U.S. coal power boom suddenly wanes

From the Christian Science Monitor:

U.S. coal power boom suddenly wanes [1]

Worries about global warming and rising construction costs give the edge to natural-gas and renewable-energy plants.

By Mark Clayton [2] | Staff writer

from the March 4, 2008 The Christian Science Monitor [3]

"What you're seeing is a de facto moratorium on coal power right now," says Robert Linden, a senior oil and gas analyst at Pace Global in New York. "You turn off the money spigot, you've turned off those plants."

Aside from the 28 or so coal-fired power plants already under construction, prospects remain tenuous for the half-dozen plants "near construction" and another 80 plants not nearly as far along, says Steve Piper, managing director of power forecasting at Platts, the energy information division of McGraw-Hill. "Expansions [of existing plants] still have a good chance. But others will come under increased pressure for deferral or outright cancellation."