2015 saw 17 states retire 94 coal-powered generating units at 39 different plants for a combined generation capacity of 17.6 GW.
If you live in a coal plant-free state, congratulations! Allow me to speak for the rest of us and say that we have heard some really wonderful things about both Rhode Island and Vermont; they seem like nice places.
The other 48 all have existing coal plants. (including the ones that have the plants powering the regional grid that supplies electricity to Vermont and Rhode Island...just sayin.)
But this year 17 states saw some of those Black Rock Burn Stations pack it in. If your state is on this list, that’s fantastic! Your air should be some what cleaner, but you still have work to do.
If your state is not on this list, I am sorry …and you have a LOT of work to do!
So let’s run through the TOP 17!
Numbers 14-17: Illinois, Michigan & Montana (1 unit)
In a three-way tie for “We made a point to close one coal burner just to be sure we’d be on Wisper’s list” we have:
Illinois
NRG Energy closed the 251MW Unit 3 at the Will County Plant in Romeoville, IL in April and after considering applying for a conversion permit to re-open it as a Natural Gas Unit, they decided to retire it permanently.
...and there was much rejoicing.
Michigan
DTE Energy closed the Harbor Beach Power Plant, a 103-MW coal station built in 1968 specifically to power the Thumb region of Michigan which had no utility service at the time. Since then transmission lines have been built, with a new 345,000-volt loop in progress, which makes expensive dirty local generation superfluous.
Montana
Before the new 2015 rules took effect in April, PPL Montana also rushed to shut down what had been the number one air polluter in beautiful Billings, MT (Big Dirty Sky Country?) every year for 40+ years: The J.E. Corette Plant out on Charlene St. This 154-MW relic from 1968 would have required $38 million worth of upgrades to meet the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards and was nowhere near profitable enough to merit that kind of investment.
Demolition of the site began in August, beginning with the asbestos removal.
Numbers 12-14 Iowa, Mississippi & Utah (2 units)
In another three-way tie for “We also wanted to be on Wisper’s List but didn’t want to look like jerks who only closed one measly coal burning unit” we have:
Iowa
Iowa gets more of an “honorable mention” here since Interstate Power and Light officially converted Units 3 and 4 of its Dubuque Generating Station, located right on the shore of the Mississippi River, to natural gas. This is more of a regulatory filing since the plant was built to use both fuels, and in fact had been burning gas since 2011 but it is now permanently a gas-only station, used only to regulate voltage during peak demands and is slated for full retirement in 2017.
It should be noted though that this is still a win. Part of the War on Coal is the War on the Coal Industry as a Whole, and permanently removing this site’s capacity as a potential buyer causes ripples and supply-side impacts within the production companies.
Mississippi
The Southern Company converted its Jack Watson Generating Plant in Gulfport, MS to natural gas and then shut down Units 1 and 2, each 75MW, and brought into service in 1957 and 1960, respectively.
These two units were burning coal last year, gas this spring and are now officially and permanently off the grid.
Utah
The most obvious call-it-what-it-is named plant in the country, MidAmerican Energy’s Carbon Power Plant, just north of Helper, UT right on the bank of the Price River was shuffled off into early retirement in April.
Unable to meet pending regulations, the 60-year old 2-unit 172MW generating facility was shuttered on April 16th, delisted as a dispatch grid option and is no longer licensed as a generation site. What was the Beehive State’s oldest power plant is now GONE.
Numbers 10 & 11: Kentucky & Minnesota (3 units)
Kentucky
What has to essentially feel like losing a home game for the Coal Industry, Kentucky shuttered 3 coal burning units in 2015.
American Electric Power did a mass closing of 9 coal plants on May 31st, and one of them was the 55-year old coal-burning behemoth in Louisa, KY known as BIG SANDY. Both units, totaling 1,097MW went offline in May. The company is considering restarting the smaller Unit 1 (281 of those megawatts) as a gas unit next year depending on market pricing.
Elsewhere, The Tennessee Valley Authority formally delisted one unit at their massive 10-unit plant in Paducah, KY aptly titled “Shawnee FOSSIL Plant”. (who the hell wants to live near a FOSSIL PLANT??) Unit 10 had been running as a coal-fired unit since 1956 but was used in the 1980 to conduct experiments with Fluidized Bed Combustion which was thought to be a potential solution for nitric oxide and sulfur pollution. But the experiments failed, the unit was shut down in 2010 but was still listed as “generating capacity” until this year.. …so this technically counts as a closure. Whatever, we’ll take it.
Minnesota
Minnesota Power converted both units of its circa-1953 106MW Syl Laskin Energy Center Plant in Aurora, MN to natural gas and retired one of three units at the Taconite Harbor Energy Center in May.
This was done as a stop-gap measure in order to meet minimum pollution compliance and by July, Minnesota Power announced that the entire Taconite plant will be idled in the fall of 2016. We’ll trust but verify that plan on next year’s list.
Number 9: VIRGINIA (4 Units)
Part of that 9-plant closing spree by AEP I mentioned earlier hit Virginia fairly hard.
