(The Associated Press circulated the following article by Mike Crissey on June 7.)
PITTSBURGH — The average American is expected to use as much as 3 percent more electricity each year over the next two decades; coal could help fill the gap. But it may not be a matter of mining more coal – both production and consumption rose last year – but moving more coal.
At the National Coal Show, which opened Tuesday, industry executives and a government geologist discussed whether the U.S. has the necessary railcars, locomotives, trucks and barges to transport the coal that’s needed to supply a growing American appetite for electricity.
Executives from coal, barge, railroad and power companies said the nation’s transportation infrastructure can handle the increased demand – if they don’t lose too many employees or equipment from wear and tear.
According to government estimates, the nation’s electrical consumption is expected to nearly double in the next two decades, from about 3,480 billion kilowatt-hours in 2003 to 5,220 billion kilowatt-hours in 2025.
Coal-fired power plants provide almost half of the electricity produced in the U.S., and that share is expected to hold steady over the next 20 years, according to the Energy Information Administration, a part of the Energy Department.
About 1.1 billion tons of coal was mined last year, slightly below the 2001 record of about 1.3 billion tons; about 1 billion tons were used.
Meeting the growing demand for coal would likely require a multi-million dollar investment in employees and equipment, executives said.
“This thing needs to come quickly. When I say quickly, you’ve got to plan at least five years out there. … This is not equipment that you go down to Wal-Mart and buy, this is something that is obviously heavy equipment,” said Danny Smith, senior vice president of energy & properties for Norfolk Southern Corp.
Virginia-based Norfolk Southern, which also owns mines, and the nation’s other railroads are the workhorses for the coal industry, carrying about 60 percent of the coal shipped in the U.S.
About 15 percent of Norfolk Southern’s fleet is used to ship coal. Last year, the railroad bought about 200 locomotives. They plan to buy about 230 more in the next two years. The railroad also faces replacing more than 30,000 aging coal cars in the next 15 years.
Meanwhile, the industry may need to repair or build new rail lines.
“The railroads are not like highways, you don’t have lanes going both ways,” Smith said.
Meanwhile, the nation’s barge companies are dealing with a glut of aging barges from a building boom about 20 years ago, and few new barges are being built, said Tom Vorholt, vice president for utility sales for Ingram Barge Company, one of the nation’s largest.
The industry, which ships about 20 percent of the country’s coal, faces spending as much as $400 million to replace the roughly 1,000 barges that were scrapped or sold overseas in the past two years, he said.
Demand to ship coal has already outpaced the Nashville, Tenn.-based company’s fleet. “We are quite regularly turning people away and I’m sure others have too,” Vorholt said.