just felt compelled to offer an alternative, more progressive step.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!

In short, putting in new coal plants requires that they meet all the newest environmental regulations.

Particularly reduced sulfur, NOx, U238, and Thorium, and mercury etc

So even without carbon being an issue, Coal has gotten a lot more expensive than it used to be.

From around $1000/KW installed, to $2200/KW installed in the last 5 years.

And Carbon Capture and Storage is expected to jack that up to about $3700/KW installed, or higher.

With prices like that, it's no wonder that Coal isn't looking like such a bargain anymore.

_

Way I look at it.  It's Capitalism at work.
A more ideal form of Capitalism were you can't ignore paying the full cost of production.
_

That said, we should be wary that having them jump the ship on Natural Gas and Coal might lead them to Nukes.

So how do we steer them instead towards industrial renewables.

You're absolutely right.  There are interesting (and very politically charged) debates going on in most state utility commissions right now who are facing the prospect of either accepting utility requests for massive increases in rates to pay for those new coal plants or else run the gas fleet harder and pay equal increases.  It is a politically interesting time, because those commissions - who have historically tended to believe that whats-good-for-the-utility-is-good-for-the-consumer are suddenly much more receptive to more holistic pitches.

Do note though that it's not so much that coal has suddenly become more expensive: many of the added capital costs have been a factor in new coal plant construction since the clean air act was passed.  The difference today is that having now just about exhausted the reserve margin in the (pre-CAA) fleet, we're now finally facing up to the need to have to pay those capital costs rather than just run the old plants harder.

(How is pre-CAA coal like a bad stripclub?  It's cheap and dirty.)  

I'm not sure I'd quite classify this as capitalism at work though, because no matter how you slice it, a utility commission who decides which plants shall be built looks a lot more socialist than capitalist.  That said, we are slowly starting to pay something closer to the true cost of coal, which is a good thing and gets to your larger point.  (I say almost because even these pollution abatement costs still don't factor in the health & climate costs of coal that remain outside of the marginal c/kWh rate.)

My only disagreement with you is your last comment about being wary of going to natural gas and nukes.  Low carbon is better than high carbon.  Zero carbon is better than low carbon.  But we shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.  Nuclear power does scare me in 1000 year time frames, for obvious reasons.  But global warming scares me a lot sooner.  Ultimately, it is going to take a combination of natural gas, nuclear, renewables and energy efficiency working together to make any rapid reduction in carbon emissions.  Cutting any one out of the mix only delays a carbon-reduction process that we cannot afford to move slowly on.

Hey GreyFlon could you check your measurement units?  You mentioned thousands of dollars per kilowatt.  Goodness, my toaster oven might use one KW a month and I think that's only a buck or two.  My average monthly bill is 500 kW-hours and costs about $200 after all the fuel adjustments - for natural gas.  Oh well, energy, power, megawatts - what's the diff?
sammie

Onward through the fog

Greyflcn is right on his units.  I believe you are confusing kW and kWh (The former is a unit of power, the latter energy.  If I use a full kW for one hour, I have consumed a kWh of electricity.  It is the difference between the rated horsepower of your car engine and your total fuel consumption.  They are related, but only through a unit of time.)

GreyFlcn's numbers are capital costs, per kW of peak power output from the plants, and are about right.  Your estimates for your toaster are units of kWh energy use, and are a function of power costs and toaster efficiency.  Apples and oranges.

For comparison though, a typical, pre-CAA coal plant has generation costs of 2 - 4 cents/kWh depending on coal price.  Add another 2 - 4 cents to amortize the cost of the transmission and distribution wires and you get to the delivered cost of energy from those facilities.  The new coal plants, once you factor in higher capital costs for all the pollution control, lower overall efficiency (the pollution controls mandated for coal plants consume 5 - 10% of the total power plant load, thereby driving up overall coal use per useful kWh) and the cost of new transmission are coming in at closer to 9 - 10 cents/kWh.