Southern Company is an American gas and electric utility holding company based in the southern United States. It is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, with executive offices also located in Birmingham, Alabama. The company is the second largest utility company in the U.S. in terms of customer base, as of 2021. Through its subsidiaries it serves 9 million gas and electric utility customers in 6 states. Southern Company's regulated regional electric utilities serve a 120,000-square-mile (310,000 km2) territory with 27,000 miles (43,000 km) of distribution lines.
India is the third largest producer of electricity in the world. The national electric grid in India has an installed capacity of 403.759 GW as of 30 June 2022. Renewable power plants, which also include large hydroelectric plants, constitute 39.2% of total installed capacity. During the fiscal year (FY) 2019–20, the gross electricity generated by utilities in India was 1,383.5 TWh and the total electricity generation in the country was 1,598 TWh. The gross electricity consumption in FY2019 was 1,208 kWh per capita. In FY2015, electric energy consumption in agriculture was recorded as being the highest (17.89%) worldwide. The per capita electricity consumption is low compared to most other countries despite India having a low electricity tariff.
The National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) is a U.S national laboratory under the Department of Energy Office of Fossil Energy. NETL focuses on applied research for the clean production and use of domestic energy resources. NETL performs research and development on the supply, efficiency, and environmental constraints of producing and using fossil energy resources, while maintaining their affordability.
Coal pollution mitigation, sometimes called clean coal, is a series of systems and technologies that seek to mitigate the health and environmental impact of coal; in particular air pollution from coal-fired power stations, and from coal burnt by heavy industry.
An integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) is a technology using a high pressure gasifier to turn coal and other carbon based fuels into pressurized gas—synthesis gas (syngas). It can then remove impurities from the syngas prior to the electricity generation cycle. Some of these pollutants, such as sulfur, can be turned into re-usable byproducts through the Claus process. This results in lower emissions of sulfur dioxide, particulates, mercury, and in some cases carbon dioxide. With additional process equipment, a water-gas shift reaction can increase gasification efficiency and reduce carbon monoxide emissions by converting it to carbon dioxide. The resulting carbon dioxide from the shift reaction can be separated, compressed, and stored through sequestration. Excess heat from the primary combustion and syngas fired generation is then passed to a steam cycle, similar to a combined cycle gas turbine. This process results in improved thermodynamic efficiency compared to conventional pulverized coal combustion.
Coal generated about 22% of the electricity at utility-scale facilities in the United States in 2021, down from 39% in 2014. In 2021, coal supplied 9.5 quadrillion British thermal units (2,800 TWh) of primary energy to electric power plants, which made up 90% of coal's contribution to U.S. energy supply. Utilities buy more than 90% of the coal consumed in the United States. There were over 200 coal powered units across the United States in 2022. Coal plants have been closing since the 2010s due to cheaper and cleaner natural gas and renewables. But environmentalists say that political action is needed to close them faster, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the United States to better limit climate change.
JEA Northside Generating Station in Jacksonville, Florida is a major power plant, one of the three power plants owned and operated by JEA, Jacksonville's municipal utilities service. It produces electricity by burning coal and petroleum coke at Units 1 and 2, formerly the largest circulating fluidized-bed combustors, (CFBs), in the world. These combustors, completed in 2002 and rated at 297.5 megawatts each, produce enough electricity to light more than 250,000 households. In addition, Unit ST3 produces 505 megawatts of electricity by burning residual fuel oil and/or natural gas.
Hudson Generating Station was a power plant operated by PSEG Fossil LLC, a subsidiary of Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG). It was located in Jersey City in Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. The site was in operation from 1906 to 2017, but as of 2011 only one unit was in operation at the facility – Unit 2, which ran primarily on coal to generate electricity and was also capable of burning natural gas as a secondary fuel. Unit 2 was also equipped with several back-end technology emission controls. The generating station was closed permanently by PSEG Power on June 1, 2017. The 241-acre site was sold to Chicago-based Hilco Redevelopment Partners in January 2019, which plans to repurpose the site as a state-of-the-art industrial park serving growing warehouse-distribution business in region.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a technology that can capture carbon dioxide CO2 emissions produced from fossil fuels in electricity, industrial processes which prevents CO2 from entering the atmosphere. Carbon capture and storage is also used to sequester CO2 filtered out of natural gas from certain natural gas fields. While typically the CO2 has no value after being stored, Enhanced Oil Recovery uses CO2 to increase yield from declining oil fields.
