I just saw a (somewhat) encouraging Business Section article in The Seattle Times (reprinted from the LA Times). Title in the print version is “Coal-fired energy plants burn out in Western states”. It starts out:
For nearly half a century, the deserts and plains of the American West have been punctuated by coal-burning furnaces and towering smokestacks — hulking power stations that have sustained small-town economies and fueled the growth of the region’s major cities, from Los Angeles to Phoenix to Seattle.
The first month of the new decade landed like a sledgehammer on those industrial giants.
January started with two coal fired generators shutting down for good in Montana, followed by announcements of planned shutdowns in Arizona and New Mexico. At this point, according to the article, there are only 20 coal plants in the Continental US West whose owners have not committed to fully shutting them down and retiring them by specific dates. Since 2010, 49 coal-burning generating stations have shut down units or have announced plans to shut units down.
It’s not ALL good news —half the coal plants without retirement dates are in Montana, Utah, and Wyoming — with little or no regulation requiring cleaner energy efforts. Some of them were recently built and have access to very cheap coal from the Powder River Basin. Cheap to operate still, if you ignore the environmental costs. It’ll probably take a couple more rounds of drops in the cost of battery storage to take the legs out from under them on the cost of operations arena.
It will take pressure on other fronts — Washington, Oregon and the Sierra Club are pressuring Berkshire Hathaway over their coal-fired PacifiCorp units. Sierra Club in particular has challenged PacifiCorp’s cost assumptions. Stiffen your local legislators spines anyway you can!