Could Proposed Gas Generators Become 'Stranded Assets'?

SUGAR LAND--November 13, 2019--Written by John Egan for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--The term "stranded assets" first entered the Power Industry's lexicon about 25 years ago, when advocates of electric restructuring warned that competitive markets would lower electric prices, making many power plants uneconomic. But it has been low-cost natural gas, not electric restructuring, that has closed so many coal-fired power plants. Two recent studies from Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) (Boulder, Colorado) predict declining prices for renewable generation and energy-storage projects will do to gas-fired generation and gas pipelines what low-cost gas did to coal-fired generators: render them uneconomic. Within this article: How the changing face of the U.S. energy market could play out in the future, with recent examples of how power producers and government bodies are reacting to market-driven developments.