{"id":366,"date":"2016-02-11T09:16:13","date_gmt":"2016-02-11T14:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/?p=366"},"modified":"2016-02-11T10:34:59","modified_gmt":"2016-02-11T15:34:59","slug":"use-of-coal-to-generate-electricity-in-u-s-falls-to-all-time-low","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/use-of-coal-to-generate-electricity-in-u-s-falls-to-all-time-low\/","title":{"rendered":"Use of coal to generate electricity in U.S. falls to all-time low"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Utility company&#8217;s use of coal drops significantly in 2015<\/h2>\n<p>The use of coal to generate electricity in the U.S. fell to a historic low level in 2015, as utility companies increasingly moved away from the fossil fuel.<\/p>\n<p>According to a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bcse.org\/sustainableenergyfactbook.html\" title=\"recent study by the Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE)\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>recent study by the Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE)<\/strong><\/a>, coal sourced 34 percent of U.S. electricity generation in 2015, which is a decrease from 39 percent in 2014. Coal-generated electricity reached its peak in 2005, accounting for 50 percent of all U.S. electricity generation.<\/p>\n<p>The move away from what is largely considered to be the &#8220;dirtiest&#8221; of fossil fuels is dramatically noted in the figures that are coming out.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">US electricity industry&#39;s use of coal fell to historic low in 2015 as plants closed <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/GkA2adDnCT\">https:\/\/t.co\/GkA2adDnCT<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Guardian US (@GuardianUS) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/GuardianUS\/status\/695113184697573376\">February 4, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h3>Coal plants shuttered<\/h3>\n<p>Environmental regulations and a move to cleaner sources of power caused a number of coal plants across the U.S. to be shuttered in 2015. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bcse.org\/sustainableenergyfactbook.html\" title=\"According to the BCSE\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>According to the BCSE<\/strong><\/a>, over 40GW of coal-burning power plants have been disconnected since 2005, while less than half &#8212; 19GW  &#8212; of coal-burning generation was added to the grid. <\/p>\n<h3>Natural gas usage spiked<\/h3>\n<p>At the same time coal-generated electricity generation was slowing down, the use of natural gas as an electricity source spiked. <\/p>\n<p>Natural gas production, and the resulting natural gas storage inventories, reached record highs in 2015, as natural gas produced more than 32 percent of all electricity generation last year.<\/p>\n<span class=\"source-attribution\">Source &rarr; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bcse.org\/sustainableenergyfactbook.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE)<\/a><\/span><div class=\"pd-photo-att\">Photo Credit: <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Salem_Harbor_Power_Station.JPG\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Photo<\/a> by AlexiusHoratius \/ <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">CC BY-SA 3.0<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The use of coal in the U.S. fell to historically low levels in 2015, as utility companies moved away from the fossil fuel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":368,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3,4],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":425,"href":"https:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366\/revisions\/425"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}