The Trump administration ordered an growing old coal-fired energy plant in Colorado to stay open on Tuesday, a day earlier than it was set to be retired.
The order from Energy Secretary Chris Wright will hold the practically 50-year-old Craig Generating Station Unit 1 in northwest Colorado working till the tip of March, with an possibility to prolong it additional.
It’s the Department of Energy’s sixth such transfer this yr; Wright has additionally ordered two coal crops in Indiana, one in Michigan and one in Washington state to stay open previous their retirement dates, in addition to a Pennsylvania energy plant that runs on oil.
“Keeping this coal plant online will ensure Americans maintain an affordable, reliable, and secure supply of electricity,” Wright stated in a press release.
Colorado’s governor and its high vitality official pushed again on Wright’s declare that maintaining Craig open would enhance affordability, saying it might solely elevate electrical energy costs.
In a press release, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, stated the order would move “tens of millions in costs to Colorado ratepayers, in order to keep a coal plant open that is broken and not needed.”
According to Polis’ assertion, Craig 1 “isn’t even operational right now” and would require repairs costing millions of {dollars} to get it up and operating earlier than it could even produce energy. Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, the ability provide co-op that owns Craig 1, stated the unit has been offline since a important half broke on December 19.
“As a not-for-profit cooperative, our membership will bear the costs of compliance with this order unless we can identify a method to share costs with those in the region,” stated Tri-State CEO Duane Highley.
It would cost at the very least $20 million to hold Craig 1 operational for 90 days and roughly $85 million to run the unit for a yr, according to a report from energy sector consulting agency Grid Strategies, ready for the Sierra Club. Those prices are largely from the acquisition of coal. However, the value tag could balloon to $150 million per yr, relying on how a lot the DOE requires the plant to run, the Grid Strategies report stated.
Colorado Energy Office govt director Will Toor stated Tri-State has already constructed gasoline and renewables initiatives to exchange the ability the unit produced. Toor stated the North American Electric Reliability Corporation has not forecast any reliability dangers within the area.
In different phrases, Toor stated, Craig 1 is solely not wanted to bolster the state’s grid.
“We think there would be a very significant cost to ratepayers for no benefit,” Toor advised NCS.
In addition, Toor stated, Craig 1 was constructed close to a coal seam that has had all of its coal mined. Procuring extra coal from elsewhere would incur further prices.
Wright’s order “is purely for the purpose of trying to keep coal in the system for ideological reasons, while driving up cost to customers,” Toor stated. “At the same time, they are actually taking steps to reduce the reliability of the grid by making it far harder to deploy the resources that you can quickly build, which are wind and solar.”
Keeping different coal crops open previous their retirement dates has foisted tens of millions of further prices on ratepayers.
Consumers Energy, the utility operating a retiring Michigan coal plant that Wright pressured to stay open in June, just lately reported that it cost $80 million to hold the plant open from late May to late September — largely from the acquisition of further coal — which can elevate residential electrical energy payments in Michigan and 10 different states the plant serves.
Environmental teams are difficult the opposite orders from Wright within the courts.
Correction:
An earlier model of this story misstated a determine in a Grid Strategies report on Craig Generating Station Unit 1.