SCHENECTADY -- Jan 23 - Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News - Larry Rulison Times Union, Albany, N.Y.

An expected shift by electricity generators away from the use of natural gas toward coal could have major implications for General Electric Co., which is a large producer of gas turbines used in power plants.

The reason has a lot to do with the volatility of the price of natural gas, which was the fuel of choice for new power plants built in recent years. Because of rising natural gas prices, the U.S. Energy Information Administration is projecting the share of electricity generated from natural gas will drop from 18 percent to 17 percent by 2030, while the share generated from coal is expected to increases from 50 percent to 57 percent during the same period.

That goes against trends in earlier years, in which most of the new power plants being built have been powered by natural gas.

The shift toward coal will impact the GE Energy division, -- and possibly Schenectady. GE Energy has been focusing heavily on making turbines that run on gas: 127 gas turbines shipped last year compared to just 23 steam turbines. Most of the company's steam turbines are manufactured in Schenectady, where GE Energy has its power generation headquarters. Dennis Murphy, a GE Energy spokesman, said the company would not be harmed by a market shift away from natural gas because it also has major manufacturing capacity for steam turbines, so-called integrated gasification combined-cycle plants that turn coal into gas, and alternative power sources such as water, wind and nuclear energy.

"No matter which direction the market goes, GE is extremely well-positioned to meet its needs," Murphy said.

He did say that gas could become "not as dominant" as it has been in the past as a power source. However, he stressed that such a shift would not necessarily benefit GE Schenectady's operations, even though that plant makes most of the company's steam turbines.

GE Energy, which is based in Atlanta, had $2.7 billion in profit last year on $16.5 billion in sales. That was up from 2004, when profit was $2.5 billion on $14.6 billion in sales.

Those figures were released Friday as part of GE's annual earnings conference call in which it announced consolidated profits of $16.4 billion from sales of $149.7 billion.

The results were not good enough for Wall Street. GE shares dropped $1.31, or 3.78 percent, to $33.37 in trading Friday, sending shudders throughout the stock market.

John Shelk, a spokesman with the Electric Power Supply Association, said power generation companies are going to have to increase the number of plants they have by as much as 50 percent in the next 20 years to meet demand.

He said companies are examining coal-burning technology because of higher natural gas prices. But they also see coal as more economical than natural gas for increasing baseload supply, which is the minimum electricity needed for everyday use.

New York state is a different story. Ken Klapp, a spokesman with the New York Independent System Operator, the Guilderland-based nonprofit that administers the state's wholesale electric market, said there are no coal plants proposed in New York.

He said only 15 percent of the state's electric generation is from coal, compared with 50 percent for the entire United States. Natural gas makes up 8 percent, while combined-cycle plants that can burn oil and gas make up 27 percent of the total. Hydro and nuclear total nearly 50 percent. That diversity helps New York fight off the impacts of fuel price volatility. "It's an advantage that New York has over some of the surrounding areas," he said.