Get up-to-the-minute multimedia coverage of the U.N. Conference on Climate Change as world leaders and environment officials hammer out a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. Full Coverage
U.S. coal burn up 3 percent for week: Genscape
HOUSTON (Reuters) - U.S. coal consumption during the past week rose 3 percent from the previous week on higher power demand and nuclear plant outages but was 1 percent below the same week last year, Genscape said on Friday.
Consumption in the populous East for the week ended Thursday rose 2 percent from the previous week but was 1 percent less than the same week in 2008, the power data provider said.
In the less populated West, coal demand was up 4 percent from the previous week but off 6 percent from the same week a year ago.
A surge in power demand in the Midwest was the main driver of the rebound. Another factor was the number of nuclear plants offline, with coal-fired plants closing gaps between supply and demand, Genscape said.
Genscape has said comparisons with last year are less meaningful than in most years because the economic crisis deepened rapidly after mid-September 2008.
"But even finding a stable bottom for consumption is better news than the electricity industry has had for a while," Genscape said.
The regional indexes are calculated separately from the national index. They do not always add up to a number equaling the separately calculated U.S. total, Genscape has said.
(Reporting by Bruce Nichols; Editing by David Gregorio)
