One of the oldest power plants in the United States, located on the edge of the largest coal mine in the United States, was scheduled to close in 2027. The utility plan was released in late December.
Currently, three coal burning units at the Dave Johnston Power Station near Glenlock, Wyoming are among dozens of people across the country, allowing coal to burn well past the date of retirement. Utilities such as Rocky Mountain Power, which operates the Glenlock plant, could take advantage of growing energy demand and changing environmental regulations to keep these plants operating. However, experts say it's not very useful to slow the inevitable decline in coal.
As plants switched to cheaper and cleaner fuels, coal power went down.
Source: Reports from Global Energy Monitor and the New York Times.
Note: Coal capacity has been added.
Coal has been declining for over a decade. Once the dominant source of energy in the United States, today nearly 400 coal units supply about 16% of the country's grid. That's far below natural gas, nuclear and renewable energy.
The company has retired since 2000 since 2000, individual generators with approximately 780 coal units, boilers and turbines that can produce electricity. More than half of the remaining units are scheduled to retire. Collect international energy data.
However, a New York Times analysis shows that between 2017 and today, utilities have been able to qualify almost a third of planned retirement dates, either through delays or resignations, through delays or resignations, or through resignations. It indicates that the lifespan has been extended.
Source: Reports from Global Energy Monitor and the New York Times.
Note: This reflects changes to your retirement plan from the date of your initial retirement announcement until January 2025.
“Around last year or so, some large utilities have curbed emission reduction targets and, more specifically, the retirement dates of some coal units,” said Energy, a research advocacy group. and David Pomeranz, executive director of the Institute of Policy Studies.
Continued use of coal means more carbon emissions, increasing the excess of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, poses airborne hazards that can damage human health. Many of the plants date back to the 1960s, and surgery is expensive, requiring heavy maintenance and altered contamination prevention.
In 2023, a study showed that 99% of US coal seams are more expensive to operate than the cost of building renewable alternatives. This is an incentive included in the expensive unit upgrades required for the new federal pollution standards passed in 2024, without considering the hundreds of billions of dollars in tax deductions and incentives in 2022.
“Even without the incentives of an IRA, it far exceeds the crossover points of most coal plants,” says author of the 2023 study and senior policy analyst at Energy Innovation, the clean energy research group. Michelle Solomon said. “It's really easy to not only add new winds and solar, but also fund a lot of battery storage to suit your savings.”
However, global energy demand is also on the rise. The utility argues that growth in loads, or increasing demand for electricity, means that coal units must be kept in the grid while building new energy sources. The company predicts that electricity demand will increase by 20% by 2035, according to data compiled by RMI, a nonprofit focused on energy research.
“There was a delay in retirement based on grid stability and energy needs arising from using data centers and AI,” said Emily Arthun, CEO of the American Coal Council. The new administration's plan to roll back regulations and policies regarding the coal industry “gives the opportunity for utility to use coal for longer,” Arsan said.
In Indiana, Duke Energy proposed to extend the lifespan of the Gibson Power Plant. This is a 50-year-old plant that can burn enough coal to produce more than 3,300 megawatts of electricity until 2038, and backtracks previous plans for charcoal-free utilities.
In an email statement, Duke Energy cited “high-growth demand for energy” for delays.
But increasing use of electricity in cars, buildings and industries is part of the clean energy transition and does not require coal, experts say. The utility has the option to increase the use of renewable energy, such as wind, solar, and battery storage.
Critics, including the tech giants, have been called the rise in forecasts of increased energy demand from AI and data centers. Last year, Microsoft argued that while utilities underestimate how renewable energy meets demand, they overestimate the amount of energy they need.
Renewable energy could surpass the increase in electricity demand, according to the Energy Economics and Financial Analysis Institute, an energy research firm. Since 2019, the US generation from wind and solar has exceeded an increase in electricity demand almost 100 million megawatts-hours. In 2024, more than 80% of renewable energy per year ended up abolishing coal. At that rate, renewable energy could surpass charcoal every day in 2026, according to the Institute.
