Dozens of Coal-Fired Plants Will Shut Down Over New Wastewater Guidelines
Coal-fired plants can’t catch a break these days. Already under fire for being a key contributor to climate change, some coal power plants are now on the hook for millions of additional dollars of expense thanks to new wastewater rules. This begs the question; how will this impact overall reliability?
How the New Rule Impacts Coal-Fired Plants
The new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) guidelines mandate that coal-fired plants scrub coal ash and toxic heavy metals from wastewater before it is dispatched into waterways. The EPA estimates this will reduce the amount of pollutants deposited into the nation’s waterways by up to 386 million pounds per year.
In all, 75 coal-fired power plants across the U.S. are impacted by these new guidelines. Of these, 21 plants in 14 states – including 2 of the largest coal plants in Pennsylvania that supply electricity to an estimated 1.5 million homes – plan to shutter operations due to the increased expense of implementing the required pollution-control equipment upgrades by 2028 (collectively, this would cost $200 million per year). Another 5 plants plan to switch to natural gas, which indicates that over a third of the 75 impacted plants are struggling with the requirements.
The states where coal plants are planning to retire are Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia.
Electric utilities impacted include Southern Co., which will retire 66% of its coal plants, and NRG, which plans to stop burning coal at all of its plants except for two located in Texas which will be upgraded to meet the new pollution requirements.
Overall, this follows a longer-term trend – over the past 10 years, 30% of coal-fired capacity has been retired. Unfortunately, according to Michelle Bloodworth, CEO of America’s Power, a pro-coal trade organization: “retirement of dispatchable generation like the coal fleet will jeopardize the reliability and resilience of the electricity grid.” She also believes that reduced coal capacity played a key role in the Feb. 2021 Texas ERCOT debacle.
Time will tell the tale of how this impacts the nation’s overall reliability. The key is that electricity generated from the soon-to-be-retired coal-fired plants must be replaced with equally reliable generation sources. If not, then we could be looking at a “house of cards” situation which could have far-reaching implications.
