Over the past two weeks, we’ve had a wave of coal plant retirement announcements that’s the biggest I can remember in my decade plus with the Sierra Club. And even better, virtually all of that coal is going to be replaced with clean energy and not fracked gas. Since these announcements came in the midst of the election, you may have missed the news, but they add up to a big tipping point. As President-elect Biden prepares to take office with a clear commitment to tackle the climate crisis and put the nation on a path to 100 percent clean energy, this growing momentum to transition away from fossil fuels to clean energy is right on time.
These retirements bring us to 175 GIGAWATTS slated to retire or closed since 2010, just shy of half the coal capacity that was on the grid a decade ago and has come online since. And the big new clean energy commitments these utilities are making to replace this coal power for tens of millions of homes promises to create thousands of new jobs and lots of exciting economic opportunities for communities.
A total of 26,082 megawatts have been proposed for retirement so far in 2020 -- the largest one-year total in US (and the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign) history and more than double the amount proposed for retirement in 2019. That’s a total of 334 coal plants slated to retire, leaving 196 remaining without retirement dates. Beyond Coal activists are a powerful group of parents, scientists, students, elected officials, people of faith, business owners, and so much more. We are a force to be reckoned with -- we are the ones working hard together for this transition to clean energy.
As we look ahead to 2021 and the new opportunities under a Biden-Harris administration, the momentum is clearly on the side of moving beyond coal and gas, and together we’re going to keep accelerating that progress in the months ahead. Here are the recent highlights:
Talen Energy’s Brandon Shores, Wagner, and Montour coal plants in Maryland and Pennsylvania
After years of campaigning and discussions with Talen Energy, it has announced that it will retire three coal plants in the Mid-Atlantic: Brandon Shores and Wagner in Maryland (1,865 MW) and Montour in Pennsylvania (1,642 MW). With these announcements, Maryland will have only two coal plants remaining without retirement dates, and Pennsylvania will have only four conventional (non–waste-coal) plants left.
You can see the Brandon Shores and Wagner power plants from Baltimore, and they’re the reason the Baltimore region was one of the few places even the Trump EPA recognized as being in violation of the Clean Air Act’s health-based standard for sulfur dioxide (SO2) pollution. Local residents told us about the coal dust they have to skim off their community pool and car windshields because the coal piles are so close to their homes. And when they figured out the SO2 problems were associated with the two plants, they mobilized.
In Pennsylvania, the Montour plant is a notorious polluter of both air and water. Working with partners over the years, we had strengthened air pollution requirements and locked down strong water-discharge permits for all of the coal plants in the state, including Montour.
Talen has also committed to pursue a hefty 1 GW of clean energy and storage, including some in the communities that are home to some of these plants. All this was the result of years of work by our staff and partners in multiple states.
WEC Energy’s Oak Creek coal plant in Wisconsin
This coal plant became notorious after we produced a viral video a few years ago that showed a local community member wiping coal ash off a red playground slide with his hand. After years of tireless advocacy by the Sierra Club and neighbors of the plant, WEC Energy Group announced it will retire 1,800 MW of coal and gas and replace it with a significant clean energy portfolio that includes 800 MW of solar, 600 MW of battery storage, and 100 MW of wind. WEC’s announcements are part of a “roadmap” that lays out the company’s near-term plans to achieve a 70 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2030.
This campaign has been a powerful partnership with local residents and activists that paired strong and consistent grassroots pressure with sharp and strategic legal and economic advocacy.
AEP’s Pirkey and Welsh coal plants in Texas
American Electric Power, parent company of Southwestern Electric Power Company (SWEPCO) and other subsidiaries, announced a plan to address coal ash and toxic water pollution across all its coal plants. The announcement included plans to end coal use at its 721-MW Pirkey and 1,116-MW Welsh plants in East Texas. In addition, AEP announced it will divest its interest in the Rockport coal plant in Indiana in 2022, which we see as an important indicator that the plant may be on a path to retirement.
The Sierra Club has fought pollution and ongoing spending at the SWEPCO coal plants for years, focusing both on the public health harms they cause as well as the economic harms to SWEPCO customers, who have subsidized the plants as they lost money. This transition from coal is long overdue.
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All this comes on the heels of other big coal retirement announcements this fall, including the single biggest coal retirement announcement in US history by Vistra, the biggest climate polluter in the US electricity sector. And now here we are: heading into a Biden-Harris administration with a president-elect who ran on climate, in a time when the climate crisis is landing on the doorsteps of more and more families and public demand for action is intensifying. As coal and gas continue to struggle to compete with renewables, we’ll keep pushing to accelerate the shift to 100 percent clean energy, create millions of new jobs, support a fair and robust economic transition for fossil fuel workers and communities, clean up pollution in low-income communities and communities of color, and tackle a massive source of climate warming emissions.
Together we will continue to organize and mobilize to restore our right to clean air, clean water, and a sustainable, healthy climate. The Sierra Club is a powerful collective of nearly four million grassroots changemakers with different races, ages, identities, incomes and zip codes -- and when we show up together, we can create powerful change. I am so excited about what we can accomplish for our kids, our communities, and our climate over the coming months and years.
