The Department of Energy ordered Colorado coal plant to stay open for three months, one day before it was set to close. The coal plant will require tens of millions in repairs to get up and running again, and its retirement was expected to save Colorado ratepayers $79 million per year.
Coal is a dead energy source. It’s costly, inefficient, and deadly both for workers and for all species on Earth alike. For these reasons, coal has seen a rapid decline in the US, as the country shifts to significantly better power sources.
Coal peaked at around half of US electricity supply in the early 2000s, but has been dropping precipitously since around 2008. Now, coal is only 15% of US electricity supply, and that number will keep dropping.
There is no point to opening new coal plants, because they’re enormously expensive, and it’s getting worse. This is why almost all of new US capacity this year has been solar or wind generation.
But that hasn’t stopped republicans from trying. The current squatter in the White House, who cannot legally hold office in the US, is doing his best to force the high costs and poison from this dead energy source onto the US populace. He’s already dedicated $625 million of taxpayer money to propping up this dead energy source, and the former oil CEO he installed into the Energy Department fired his latest salvo today.
The DoE ordered Craig Power Plant in Craig, Colorado to stay open for at least three months, the day before the plant was set to retire.
DoE claimed that “reliability” was the reason for its order, but the plant’s operator, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, says “Craig Unit 1 is not required for reliability or resource adequacy purposes.” It made this statement earlier this year, expecting that the DoE might issue such an order.
An analysis showed that the annual cost of keeping Craig open would be $79 million. This cost would be applied to Colorado ratepayers, increasing the price of their electricity during an affordability crisis (and it’s not the first time these clowns have done this).
Colorado’s Governor, Jared Polis, pointed out how ludicrous the order is:
This order will pass tens of millions in costs to Colorado ratepayers, in order to keep a coal plant open that is broken and not needed… Ludicrously, the coal plant isn’t even operational right now, meaning repairs — to the tune of millions of dollars — just to get it running, all on the backs of rural Colorado ratepayers!
It also works counter to the government’s own priorities. Colorado is highly noncompliant with federal EPA clean air regulations, especially in the Eastern front of the Rockies, where most of the state’s population lives and breathes. Shutting down the plant was supposed to help Colorado become compliant, and DoE’s order only damages its ability to meet federal requirements.
Environmental group Earthjustice already announced it would take action to stop the illegal order. Several of the administration’s illegal orders have already been stopped in court, but that hasn’t stopped them from continuing to do the same illegal things again.
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