East Central Area Reliability Coordination Agreement (ECAR)
Projected Change in Electricity Generation from 1996 for Full Competition Cases
1996-2005	1996-2015

• Electricity sales are projected to grow between 1.3 and 1.7 percent per year from 1996 through 2015.
• The growth in generation occurs primarily in coal- and gas-fired plants.
• Coal-fired generation increases through greater utilization of existing power plants (63 percent capacity factor in 1996 and 77 percent in 2015). No new coal-fired plants are projected to be built.
• Additional gas-fired generation is produced by new gas-fired combustion turbines and combined-cycle units(30 Gigawatts of turbines and 6 to 11 Gigawatts of combined-cycle units built between 1996 and 2015). Variation in the level of increase in gas-fired generation in 2015 is due to uncertainty about the growth in demand for electricity.
• In 2015, natural gas consumption is between 0.6 and 1.0 quadrillion Btu above 1996 levels, and coal consumption is between 0.6 to 0.7 quadrillion Btu higher than in 1996.