But in addition to market forces, utilities have taken advantage of changes in environmental regulations to open coal stations, especially in coal-friendly states like Wyoming, where two-fifths of US coal are still mined. You can leave it there.
“For an exclusive utility owned by an investor, it's not costing to keep the factory running. Inevitably, it costs the fee payer who pays it,” Dr. Solomon said. . “Politically, I don't think there's just a feeling of pressure to move to a cleaner energy source, as there's a lot of support for coal in Wyoming and Utah where Rocky Mountain Power is operating.”
Operators at the Dave Johnston Power Station last month withdrew plans for three of the station's four coal-fired forces.
Willwarasila for the New York Times
Under the Clean Air Act regulations passed last year, coal units that have planned to operate 2032 in the past must comply with lower carbon regulations. Rocky Mountain Power has plans for at least two units to adopt carbon capture technology by 2030, but other requirements from the Environmental Protection Agency's carbon pollution regulations have been “modeled as formal requirements.” Not at all,” according to an emailed statement from parent company Pacificorp. of Rocky Mountain Power. The law is in lawsuit and Trump is not expected to enforce it.
“A lot of that is politics,” said Christine Shearer, project manager at Global Energy Monitor. “The pending EPA regulations regarding coal plants are currently uncertain, and we can see that the utility has a more friendly political atmosphere and may be looking for ways to keep coal plants online for a long time …”
Other utilities are responding to economic power and state-level regulations to close coal units more quickly. Between 2017 and January 2025, almost a quarter of coal units accelerated planned retirement dates. In Michigan, for example, coal operators have decided to retire from their 1,500 megawatt fleet by the end of 2026 six years earlier. Another powerful greenhouse gas. The transition will save customers almost $600 million, according to Srikanth Maddipati, vice president of consumer energy, a utility that runs Coleman.
Maddiepati pointed out the regulations on clean water and coal waste disposal as a reason for resigning early, but the bigger issue is that if maintained online, the expensive maintenance costs older units require. I mentioned. Michigan's Clean Energy Standard required consumer energy to serve customers with 60% renewable energy by 2035 and 100% renewable energy by 2040. Renewable energy was also inexpensive, Maddapati said.
“How we produced energy 200 years ago is different from today,” Madapati said. “Our customers continue to adopt new technologies to provide safer and more reliable energy, which will benefit them.”
Almost two-thirds of accelerated retirements occurred at the Kingston Fossil Factory, a 1.4-gigawatt coal factory owned by Tennessee Valley authorities. Kingston, once the largest coal plant in the world, opened in 1955, was also one of the nation's largest industrial disasters when billions of gallons of coal residue were leaked in 2008. The unit is also modified to burn gas.
But as more planned gas, nuclear and renewables enter the grid, even the open units continue to lose capacity.
“They open these units and leave the options open, but that doesn't mean they'll be used much,” says Seth, a data analyst at the Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. Faster said. “They're not competitive.”
Methodology
The planned retirement and changes to the coal unit were compiled by Global Energy Monitor and The New York Times. Changes to retirement plans do not reflect the shift to other fuel types or additional technologies to reduce emissions from existing coal units.
Some plant owners did not respond to planned resignation confirmation requests, and a recent update was used from the Global Energy monitor.
Northstar Clean Energy said that TES Filer City Station Unit 1 will continue to burn coal until 2025, and possibly until early 2026 and early 2027, as Northstar Clean Energy will move to biomass with carbon capture and sequestration at its plants. ” It is marked as “retracted” for the purposes of this article.
A planned retirement at Santee Cooper's Winyah Generating Station Coal Unit is subject to having a replacement generation.
The current retirement status for Cardinal Plant Unit 1 could not be confirmed. It is marked on the map as “Resignation as planned.”
