US Electricity Production Was Flat Last Week
Why Coal Producers See Recent Indicators as a Big Lump of Coal
US electricity generation
The EEI (Edison Electric Institute) publishes electricity generation data weekly. The current report is for the week ended November 27, 2015. US electricity generation remained steady at 70.1 million MWh (megawatt-hours) that week.
However, the week’s electricity generation was lower than the 71.9 million MWh reported during the same week in 2014.
Why is this indicator important?
More than 90% of the coal produced in the United States is used for electricity generation. The power utility segment is coal’s largest end user. As a result, coal and utility investors should watch electricity generation trends. Electricity storage is expensive, so most produced electricity is consumed right away. As a result, electricity generation mirrors consumption.
What does this mean for coal producers?
Thermal coal is used mainly for electricity generation. Everything else being equal, a rise in electricity generation is positive for coal producers (KOL) such as Peabody Energy (BTU) and Cloud Peak Energy (CLD). However, coal is losing market share to natural gas in the current low natural gas price environment.
Weekly generation levels are subject to seasonal deviations. The impact on utilities (XLU) such as NextEra Energy (NEE) and Southern Company (SO) depends on the regional breakdown of electricity generation. We’ll take a look at that in the next part of this series.
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