First up was the 3-unit 705MW Clinch River Plant in Carbo, VA. In 1960 this plant was famous for running an entire calendar year with a heat-rate below 9,000 Btu/kwh making it the most efficient coal plant in America and was AEP’s most efficient plant in its fleet for 13 years. That is an amazing testament to American Engineering; however, the fact that this thing is still clunking along 55 years later –is not.
The 235 MW Unit 3 at this site was formally decommissioned on May 31st. The other two units will be undergoing retrofitting to burn natural gas and should count as coal-unit closings on next year’s countdown.
Next up a true piece of American History: The Glen Lyn Plant was first brought online in Giles County, VA in 1919 to supply power to the regions coal mining operations and communities. It’s “Unit 5” burner was placed into service in 1944 making it the oldest coal-fired generator in the United States at the time of its closing. Over time the plant expanded from 75 MW to 338 MW and is now completely closed.
Lastly, one unit of Dominion Power’s Yorktown Power Station was closed. We were supposed to get them both offline this year, but there is a nasty ongoing fight about some transmission lines Dominion Power wants to run across the Jamestown River that it needs in place before the plant can be turned off. The locals are FIRED UP and actively resisting, lobbying and SUING to stop those lines from being built.
Number 8: WISCONSIN (5 Units)
Alliant Energy retired the smallest and oldest unit at its Edgewater Generating Station in Sheboygan. It has also agreed to shutter another of its 5 units if its recently proposed new natural gas plant is approved in Beloit, WI.
As part of the same project that idled Unit 3 at Edgewater, Alliant has also starting closing down the entire 2-unit Nelson Dewey Generating Station located on the Mississippi River in Cassville, WI. Decommissioning work started around Halloween and will complete before the end of the year. They are formally seeking bids for the 130-acre riverfront site, you know… ...if you know anyone that might be looking.
Elsewhere in the state WE Energies completed its natural gas conversion of the Valley Power Plant located on 1.8 square miles of Menomonee Riverfront property in downtown Milwaukee. Both of the plant’s 136MW Coal units fired up in the late 1960’s have been switched to gas.
Numbers 6-7: Indiana & Tennessee (6 Units)
Indiana
Located on the White River near Petersburg, IN in Pike County, the Frank E. Ratts Generating Station was built in 1970. In 2010 Hoosier Energy settled with the EPA over Clean Air Act violations and agreed to pay a civil penalty and upgrade its pollution controls at two stations, including Frank E. Ratts. However with MATS taking effect in April this year, Hoosier Energy decided it was time for retirement.
Both 117 MW units were retired by May.
In bigger news downstate, AEP shut down all four units of its 1100 MW monster plant in Lawrenceburg, IN known as the Tanners Creek Generating Station, located on the Ohio river right at the tripoint of Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana. Built in the 1950’s this smog spewing relic ranked 67th on the list of America’s dirtiest power plants and is now OFF.
Tennessee
The Tennessee Valley Authority scaled back its oldest fossil fuel plant located near Waverly, TN. The Johnsonville Fossil Plant was a 10 unit coal burning 428MW beast built from 1949 through 1951. Several units had already been idled and a few converted to Natural Gas in a cogeneration agreement where the plant provided steam for heating use at a nearby DuPont factory. This May the TVA officially decommissioned units 1-6 , taking 794 MW of coal power permanently off the grid.
Numbers 4-5: Alabama & Georgia (7 Units)
Alabama
Alabama Power completed the $1bn refit project to convert 4 of its units at the Shelby County E. C. Gaston Steam Plant to run on natural Gas. The 5th unit will continue to burn coal (for now) but is being outfitted with emissions control technology. The 4 converted units combine for 1,061 MW of coal power that were removed from service.
Likewise, two circa-1951 units at their Gorgas Steam Plant in Parrish, AL were converted to gas removing 250 additional Megawatts of coal from the Alabama grid.
Lastly the TVA received the last load of coal to its Widows Creek Fossil Plant in Stevenson, AL in September and burned through it before the month was out. This is the location Google has stepped in to purchase, clean-up and retrofit into a regional datacenter, investing $600 million and making smart use of the existing infrastructure, transmission capacity and water accessibility.
At the time of retirement, the Widows Creek plant was running a single 575 MW unit.
Georgia
The massive smokestack towers on the shore of Lake Sinclair went cold in April when Georgia Power shuttered the last units of Harlee Branch Power Plant. The last two coal units were each an impressive 544 MW, taking over a gigawatt of dirty coal power offline in a single stroke.
As part of the same compliance effort, Georgia Power shut all five coal burning units at Yates Steam Generating Plant in Sargent, GA. Each one brought on-line in the 1950’s these burners combined for 681 MW of coal power and are estimated to have spewed 3.4 million pounds of acid (nitric, sulfurous and sulfuric) into the air in the year 2011 alone.
Number 3: West Virginia (9 Units)
West Virginia is essentially Ground ZERO for the War on Coal. The mines, the mining companies, the railroads, the excise tax shortfalls, the job losses and, to add an extra hit to this black rock based economy, the plant closures.
