We’ve known for decades the fate of Utah’s leading energy source: Coal isn’t sustainable and would eventually disappear. It was only a question of when.
Now we know.
Last week, Rocky Mountain Power, which provides electricity to most Utah homes, announced it will abandon coal at its last two power plants a decade earlier than previously expected, with the plant in Huntington slated to close in 2031 and the last plant, Hunter, due to close in 2032.
If the pivot goes as planned, and much could change between now and then, it would be a watershed moment for Utah, where we have clawed coal from the earth since 1875 to generate the state’s primary power source.
The utility will start scaling back its use of coal beginning this summer.
In its place, Rocky Mountain’s parent company, PacifiCorp, said it plans a massive push on renewable energy, as well as building at least one nuclear plant.
The move is driven by a number of factors, including compliance with an Environmental Protection Agency rule on ozone and major investments in the energy infrastructure from the federal government.
But the biggest driver is the same thing that put the coal plants on the chopping block by 2042 in the first place — economics.
It now simply costs more, purely from a dollars and cents standpoint, to continue to operate the coal plants.
According to a study released earlier this year, the cost of generating renewable energy has fallen so sharply over the past decade that it is now cheaper to replace nearly every coal-powered watt with wind and solar power than to continue operating the existing coal plants.
“Rocky Mountain Power is taking advantage of the cheapest, cleanest resources available,” Sarah Wright, executive director of Utah Clean Energy, told me Friday. “[PacifiCorp] is planning for a total of 20,000 megawatts of renewable energy and over 7,000 megawatts of energy storage, which will drive a cleaner, safer, more affordable electrical system for all Utahns.”
To put it into context, the 20,000 megawatts PacifiCorp is aiming to produce system-wide is enough to power several million households. All of that may not end up in Utah, but a lot of it will, given that the state makes up 47% of PacifiCorp’s market.
And then there are the profound environmental benefits of phasing out coal. As of 2019, the two plants emitted nearly 14,500 tons of carbon dioxide, the same annual emissions as 3 million passenger cars, according to the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah. In 2020, The National Parks Conservation Association ranked Hunter as the 2nd worst source of regional haze impacting National Parks, while Huntington was 18th.
And a report last year by the Environmental Integrity Project and Earth Justice ranked Hunter as the ninth-worst groundwater-contaminating plant in the country as a result of the toxic coal ash that is a waste product of burning coal.
In short, Utahns stand to benefit from lower-cost, cleaner power than we have ever had before. It’s a tremendous opportunity.
It will, however, hurt Utah’s already struggling coal-country economies.
A report last year from the University of Utah’s Kem Gardner Policy Institute, looking at the previous planned closures — Huntington by 2036 and Hunter by 2042 — already forecasted lost jobs, a shrinking population and diminishing wages in Carbon and Emery counties.
With an accelerated timeline, the report said, a quarter of the jobs in the two counties could disappear and wages would fall by 10% before rebounding.
It is a blow, to be sure, but one that we have known for years is coming.
There has been a concerted push at the state level to focus on helping rural Utah, and coal towns in particular, cope with coal’s demise. Several years ago I wrote about the Coal Country Strike Team, an innovative, targeted task force designed to help the impacted communities absorb the inevitable impacts and re-emerge with a stronger, more diverse economy.
Of course, there will be those in the Legislature who want to cling to the past, fight the change and score political points. It’s a foolish crusade that wastes capital and, more importantly, squanders another non-renewable resource we don’t have much of: Time.
from The Salt Lake Tribune https://ift.tt/Hoym41J
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