Refined coal is the product of the coal-upgrading technology that removes moisture and certain pollutants from lower-rank coals such as sub-bituminous and lignite (brown) coals, raising their calorific values. Coal refining or upgrading technologies are typically pre-combustion treatments and/or processes that alter the characteristics of a coal before it is burned. The goals of pre-combustion coal-upgrading technologies are to increase efficiency and reduce emissions when coal is burned. Depending on the situation, pre-combustion technology can be used in place of or as a supplement to post-combustion technologies to control emissions from coal-fueled boilers. A primary benefit of refined coal is the capacity to reduce the net volume of carbon emissions that is currently emitted from power generators and would reduce the amount of emissions that is proposed to be managed via emerging carbon sequestration methodologies. Refined coal technologies have primarily been developed in the United States. Several similar technologies have been researched, developed and tested in Victoria, Australia, including the Densified coal technology developed to alter the chemical bonds of brown coal to create a product that is cleaner, stable, exportable and of sufficiently high calorific value to be a black coal equivalent.
The Kędzierzyn Zero-Emission Power and Chemical Complex is a proposed facility in Kędzierzyn-Koźle, Poland. It will combine power and heat generation with that of chemical products and carbon capture and storage. The project is proposed by a consortium of chemicals producer Zakłady Azotowe Kędzierzyn and electricity company Południowy Koncern Energetyczny. The plant will produce synthesis gas by gasification of hard coal. The produced gas will be used for power and heat generation or for production of chemicals. The plant will capture produced carbon dioxide (CO2), which will be stored in natural geological reservoirs or used as a raw material for production of synthesis fuels, fertilisers or plastics.
Boundary Dam Power Station is the largest coal fired station owned by SaskPower, located near Estevan, Saskatchewan, Canada.
Prairie State Energy Campus is a 1,600 megawatt base load, coal-fired, electrical power station and coal mine near Marissa, Illinois southeast of St. Louis, Missouri. Prairie State Energy Campus (PSEC) features low levels of regulated emissions compared to other coal-fired power stations, capturing sulfur from high-sulfur coal mined nearby instead of transporting low-sulfur coal from elsewhere.
The E. W. Brown Generating Station is a quad coal-fired power plant, natural gas power plant, solar power plant, and hydro electric plant owned and operated by Kentucky Utilities near Harrodsburg in Mercer County, Kentucky.
The Kemper Project, also called the Kemper County energy facility or Plant Ratcliffe, is a natural gas-fired electrical generating station currently under construction in Kemper County, Mississippi. Mississippi Power, a subsidiary of Southern Company, began construction of the plant in 2010. The initial, coal-fired project was central to President Obama's Climate Plan, as it was to be based on "clean coal" and was being considered for more support from the Congress and the incoming Trump Administration in late 2016. If it had become operational with coal, the Kemper Project would have been a first-of-its-kind electricity plant to employ gasification and carbon capture technologies at this scale.
Energy in the U.S. state of Hawaii is produced from a mixture of fossil fuel and renewable resources. Producing energy is complicated by the state's isolated location and lack of fossil fuel resources. The state relies heavily on imports of petroleum. Hawaii has the highest share of petroleum use in the United States, with about 62% of electricity coming from oil in 2017. As of 2021 renewable energy made up 34.5%.
The U.S. state of Arkansas is a significant producer of natural gas and a minor producer of petroleum.
Coal gasification is a process whereby a hydrocarbon feedstock (coal) is converted into gaseous components by applying heat under pressure in the presence of steam. Rather than burning, most of the carbon-containing feedstock is broken apart by chemical reactions that produce "syngas." Syngas is primarily hydrogen and carbon monoxide, but the exact composition can vary. In Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) systems, the syngas is cleaned and burned as fuel in a combustion turbine which then drives an electric generator. Exhaust heat from the combustion turbine is recovered and used to create steam for a steam turbine-generator. The use of these two types of turbines in combination is one reason why gasification-based power systems can achieve high power generation efficiencies. Currently, commercially available gasification-based systems can operate at around 40% efficiencies. Syngas, however, emits more greenhouse gases than natural gas, and almost twice as much carbon as a coal plant. Coal gasification is also water-intensive.
Conesville Power Plant was a 2-gigwatt, coal power plant located east of Conesville, Ohio in Coshocton County, Ohio. Its units were co-owned at the time of its closing by American Electric Power (AEP) and AES Ohio Generation. All plant operations were handled by AEP. Conesville began operations in 1957 and ceased generation in April 2020.
