Just outside the gates of the Dickerson Getting Station, kayakers paddle through a concrete sluiceway that channels cooling water from the massive coal-burning power plant through a series of specially-designed obstacles to the Potomac River. Dickerson’s power lights up Washington, DC, and its suburbs. However starting in August, these kayakers will need to discover somewhere else to practice, while 63 plant workers will be looking for brand-new tasks.
The Texas-based energy that owns the Maryland plant simply revealed it will shut down Dickerson’s 3 power systems after 60 years of operation, citing the high expense of operation. Like lots of other coal plants across the country, Dickerson is a casualty of coal’s fast-moving demise. The industry has been squeezed in between less expensive gas and expanding usage of renewable energy for a number of years, and now the Covid-19- driven economic downturn has actually jammed a stake through its financial heart.
” This is an earth-shaking minute in the energy sector,” states Robert Godby, director of the Center for Energy Economics at the University of Wyoming, about the rapid drop in demand for coal power. “This market just does not alter this rapidly.”
Godson states the amount of coal used for electrical power has actually dropped 40 percent in 2020 compared to the same time in 2015, according to figures from the U.S. Energy Details Company. Before the pandemic hit, specialists like him were anticipating a 15 percent decline. Regardless Of Covid-19- related federal bailout money for some coal companies and President Donald Trump’s efforts to roll back contamination guidelines, energies have s
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