Coal-Fired Power Plant Closure Announcements Surge

Written by John Egan for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Coal-fired power plant retirements across North America are surging, a trend that is expected to continue as the imperative to decarbonize the electric power industry causes asset owners to increasingly abandon coal in favor of more environmentally friendly ways to generate electricity.

"The drive to decarbonize the electricity business continues to thin the ranks of coal-fired generators," said Britt Burt, Industrial Info's vice president of research for the Global Power Industry. "In less than a year, closure announcements covering about 5,000 megawatts (MW) of coal-fired generation were added to the 65,000 MW of planned closures that would take place by 2030. That means right now, we are tracking the expected closure of about 70,700 MW of coal-fired generation by 2030."

"Last year," he continued, "IIR estimated that about 35,000 MW of coal-fired generation across North America would be closed by 2025. Now, that number is about 43,000 MW. If anything, we expect the closure announcements to continue growing."

Click on the image at right to see a summary of power plant retirements for all fuels through 2035.

Late last month, the PJM Interconnection announced it was deactivating about 3,200 MW of coal-fired generation, most of which was owned by Energy Harbor (Akron, Ohio), the unregulated merchant power unit of FirstEnergy Corporation (NYSE:FE) (Akron).

In February, AES Corporation (NYSE:AES) (Arlington, Virginia) announced its intent to exit coal-fired generation by 2025 using a combination of asset sales, fuel conversions and plant retirements. The utility holding company currently operates about 7,100 MW of coal power plants. AES said it signed about 5,000 MW of renewable energy and energy-storage agreements last year. It further said that it expected to bring about 9,239 MW of renewable energy and energy storage projects by 2025.

Speaking to investors on February 24, during the company's full-year 2021 earnings call, AES Chief Executive Officer Andrés Gluski said, "Last year was AES' best year ever, in terms of safety, new renewables PPAs signed, growth in our backlog of projects and pipeline, earnings and cash flow. ... Our backlog of (renewable energy) projects stands at 9,200 MW and our pipeline of potential projects grew to 59,000 MW."

"To continue to accelerate the future of energy," Gluski continued, "today, we are announcing our intent to exit coal generation by the end of 2025."

In other coal power plant retirement news:

• Public Service Company of New Mexico, a unit of PNM Resources Incorporated (NYSE:PNM) (Albuquerque, New Mexico) said it would close two units at the San Juan Generating Station in New Mexico by September 2022.
• GenOn Energy Holdings, a subsidiary of NRG Energy Incorporated (NYSE:NRG) (Houston, Texas), this month transferred ownership of its 52-year-old, 565-MW Cheswick Power Station in Springdale, Pennsylvania, to Charah Incorporated (Louisville, Kentucky), which specializes in coal power plant demolition. Cheswick ceased operations at the end of March. GenOn last year said it would close the plant, citing market conditions, environmental rules and an inability to compete in the PJM market.
• Duke Energy Corporation (NYSE:DUK) (Charlotte, North Carolina) told investors and analysts on February 10 that it intended to close its 11 remaining coal-fired generators by 2035 as it moves rapidly to cleaner energy. Six of those units to be closed are in North Carolina and South Carolina, one is in Florida and four are in the Midwest. The utility holding company has retired 56 coal-burning units totaling about 7,500 MW since 2010.

"Years ago, when generators were just starting to decarbonize," Burt commented, "some people thought all it would take to reverse that trend and drive generators back to coal would be some large outages for utilities that relied too heavily on solar or wind power, and didn't have the coal generation running when the sun didn't shine or the wind stopped blowing."

"Not only has that not happened, but the rush to renewables has accelerated in recent years," he said. "It looks like the next stop on King Coal's train will be full decarbonization sometime in the next decade or so."

Industrial Info Resources (IIR) is the world's leading provider of market intelligence across the upstream, midstream and downstream energy markets and all other major industrial markets. IIR's Global Market Intelligence Platform (GMI) supports our end-users across their core businesses, and helps them connect trends across multiple markets with access to real, qualified and validated project opportunities. Follow IIR on: LinkedIn.