Some not-so-random thoughts on items in the news:
COAL: President Donald Trump wants utilities to buy more electricity from Ƶbeautiful, clean coal,Ƶ and he recently issued four executive orders to roll back regulations that inhibit the burning of coal to produce electricity and, he says, to encourage construction of new coal-fired power plants.
Utilities and independent power producers will decide whether they want electricity from coal-burning power plants. The builders of data centers have decided they want to be near nuclear or gas-burning power plants. If theyƵre willing to rely on coal-fired electricity, theyƵve been awfully quiet about it.
The Ohio Valley has lost several coal-fired power plants to EPA regulations and to economics in the past 15 years. Some of those plants have been demolished already, and some still operating have filed required paperwork to be taken out of service in the next few years.
The most recent came Saturday. Two smokestacks and several boilers at the W.H. Sammis Power Plant at Stratton, Ohio, about 38 miles north of Wheeling, were demolished by controlled explosions. The first two of the plantƵs seven generating units went into service in 1960. Four units were decommissioned in 2020, and the remaining three in 2023. Demolition at Sammis is scheduled to continue through the end of 2026.
There will be more retirements. The power plant at Rockport, Indiana, which is comparable to the Amos plant in Putnam County, West Virginia, and the Gavin plant in Gallia County, Ohio, is scheduled for decommissioning in 2028.
East Kentucky Power Cooperative owns the coal-burning H.L. Spurlock Generating Station along the Ohio River near Maysville, Kentucky. EKPC has diversified its generating fleet away from coal. It has a solar farm near Winchester, Kentucky, it has plants that burn methane gas from landfills, and it buys hydroelectric power.
Last fall, EKPC announced plans to build two gas-fired power plants and convert one of the two units at Spurlock to burn gas along with coal.
If the president is serious, the clock is ticking.
BRITISH STEEL: The big investment money in the steel industry lately has gone to mills that use electric arc furnaces to melt scrap steel into new steel. Older mills using blast furnaces to turn iron ore and coke into new steel remain a large part of the industry here in the United States. In Great Britain, though, that part of the industry has been in decline and almost went totally out of business.
British Steel owns the last two blast furnaces in England. Jingye Group, the Chinese company that owns British Steel, was believed to be about to shut the furnaces down when it stopped ordering the iron ore and coking coal that fed them. Jingye said it was losing about $900,000 per day operating the furnaces.
On Saturday, Parliament returned from its spring recess to pass emergency legislation authorizing the government to take control of British Steel. British authorities are talking about nationalizing British Steel until a new owner can be found.
Britain doesnƵt want to be a nation that cannot produce its own new steel, which is favored for construction and railroads, and itƵs apparently not willing to let its last blast furnaces remain in foreign ownership that has no stake in Britain other than financial.
COKE: The move away from blast furnaces to electric arc furnaces can be seen here in the Tri-State. The former Ƶhland Works of Armco Steel (later AK Steel, then Cleveland-Cliffs) has been leveled. This region once had three plants that converted coal to coke. They were at Ƶhland, Ironton and Portsmouth, Ohio. All three are gone. Sun Coke has a large coke plant at Haverhill, Ohio, so the region retains a link to that part of the industry.
U.S. STEEL: Not much attention has been given lately to plans by JapanƵs Nippon Steel to acquire U.S. Steel. That could be because the two companies have taken the Trump administration to court over its refusal to allow the deal to go through. President Trump, as former President Joe Biden before him, says AmericaƵs largest steel companies should be owned by American companies, not foreign ones.
Nippon Steel has come up with a new proposal, which is backed by the Japanese government. Instead of buying U.S. Steel, Nissan Steel should be allowed to invest in it.
U.S. SteelƵs future has faded from the headlines, but things are still happening.
