Utilities announce closure of 10 aging power plants in Midwest, East

By Juliet Eilperin, Updated: Wednesday, February 29, 10:10 AM

Two separate utilities announced the closure of 10 aging U.S. power plants Wednesday, a move environmental groups hailed as a major victory in their ongoing effort to phase out the nation’s coal-fired electricity generation.

Midwest Generation, which had come under intense pressure from environmental activists, Chicago residents and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, told the mayor it would retire its Fisk power plant in 2012 and Crawford plant in 2014. Both have been operating for decades in the middle of the city’s Southwest side.

GenOn Energy, meanwhile, issued a statement saying it would deactivate eight power plants — eight fired by coal and one by oil — between June 2012 and May 2015 because it would be too expensive to install pollution controls now required by the federal government. The Environmental Protection Agency finalized rules in December that require utilities for the first time to curb the amount of mercury and other air toxins they release in the air.

In its announcement, GenOn outlined a schedule for closing 3,140 megawatts of generation capacity in Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey “because forecasted returns on investments necessary to comply with environmental regulations are insufficient.”

The closing of the Fisk and Crawford plants marks the biggest public win for anti-coal activists and their allies in elected office. They have been in operation since 1968 and 1958, respectively. Last week Emanuel had warned Midwest Generation it had a week to broker a deal on curbing pollution from the plants or face the prospect of a city council ordinance that would force the company to shut them down within two years.

Michael Brune, executive director of the advocacy group Sierra Club, called the closures “a giant leap in our work to move America beyond coal.”

“This announcement is the culmination of many years of hard work by local families and concerned residents in Pilsen and Little Village, and this victory belongs to them,” Brune said in a statement. He added previous locations had been burning coal in these same locations since 1903, “contributing to asthma attacks, respiratory illnesses and other health problems.”

But Carol Raulston, spokeswoman for the National Mining Association, cited the retirement as an example of how the federal government’s new air quality rules could threaten the nation’s future electricity supply.

“These announcements are further proof EPA has dangerously underestimated the impact of its unprecedented roll-out of rules on the reliability of the nation’s electricity grid, as the announced retirements of electricity plants already exceeds EPA’s dubious estimate,” Raulston wrote in an e-mail.

According to Bruce Nilles, senior campaign director for the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” campaign, Midwest Generation will replace the electricity it generates from the two Chicago power plants with a mix of natural gas and renewable energy.

Midwest Generation did not immediately return calls seeking comment Wednesday.

In May 2011, eight Greenpeace activists climbed Fisk’s 400-foot smokestack and painted the message “Quit Coal” on it. The activists, who were arrested in the morning after staying overnight, are still facing legal charges stemming from the incident. Eight Greenpeace activists also rappelled off the Pulaski bridge in Chicago with a banner to stop a coal barge from delivering coal to the Crawford coal plant on the same day.

In January 2010, the Sierra Club announced it would aim to retire 105,000 megawatts of coal-fired generation with renewable energy by 2015; at this point 106 existing coal plants, representing 43,000 megawatts of generating capacity, are slated for closure. New York mayor Michael R. Bloomberg last year pledged to give the group $50 million over four years if it can ensure by 2015 a third of the nation’s current coal plants are either retired or slated for closure.

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