Book contents
- The Coal Trap
- The Coal Trap
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures and Tables
- Introduction: “The Lost Decade”
- 1 The Rise of Environmental Regulations under Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency
- 2 The Shale Gas Revolution
- 3 The Rise of Renewable Energy
- 4 The “Ds” of Today’s Electric Utility Industry: Decarbonization and Decentralization
- 5 From “Friends of Coal” to the “War on Coal”: How West Virginia Went from Blue to Red
- 6 “Leadership” from Washington, DC: The Congressional Delegation That Could Have but Didn’t
- 7 Manchin in the Middle
- 8 The Failure of the Public Service Commission to Serve the Public
- 9 The Role of the Legislature in West Virginia’s Failed Energy Policies
- 10 Bailing Out the Coal Industry on the Backs of West Virginia’s Electric Ratepayers
- 11 Coal Operators Get Rich and West Virginia Gets to Clean Up the Mess
- 12 What the Future Could Hold if Leaders Choose to Lead
- Acknowledgments
- Index
2 - The Shale Gas Revolution
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 July 2022
- The Coal Trap
- The Coal Trap
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures and Tables
- Introduction: “The Lost Decade”
- 1 The Rise of Environmental Regulations under Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency
- 2 The Shale Gas Revolution
- 3 The Rise of Renewable Energy
- 4 The “Ds” of Today’s Electric Utility Industry: Decarbonization and Decentralization
- 5 From “Friends of Coal” to the “War on Coal”: How West Virginia Went from Blue to Red
- 6 “Leadership” from Washington, DC: The Congressional Delegation That Could Have but Didn’t
- 7 Manchin in the Middle
- 8 The Failure of the Public Service Commission to Serve the Public
- 9 The Role of the Legislature in West Virginia’s Failed Energy Policies
- 10 Bailing Out the Coal Industry on the Backs of West Virginia’s Electric Ratepayers
- 11 Coal Operators Get Rich and West Virginia Gets to Clean Up the Mess
- 12 What the Future Could Hold if Leaders Choose to Lead
- Acknowledgments
- Index
Summary
Beginning in 2007, shale gas development began to expand in a big way in West Virginia, due to advancements in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling. As it turned out, parts of West Virginia are located atop what is now the nation’s largest shale gas play, the Marcellus. Shale gas development has often been referred to as a “game changer” in the domestic energy industry, particularly as making natural gas the fuel of choice for generating electricity at baseload power plants (i.e., generating plants that are the cheapest and generally run around the clock). Within six years, natural gas would surpass coal as the leading source of fuel for electricity generation, due to its lower cost and the high efficiency of new natural gas fired combined cycle combustion turbines, especially compared with the economics of the region’s aging fleet of coal plants, many of which were over forty years old.
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- Information
- The Coal TrapHow West Virginia Was Left Behind in the Clean Energy Revolution, pp. 43 - 62Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022