“As families struggle with rising electricity bills, the Trump Administration is delivering coal for Christmas and forcing households to pay for it,” Earthjustice attorney Michael Lenoff, who is leading litigation against the DOE on its J.H. Campbell plant stay-open order, said in a Wednesday statement after the Centralia must-run order was issued. “Coal is not only the most polluting and carbon-intensive source of electricity, it’s expensive. And these aging coal plants are increasingly unreliable.”
DOE’s must-run order for TransAlta’s Unit 2 may also complicate plans to convert the power plant to run on fossil gas. Less than a week ago, TransAlta announced an agreement with utility Puget Sound Energy to convert Unit 2 to gas by late 2028 at a cost of about $600 million, which the firm said would help meet regional grid needs while reducing carbon emissions.
Pacific Northwest utilities in September released a report expressing concerns about longer-running grid reliability challenges in the region. Tuesday’s DOE order cited a separate analysis from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) indicating “elevated risk during periods of extreme weather” for the Northwest region as justification for keeping the Centralia plant running.
But critics have pointed out that DOE’s Section 202(c) authority to force power plants to keep running for up to 90 days at a time is meant to deal with immediate emergencies, rather than serve as a tool to override the long-term planning and analysis of utilities, state regulators, regional grid operators, and reliability coordinators.
And if you’re aiming to boost reliability, aging coal plants are not your best bet. They are more likely to experience unplanned outages than modern power plants, according to a recent analysis of NERC data conducted by the Environmental Defense Fund.
“There is no ‘energy emergency’ in the Pacific Northwest that would justify forcing the continued operation of an old and dirty coal plant,” Ben Avery, the Sierra Club’s Washington state director, said in a statement on Wednesday. “All the evidence shows that when Centralia shuts down, customers’ costs will decrease and air quality will improve. Instead of lowering bills or protecting families from harmful pollution, the Trump administration is abusing emergency powers to prop up fossil fuels at any cost.”
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Great Job Jeff St. John & the Team @ Canary Media Source link for sharing this story.
