RE: Re: re 180,000 MW new capacity: Update

["Mark Jones" <jones118@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Eugene Coyle:
>
>
> Thanks Mark,
>
>     But I'm still wondering.  Your correspondent's last paragraph is not
> credible, just on the surface.  Hundreds of units have come on
> line just in
> the last fortnight?  Ridiculous.
>
>     Here are some numbers from US DOE's Energy Information
> Agency.  And this
> projection may be what Cheney relied on when he said we had to build a new
> power plant a week for the next 20 years.  Even if that were to occur it
> wouldn't be "hundreds in a fortnight."
>
> EIA says that we need 1,300 plants by the year 2020.  (Not, N.B.,
> 2003.)  This
> based on an average plant size of 300 mW.  Of that total 92% would be gas
> fired.Thus in 20 years, by 2020, the EIA projects about twice what your
> informant says will happen by June 2003.
>
>     Regardless of how the EIA's forecast turns out to comport with the
> unfolded future, I think you can see from this that wherever the
> figures you
> are relying on come from, they don't seem plausible.

I've seen that EIA quote and I also saw a comment in, I think either
Bloomberg or the FT, to the effect that the EIA is writing back to the
future, because the rate of actual construction far exceeds their own
estimate. It's hard to know the truth, but there obviously is a lot of new
construction going on right now and the 2-year/90,000 mW is based onj
something. But even taking the EIA at face value, the question again
becomes, where is the gas coming from? Something weird is happening to US ng
from what I can see: depletion rates are becoming like the porverbial fall
off a cliff. All this means that the frenzy of investment won't solve the
underlying problem. So the only way sortages can be relieved is by a
recession, conservation, and massive no nuclear investment, or all 3.

Mark Jones