American Electric Power’s sweep of closings didn’t overlook the Mountain State.
First, the 630 MW Kammer Plant was closed in Moundsville, WV. Then the 400MW Kanawha River Plant in Glasgow, WV went with it. 3 units in the first, 2 more in the second all retired.
New Haven, WV’s Philip Sporn Plant had its 4 152-MW units added to the list and all three of these sites shut down on May 31st.
No retrofits, no natural gas upgrades. Just closed.
Number 2: Pennsylvania (14 Units)
First, new gas pipelines in crossing Lawrence County allowed NRG to convert the New Castle Plant in West Pittsburgh completely to gas. The small 348 MW, 3-unit plant is a peaker plant which means it only fires up a few days per year when very hot or very cold temperatures drive up demand. Coal units take a LONG time to bring up to grid-ready levels of generation so they make poor choices for on-demand energy. Ultimately renewables and battery storage will be able to respond to demand spikes in real time, but for now companies like NRG are looking to gas.
The the Keystone State saw the closure of the Sunbury Steam Station in Shamokin Dam, PA. This 65-year old 4-unit 425 MW station was already tagged as clean-up project back in 2011 when Sunbury Power pitched the idea of converting it to gas but when the market dipped the financing fell through and this went from “to be upgraded” to “closed”. All four units were shuttered, the oldest of which had been in service since 1949.
Lastly NRG, after acquiring Houston-based GenON Energy found itself the owners of Titus Generating Station a small old power plant on the Schuykill River in Cumru Township. It was already targeted for retirement but NRG went ahead and accelerated that to get credit toward its MATS compliance. Three 75-MW units burning coal dating back to 1951 and two more configured to burn gas or oil. (Only the first three count for this list. NO EXTRA CREDIT!)
Another site NRG picked up with its GenOn merger was the Shawville Generating Plant out in Western Pennsylvania. GenOn had already put this one on its list for closure due to MATS but NRG changed that due to nearby accessibility and expanding infrastructure of Marcellus Shale gas. The four coal-burning units, capable of generating 626 MW have been taken offline but NRG expects to have them back up and running on gas by June 2016.
Number 1: Ohio (21 Units)
Ohio tops the list easily, with 50% more coal burner retirements then even the 2nd Place finisher and they came from multiple utility companies.
We had AEP including two Ohio sites in its wave of May 31st closings. First was the Muskingum River Plant, a Beverly, OH 5-unit 1500+ MW relic of the early 50’s was originally slated for a natural gas makeover but got switched to Shutt’r Down! when the price tag for that came in in middle of a commodity price slump. All five units were powered down and a real estate development company out of Missouri has already bought up the 1100 acres along the Muskingum River to build industrial complexes.
The second AEP site was the Picway Power plant, a single 106 MW unit on the Scioto River near Lockbourne. This plant had already been cut back to where it only operated 3-months per year but now it’s formally off-grid.
The old O. H. Hutchings Station plant in Miamisburg, with 6 tiny units dating back to 1948 was closed by Dayton Power & Light. One of the units was already retired since the turbine broke a few years ago and they decided it wasn’t worth fixing. The last five were all retired in June.
NRG closed down the Niles Plant, another peaker plant that GenOn had wanted to close since 2012. That saw two more 133-MW units taken down
Duke Energy closed the Miami Fort Station outside of Cincinnati in a town called North Bend. This was a single 163-MW unit built back in 1960.
And then FirstEnergy closed the last 256-MW boiler at its century-old Lakeshore Plant in Cleveland and is working with the city to schedule the demolition and reclamation to potentially turn those 57 acres into recreational space.
Then they finally turned off the lights at the Ashtabula Plant right on Lake Eire, a move they had announced and scheduled and rescheduled going back to 2012 due to the grid operator’s request/demand it stay open for reliability reasons.. This site was down to a single circa-1958 256 MW boiler.
Most notably though, they removed all five coal units at their 1257 MW Eastlake Power Station and replaced them with substation equipment used to regulate and convert voltages across the wider grid. So the site is still operational as a FirstEnergy facility but is no longer generating electricity.
And that’s it for this year folks! Not too shabby for the early stages of an energy revolution. I would note that quite a few of these were scheduled closures that got bumped up due to market reasons or plants that had already been semi-idled as peaker plants but were then closed completely.
There are already 59 units filed with the FERC with a 2016 closure date, but that doesn’t stop any number of other companies from accelerating more units from 2017, 2018 and beyond into next year if they think that positions them better from either a compliance or profitability perspective.
And from the FERC’s official monthly Infrastructure Update Report (which for some reason they have not released for October yet. Weird.) through the end of September there has been exactly ONE new coal generating site brought on line. It was a local 3 MW unit (Three megawatts. That’s it. Three.) in North Dakota that an oil company built to supply energy to their operations. That’s all. 165 new solar projects, 34 new wind farms (totalling just under 4 GW btw) and ONE coal generator.
The War on Christmas is bullshit. The War on Coal is Real.
AND WE ARE WINNING IT!