Big US utility closes coal power plants

Big US utility closes coal power plants

TckTckTck • November 15, 2013 • 0 Comments

Coal fired power plants create air pollution dangerous to human health and the environment. Creative Commons: Simon Q, 2013

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the largest public power provider in the United States, announced Thursday it will shut down eight units of coal-fired power at three plants in the southeastern US.

According to the Clean Air Task Force, the pollution for just one of these coal plants contributed to 940 asthma attacks, 83 heart attacks, and 57 deaths per year in Alabama alone. Jimmy Green, Energy Policy Manager at the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, said:

TVA is acknowledging that it's easier to meet electricity requirements through energy efficiency rather than by propping up old coal plants with expensive retrofits to satisfy increasingly stringent environmental regulations. The cheapest and cleanest energy is the energy you don't use.

Bill Johnson, TVA's 59-year-old CEO, said:

The average age of our coal fleet is over 51 years, so I like to joke that I would like to close the ones that are older than me.

TVA's announcement is seen as a major step in the direction of cleaning up America's electricity sector. This move is part of a plan to reduce coal to only 20% of the utility's total energy portfolio.

Former head of the TVA S. David Freeman said of the decision to reduce coal burning:

I was deeply involved in the strip mining, underground mining, trucking, and most importantly, the burning of huge quantities of coal. No one who has been deeply involved with coal can rightfully say it is clean.

Now, as it works toward reducing its carbon pollution, the TVA is being urged to resist replacing those coal plants with natural gas plants — which would keep it on the path of dirty, harmful energy – and to instead develop and deploy ground-breaking clean energy and energy efficiency programs.