The need to comply with new federal clean air standards and market forces are likely to combine for a precipitous drop in coal-fired energy production in Kentucky over the next 20 years, that’s according to the assistant secretary for climate policy for the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet.
In fact, John Lyons told a panel of state lawmakers in Frankfort last week there may be no electricity generated by coal in Kentucky by the year 2050.
However, Lyons says coal will continue as the Commonwealth’s dominant energy source through the rest of the decade.
“What it looks like now is we’ll be about seventy-eight percent coal-fired generation by 2020. As you probably know, we were ninety-three percent coal-fired generation last year.” –John Lyons
Lyons says eleven older coal-fired Kentucky plants are already scheduled to close and business decisions are now being made to switch to natural gas because of its lower cost.
