In physics, the law of conservation of energy states – ‘energy can neither be created nor be destroyed’; rather, it only transforms from one form to another. The world’s largest economy the USA is the 2nd biggest user of electricity in the world behind Canada. But still, it is largely dependent on its electricity needs on fossil fuels. Almost 33 % of the power is generated by coal firing as per the government reports published in the year 2016.
There had been a lot of emphasis across the globe on renewable energy usage and especially using solar power for power generation instead of fossil fuels. A recent survey by agencies shows that the power generation from solar energy will be a very cost-effective alternative option and will be adopted by most of the world very soon, say by the year 2040. This will help our mother earth reduce pollution and the global warming effect the world is afraid of! But this kind of paradigm shift is certainly going to hamstring the coal industry drastically.
The recent study conducted by the Bloomberg New Energy Finance shows that the coal-fired power plant electricity generation in the USA is likely to be reduced to half of the present capacity by 2040. In contrast, in Europe, it is expected to drop to 87 %. This kind of drops in coal-fired power stations and the then shift to solar power plants are driven due to the fall in the average price of electricity generation from solar energy, as the cost per kWh power generated from solar is expected to decline by almost 66 % by 2020. Solar and even the cost of power generation from wind energy are also expected to drop 47 % due to technological advancements.
Renewable energy sources can never displace coal or other fossil fuels from power generation because they are naturally dependent and sometimes unreliable. Especially when it comes to generating power during emergency needs and the baseload factor comes in picture. But all in all, the coal industry in this sector may come in doldrums soon!
