Navajo Coal Plant - 7th-Largest CO2 Source In US - Edging Towards Shutdown

Last edited Sat Jan 28, 2017, 01:38 PM - Edit history (1)

Coal-fired power plants, once the workhorse of the nation’s electricity grid, are the biggest individual climate polluters in the country, and they’re falling victim to coal’s biggest competitor — plentiful, cheap natural gas flooding the country because of fracking. It’s a trend all across the nation, even as President Trump tries to begin to make good on his campaign promise to revitalize America’s declining coal fields while dismissing the threat they pose to the climate.

The Navajo plant may soon be the West’s largest victim of the move toward natural gas. It is America’s seventh-largest single source of the carbon dioxide emissions driving climate change. Its closure would relieve Arizona of a source of pollution long targeted by federal regulators for contributing to regional haze and poor air quality over the Grand Canyon.

The six other largest carbon polluters are coal-fired power plants scattered around the country, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “The owners’ decision to consider its future is based on the changing economics of energy — primarily the low cost of natural gas and other resources,” said Scott Harelson, spokesman for the Salt River Project, Arizona’s primary electric power company and one of the plant’s owners. “Coal plants across the West face a variety of issues that their respective owners must face with respect to their ongoing operations that could lead to additional closings.”

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State-level climate policies are having an effect, too, and are likely to be factors in any decision to shutter the Navajo plant, said Colleen Regan, head of North America power and environmental markets for Bloomberg New Energy Finance. For example, California’s cap-and-trade program prompted Los Angeles’ city electric utility to sell its stake in the Navajo plant, Regan said. The program — the nation’s first — caps the amount of climate pollution the state can release and issues pollution permits called allowances to utilities and companies. Allowances are auctioned and traded among polluters.

A Nevada electric company’s plan to cut its carbon pollution also led it to cut ties to Navajo by 2019, Regan said. “These climate-motivated deals have put an increasingly large onus on Salt River Project,” she said, adding that these factors and cheap natural gas are helping to put coal-fired power plants such as Navajo out of business. “This story is playing out across most of the country,” Regan said.

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The Navajo Generating Station coal-fired power plant near Page, Ariz., and Lake Powell.
Credit: Doc Searls/flickr


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http://www.climatecentral.org/news/wests-largest-coal-plant-may-close-21117