New Coal and Nuclear Plants May Not Be Needed, U.S. Energy Official Says

Renewable energy technologies have come far enough that the U.S. may not need to build any new coal or nuclear plants, the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said. “We may not need any, ever,” Jon Wellinghoff said at a forum of the U.S. Energy Association. The development of smart grid technologies that better store capacity from wind, solar and biomass sources, he said, will eventually meet the nation’s energy demands — and make coal-fired and nuclear plants unnecessary. His statement goes further than the publicly stated policy of the Obama administration, which supports expanded development of renewable sources but has maintained that power from nuclear and fossil fuel plants will remain a significant source of the nation’s power supply. Jay Apt, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Electricity Industry Center, questioned Wellinghoff’s assessment, saying there will be a need for “firm power” from gas-fired, coal-burning and nuclear plants “when the wind doesn’t blow.” Wellinghoff insists the existing concept of baseload capacity will be an “anachronism” as the technology develops to store power capacity, such as a system for concentrated solar plants that currently allows 15 hours of storage.