[TheRealVille]

Coal plants cancelled in 2007
From SourceWatch
Jump to: navigation, search




This article is part of the Coal Issues portal on SourceWatch, a project of CoalSwarm and the Center for Media and Democracy.
Between 2000 and 2006, over 150 coal plant proposals were fielded by utilities in the United States. By the end of 2007, 10 of those proposed plants had been constructed, and an additional 25 plants were under construction. But during 2007 a large number of proposed plants were cancelled, abandoned, or put on hold: 59 according to the list below. Several conclusions can be drawn from this tally.

Climate concerns have begun to play a major role in plant abandonments and cancellations: Concerns about global warming played a major role in 15 cases. These included five proposed Florida plants (Glades, Taylor, Seminole, Polk, and Stanton), seven proposals in Western states that have newly implemented strict carbon regulations on coal (Avista's unnamed unit, Sunflower's Holcomb unit 3; Idaho Power's unnamed unit; Energy Northwest's Pacific Mountain Energy Center; PacifiCorp's Intermountain Power, Bridger IGCC demonstration, and Bridger expansion); and Sunflower's Holcomb units 1 and 2.

Coal plants are being eliminated from long-range plans: Increasingly, coal plants are disappearing before they can even be named, due to increasing regulatory scrutiny of long-range integrated resource plans. In addition to the plants abandoned by PacifiCorp and Idaho Power Company, it is likely that other utilities around the United States have eliminated coal plants from their long-term planning rosters without public announcement.
Renewables are elbowing out coal: Regulators in several states have begun favoring utility-scale renewables over coal. In Delaware, regulators cancelled a coal power plant proposed by NRG Energy in favor of an alternative proposal that combined wind and natural gas. In California, the combination of a strict carbon emissions standard and a renewable portfolio standard has prompted utilities to enter into contracts for large thermal solar projects sponsored by Ausra, BrightSource, and Solel. Solar thermal companies have found success in recruiting top utility executives such as Robert Fishman, who left an executive VP position at CalPine to take the helm at Ausra.

More plants are being abandoned than rejected: Of the 59 projects listed below, only 15 were rejected outright by regulators, courts, or local authorities. In the remaining 44 cases, the decision was made by utilities themselves. Reasons for abandoning plants include (1) rising construction costs, (2) insufficient financing or failure to receive hoped-for government grants, (3) lowered estimates of demand, and (4) concerns about future carbon regulations.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?tit...ed_in_2007

The two coal-fired units at
Martins Creek, which were built in
the 1950s, shut down permanently
in September as part of an
agreement with environmental
agencies in Pennsylvania and New
Jersey to reduce sulfur dioxide
emissions.http://www.pplweb.com/NR/rdonlyres/913D5...er2008.pdf

I've done all the leg work for you that I'm going to, just type in "coal fired units scraped" and you will see a lot more than I can post here. Let's see is Rush is right.

You win, :igiveup:

The one good thing is, my eggs aren't just wrapped up in the coal basket, I can help build gas and nuke units if they do away with coal units. Where are all your eggs?