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Vistra Backs Illinois Transition Measure to Keep At-Risk Coal Plants Online Through 2025

April 12, 2021

The post Vistra Backs Illinois Transition Measure to Keep At-Risk Coal Plants Online Through 2025 appeared first on POWER Magazine.

Bleeding financially from underperforming and legally burdened coal generation in downstate Illinois and elsewhere, Vistra, the nation’s largest competitive generator, has renewed its call for passage of the Illinois Coal to Solar and Energy Storage Act, a bill that could help keep 2.2 GW of existing at-risk capacity online through 2025 while the state expands its renewable and storage capacity.

The Irving, Texas–headquartered company said it renewed its support for the bill owing to “mounting financial and legal pressures that now come from operating coal plants.” The announcement came as the company accelerated the closure of the 1.2-GW Joppa Power Plant in September 2022—three years earlier than previously disclosed—to settle a complaint related to pollution exceedances in Illinois.

Vistra’s Heavily Burdened Coal Fleet

The Joppa plant, which opened in 1953, has six coal units with a combined capacity of 1 GW, as well as five natural gas units with a combined capacity of 239 MW.…

Retirement Set for Wisconsin’s Second-Largest Coal Plant

February 6, 2021

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The Columbia Energy Center, a two-unit 1,100-MW coal-fired station located in Columbia County, Wisconsin, south of Portage, will be permanently retired by the end of 2024.

Alliant Energy, which co-owns the facility with Wisconsin Public Service Corp. (a subsidiary of WEC Energy Group) and Madison Gas and Electric Co., made the announcement on Feb. 2. It said Unit 1 would be shuttered by the end of 2023, with Unit 2 closed the following year.

“The closure of Columbia is truly a historic moment as we stop burning coal in our Wisconsin Operations and fully turn our attention to generating cleaner energy using renewable resources, such as solar, battery storage and high efficiency gas,” David de Leon, president of Alliant Energy’s Wisconsin energy company, said in a statement.

Alliant Energy has set goals of cutting CO₂ emissions in half by 2030, and eliminating all coal from its generation fleet by 2040.…

Companies Accelerate Shutdown of Chilean Coal Plants

January 2, 2021

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Italy’s Enel is decommissioning one of its coal-fired power plants in Chile two years sooner than originally planned, with the unit’s closure coming two days after the Chile-based unit of a U.S. utility announced it would accelerate the closure of a pair of coal-fired power plants in the country.

Enel on Dec. 31 is closing its 128-MW Bocamina 1 coal-fired power station. The company also is awaiting authorization from Chile’s National Energy Commission (CNE) to close its 350-MW Bocamina 2 plant in May 2022.

AES Gener on Dec. 29 said it would close both the 120-MW Ventanas 1 and 220-MW Ventanas 2 coal-fired generating facilities ahead of schedule, with Ventanas 1 going offline immediately, and Ventanas shutting down in 2022, instead of 2024 as originally scheduled. The Chilean government over the past year has been working with several generators in the country, including AES Gener, Enel, ENGIE, and Colbun, to gradually phase out coal-fired power generation in the South American nation.…

Continued Toll on Coal; More Companies File Bankruptcy

December 5, 2020

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The struggling U.S. coal industry, decimated by falling demand for the fuel from the power generation sector, and hit hard by low prices during the coronavirus pandemic, saw two more mining companies declare bankruptcy this week.

White Stallion Energy, which operates in Indiana and Illinois, and Lighthouse Resources, a coal company with mines in Wyoming and Montana, filed for bankruptcy in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Delaware, on Dec. 2 and Dec. 3, respectively. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has reported that the nation’s power sector consumed 30% less coal in the first half of 2020 than during the same period last year, as demand for electricity fell due to the pandemic, and natural gas and renewable energy continued to take market share from coal.

“In light of the challenging market conditions and other impacts on our business from COVID-19, we have been required to reduce costs and reorganize our business, resulting in the reduction of our workforce in Montana,” Lighthouse CEO Everett King said in a statement.…

Black & Veatch: No More Coal Construction

October 30, 2020

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Black & Veatch is ending the company’s participation in coal-based power market design and construction, saying it will allow the company to focus on clean energy technologies. The engineering and construction giant’s announcement Oct. 29 comes just more than a month after another major energy company, General Electric, said it would exit the new-build coal power market.

“We are an employee-owned company, and we do not make decisions based on what the market wants to hear, or how the market will react,” said Mario Azar, president of Black & Veatch’s power business, in an interview Thursday with POWER. “We make decisions based on the values of our company. We’ve been around for more than 100 years, and we want to be around for another 100 years or more.

“That’s how we make decisions as the executive committee of Black & Veatch,” he said. “It’s really centered around our values and our future.…

China Promotes Climate Goal, and Builds New Coal Plants

September 25, 2020

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Chinese President Xi Jinping said he wants his country to “achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.” It will not be an easy task for the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases (GHG).

China, though it has canceled some planned thermal power plants over the past several years, has as much as 200 GW of coal-fired facilities in its development pipeline, according to Mary Hutzler, a distinguished Senior Fellow at the Institute for Energy Research. Hutzler, who spent more than 25 years as an analyst and for a time acting administrator with the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), has said coal will be critical to China’s economic recovery after the coronavirus pandemic.

Xi, speaking to the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 22 as part of Climate Week NYC 2020 in New York City, called for a “green revolution,” saying the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need to preserve the Earth’s environment.…