Great Lakes Region Depending on Black Gold - Coal to Meet Future Energy Needs

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). Depending on where you are located the term "black gold" has different meanings. In Texas and other parts of the country "black gold" is certainly crude oil, but in the Great Lakes Region black gold is coal. It is no surprise that the majority of new coal-fired generating capacity under development is being proposed for the Great Lakes region. Industrialinfo.com is currently tracking one hundred ninety five coal-fired units representing over 71,000-megawatts of capacity that is in various stages of development throughout North America. In the Great Lakes there are seventy-five coal fired generating units either under construction or in development representing over 19,000-megawatts.

Due to a great abundance of coal reserves, this region is already heavily dependent on coal for it’s electricity needs, so it should be expected that coal will play a large role in meeting future energy demands. Already, coal-fired generating units supply roughly 54-percent of the region’s total installed capacity of 179,554-megawatts. Similar to the other parts of the United States, the vast majority of new generating capacity added over the past five years has been fueled by natural gas. In fact, since January 2000, natural gas-fired combustion turbines and associated steam turbines represent almost all of the 37,864-megawatts of capacity that have come online in the Great Lakes region. However, due to natural gas prices that have consistently exceeded $6 per MMBtu and the abundance and affordability of coal in the region things are set for a change of direction.

Click on the image at right to view a chart showing the breakdown of coal projects in the Great Lakes region by state.

Currently, Industrialinfo.com is tracking 32,212-megawatts of proposed capacity in various stages of development for the Great Lakes region. Proposed coal-fired generating capacity represents nearly 60% of new capacity for the region. Some of this new capacity is already under construction, including We Power LLC’s, a subsidiary of Wisconsin Electric Energy Corporation, (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) (NYSE:WEC ) Elm Road Generating Station and Manitowoc Public Utilities (Manitowoc, Wisconsin) addition to their existing station. There are others in advanced development such as Peabody Energy Corporation’s (NYSE:BTU )(Saint Louis, Missouri) Prairie State and Thoroughbred Energy campuses, Indeck Energy Incorporated (Buffalo Grove, Illinois) Will County Plant and East Kentucky Power Cooperative’s (Winchester, Kentucky) Spurlock 4 addition. Still, there are many others in the early stages of development, including The ERORA Group LLC’s (Louisville, Kentucky) Southern Illinois Clean Energy Center in Illinois and Cash Creek in Kentucky. Tondu Corporation (Houston, Texas), Steelhead Energy (Marion, Illinois), Cinergy Corporation (NYSE:CIN )(Cincinnati, Ohio) and American Electric Power (NYSE:AEP ) (Columbus, Ohio) are others that have announced plans to build new coal-fired capacity in the region. Although, a final site has not been named for the FutureGen Project, it has been included with the Great Lakes Region due to the fact that a number of the proposed sites for this project are in this region.

It remains to be seen how many of these projects actually move forward beyond development. As it stands today, there are thirty-four projects representing over $31 billion to add new coal-fired capacity to the Great Lakes region between 2009 & 2013. It seems that the longer natural gas prices stay inflated and coal prices remain competitive with each passing day the future of each of these projects shines a little brighter.

Industrial Information Resources (IIR) is a Marketing Information Service company that has been doing business for over 22 years. IIR is respected as a leader in providing comprehensive market intelligence pertaining to the industrial processing, heavy manufacturing, and energy-related industries throughout the world.