As for idle coal plants costing lots of money...
tell me about it!
Some time in the next few years my electric rates will soon drop by about 25%. You see, our local electric utility Duquesne Flicker & Flash... er... Duquesne Light built a large number of coal plants in the late 70s and early 80s to serve the steel industry. But then the local steel industry evaporated. Leaving the rate-payers holding the bag to pay for (debt service on) 2.5X the baseline capacity needed in the region.
Since the electric utility is a "regulated monopoly" they have a
guaranteed rate of return. Customers went away? Sock the remaining customers with
the entire bill. Plus profits. The reason our rates will drop is that they'll finally finish paying off the bonds for those plants, and will no longer be permitted to charge us for servicing the debt on the bonds.
In a competitive market, by comparison, Duquesne's profits would have taken a hit and their stock price would have gone done. They might even have gone bankrupt! But the people taking the hit would be the owners of the company (the shareholders), rather than the local residents who have no choice about dealing with the one-and-only power company in the region.
Yes, we've been de-regulated since then and can choose which company generates the power we buy. But part of the deregulation deal attached the debt service for those &^%$&^%$ plants to the part of our electric bill that goes to the company that owns the wires to our premises. That would be -- wait for it -- Duquesne Light!
"Why," you may ask, "don't they sell power from those plants in other markets?" They do, to the extent it has been possible. But the electric market to our West is already over capacity. And between us and the NorthEast Corridor of the US is the entire rural width of Pennsylvania. Several attempts to run new powerlines across the state have been defeated politically by the representatives of the farmers. It seems that high tension lines are bad for the cows.
Or something.
But I'm
not bitter...
Meanwhile, most of Duquesne's plants are in mothballs. And we pay (and pay, and pay) for the debt service on equipment that is not producing any revenue. And hasn't produced any revenue for over 20 years. Sigh.
So coal plants are expensive
even when they are shut down!
Xenophon