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Slew of coal plants get new lease on life — with gas

"Repowering" projects in New York and elsewhere are provoking battles...

Old U.S. coal-fired power plants, the target of new anti-pollution rules, aren't necessarily shutting down. Many are getting a second life as they're "repowered" with natural gas.

Decisions to keep running these plants—which are often more than 40 years old—have sparked court battles in New York and are raising questions about how much should be done to retain legacy fossil-fuel facilities.

In the past four years, at least 29 coal units in 10 states have switched to natural gas or biomass, according to SNL Financial, a market data firm. Another 54 units, mostly in the U.S. Northeast and Midwest, are slated to be converted over the next nine years. The future and completed conversions represent more than 12,000 megawatts of power capacity, enough to power all the homes in New England for one year.

By switching to natural gas, plant operators can take advantage of a relatively cheap and plentiful U.S. supply. The change can also help them meet proposed federal rules to limit heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, given that electricity generation from natural gas emits about half as much carbon as electricity from coal does. (Vote and comment: "Can Natural Gas Be a Bridge to Clean Energy?")

Battles in New York

In New York, at least three large coal plants that faced closure are slated for conversion to natural gas—if courts allow it. The Dunkirk plant in western New York is the focus of a lawsuit by environmental groups that say the $150 million repowering will force the state's energy consumers to pay for an unnecessary facility.

"What we're concerned about is that the Dunkirk proceeding is setting a really, really bad precedent where we're going to keep these old, outdated, polluting plants on life support for political reasons," said Christopher Amato, a staff attorney at Earthjustice, an environmental group, and a plaintiff in the case.

Dunkirk's operator, NRG, wanted to mothball the plant in 2012, saying it was not economical to run. The utility, National Grid, said shutting it down could make local power supplies less reliable, a problem that could be fixed by boosting transmission capacity—at a lower cost than repowering Dunkirk. Earthjustice alleges that the deal to reopen the plant, which New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced last December, was a purely political move meant to preserve jobs and local tax revenue.

National Grid spokesperson Steve Brady, while confirming that transmission upgrades could have addressed the reliability concerns, echoed the idea that local incentives were behind the Dunkirk decision. "There was more at stake with regard to potential plant closure than just reliability," he said. "Local and regional economic issues—including construction and permanent jobs, property taxes, other economic impacts, and so on—were also important to the evaluation process directed by our state regulatory agency."

Source: news.nationalgeographic.com