Natural gas’ most important competitor for baseload demand, coal, is experiencing a recovery of sorts. U.S. coal production and consumption, along with electricity demand, are rising as the COVID-19 pandemic recedes. While the U.S. coal industry faces immense, probably insurmountable obstacles in the medium and long-terms, coal will continue to battle natural gas for market share in 2021.

Coal: the long view

The U.S. coal industry is winding down: it’s an open question whether or not it will even exist in a decade. Coal generation at utility scale facilities is down 55% since 2011, investors fled the sector even before ESG became a household name, it seems that a major coal company goes bankrupt every month, and coal is increasingly politically toxic. The long-term trajectory of the coal industry is pretty clear.

With that being said, the long-run can take a long time to develop: coal has recently been experiencing a renaissance, of sorts. 

Coal’s decline and bounce back

Coal accounted for just 15% of all U.S. electricity generation at utility-scale facilities in April and May 2020, during the height of lockdowns. This phenomenon was due, in part, to the arithmetic and logic of electricity markets and the “merit order” of electricity dispatch. Since the marginal cost of renewable assets such as solar and wind is zero, they are typically the first fuels to be dispatched. Similarly, nuclear and hydropower assets have low fuel costs, they are typically dispatched before natural gas or coal. Due to declining overall baseload demand in the April/May 2020, along with coal’s disadvantage relative to alternative base load fuels, coal’s share of generation fell to its lowest point in decades.

Coal’s share of electricity generation has since rebounded, reaching 23% of all utility-scale generation in December 2020 and January 2021. Several factors have contributed to this trend: returning electricity demand; higher domestic + international baseload winter demand; inventory drawdowns; and, of course, lower coal prices. As people in the energy business are fond of saying, “a cure for low prices is low prices.”

It’s not clear if coal’s share of overall generation will fall this spring amid higher renewables take-up, but most analysts believe U.S. coal consumption will rise in 2021 and 2022. The EIA, notably, forecasts production, exports, and consumption to rise in both years.

We see some evidence that fits this hypothesis. U.S. coal production is showing year-over-year growth while the most recent coal inventories data, from 4Q 2020, show a return to their year-ago levels.

Carbon price could help natural gas competitiveness vis-à-vis coal

In sum, we project that natural gas power burn will face more competition this year and next year from coal-fired plants. The American Petroleum Institute recently reversed its opposition to carbon pricing, likely with at least one eye towards coal vs gas competition. Widespread adoption of a carbon price is unlikely but could staunch coal’s 2021 and 2022 comeback.