Where coal plants are retiring, and still burning

ENERGY

Operators of the Dave Johnston Plant, a coal- and gas-powered plant near Glenrock, Wyo., have withdrawn retirement plans for three of the station’s four coal-fired units. WILL WARASILA — THE NEW YORK TIMES

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By Austyn Gaffney and Mira Rojanasakul

The New York Times

One of the oldest power plants in the United States, perched on the edge of the nation’s largest coal mine, was scheduled to close in 2027. But the plant’s operator recently canceled the retirement of the 66-year-old station, according to a draft utility plan published in late December.

Now, three coal-burning units at the Dave Johnston Power Plant, near Glenrock, Wyo., are among dozens nationwide that could keep burning coal far past scheduled retirement dates. Utilities could be taking advantage of growth in energy demand and changes in environmental regulations to keep these plants operating.

But experts say that won’t do much to slow coal’s inevitable decline.

Coal has been dwindling for over a decade. Once the dominant source of energy in the United States, today nearly 400 coal units supply roughly 16% of the nation’s grid. That’s far below natural gas, nuclear power and renewables.

About 780 coal units, individual generators with a boiler and a turbine capable of producing electricity, have retired since 2000. And more than half of the remaining units are also scheduled for retirement, according to new data from the Global Energy Monitor, an organization that collects international energy data.

But a New York Times analysis shows that utilities have extended the life of nearly a third of coal units with planned retirement dates, either through delays or by reversing course and canceling retirements entirely, between 2017 and today.

“In the last year or so, several larger utilities have backslid off emissions-reductions targets and, more specifically, retirement dates for some coal units,” said David Pomerantz, executive director of the Energy and Policy Institute, a research and advocacy group.

Continued use of coal means more carbon emissions, increasing the glut of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, along with airborne hazards that can harm human health. Many of the plants date to the 1960s and are expensive to operate, requiring heavy maintenance and retrofitted pollution controls.

In 2023, a study showed that 99% of operating U.S. coal plants were more expensive to run than the cost of building renewable replacements. That’s without factoring in the hundreds of billions of dollars in tax credits and incentives included in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act or expensive unit upgrades required by new federal pollution standards passed in 2024.“Even without IRA incentives we’re far past the crossover point for most coal plants,” said Michelle Solomon, an author of the 2023 study and senior policy analyst at Energy Innovation, a clean-energy research group. “It really becomes a no-brainer for not only adding new wind and solar but also funding a lot of battery storage with your savings.”

But global energy demand has also ticked up. Utilities have argued that load growth, or the increasing demand for electricity, means they need to keep coal units on the grid while they build out new sources of energy. They’ve predicted a 20% increase in electricity demand by 2035, according to data compiled by RMI, a nonprofit group focused on energy research.

“There’s been a delay over retirements based on grid stability and the energy needs arising from our data centers and AI usage,” said Emily Arthun, CEO of the American Coal Council. The new administration’s plans to roll back regulations and policies around the coal industry, “gives utilities the opportunity to use their coal longer,” Arthun said.

In Indiana, Duke Energy proposed extending the life of its Gibson Generating Station, a 50-year-old plant that can burn enough coal to produce more than 3,300 megawatts of electricity, until 2038, backtracking on the utility’s previous plan to be coal-free by 2035.

In an emailed statement, Duke Energy cited “the high and growing demand for energy” for the delay.

But that increased use of electricity in cars, buildings and industry is part of the clean-energy transition, and it doesn’t require coal, experts say. Utilities have the option to increase their use of renewables like wind, solar and battery storage.

Critics, including tech giants, have also called the projected increase in energy demand from AI and data centers overblown.

Utilities could also take advantage of changes in environmental regulations to keep coal stations open, especially in coal-friendly states like Wyoming, where two-fifths of U.S. coal is still mined.

“For an investor-owned monopoly utility, it’s not costing them to keep running the plant, necessarily, it’s costing the ratepayers who are paying for that,” Solomon said. “Politically, there’s a lot of support for coal in Wyoming and Utah where Rocky Mountain power is operating so I think they just don’t feel a ton of pressure to move to cleaner energy sources.”

“A lot of it is politics,” said Christine Shearer, a project manager at Global Energy Monitor. “The pending EPA regulations on coal plants are now uncertain, and utilities can see they have a friendlier political atmosphere and could be looking for ways to keep coal plants online longer.”