Natural Gas Poised to Push King Coal Off the Throne

As blogged by Brad Plumer at the Washington Post, a peer reviewed study by Duke indicates that natural gas will continue to push out dirty coal as the least cost power generation option so long as average natural gas to coal price remains below 1.8 (it was 1.42 in February 2012). The study indicates that if new air emission limitations are enforced against coal power plants, natural gas plants will remain competitive with coal plants up to a ratio of 4.3. In other words, as coal plants are required to absorb the real cost of harm that they impose on the public and environment, cleaner burning natural gas will be competitive even when the average cost of gas is four times that of dirty coal.