According to U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), its Report of Short-Term Energy Outlook (March 2018) showed that demand of electricity declined. Thus, the US net electricity generation decreased 1.5% YoY in 2017. The natural gas power generation output dropped 7.7% YoY, and the coal power generation output was reduced 2.5% YoY. Meanwhile, hydro, wind and solar energy generation output all grew annually.
The natural gas power generation has been the largest power generation source in the US for the third-consecutive year. However, in 2017, natural gas power generation decreased 105 billion kilowatt-hours YoY. This set a record of the largest annual decrease. EIA pointed out, the year 2017 was the first year that both natural gas and coal power generation output dropped from 2008. EIA mentioned, 2017 was also the first time that there was no newly added thermal power generation units for nearly 10 years.
According to EIA's statistics, in 2017, wind power generation took 6.3% share of US net power generation. Power-plant-level solar energy occupied 1.3% share of US net energy generation. These two figures both set new historical records.
GE's stock price dropped against the market headwind by 44.78% YoY in 2017. This has been its largest drop scale since 2008 (down 56.30% YoY). GE performed the worst among the 30 constituent stocks. From January 1, 2018 to March 20, 2018, GE's stock price fell by 21.83%. This was the worse among the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
GE Power announced to lay off 12,000 employees globally at the end of 2017, including professional managers and product line workers. GE stated that the layoff was meant to deal with major structural change in the global electricity market. The demand of traditional power market (such as natural gas and coal) has been sluggish. On a whole, demand of renewable energy grew, so that traditional power generation output significantly fell. Thus, their capacity became excessive, and their utilization rates of capacity became low.
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