LEXINGTON, KY (May 11, 2023) — Earlier today, the Biden Administration released a draft package of regulations that will effectively force utilities to close the remainder of the nation’s coal-fired power generation fleet. Today’s action will drive up Americans’ electric bills, push the electric grid past the point of failure, lead to electricity rationing, and bring the nation’s economy to its knees, while China and India continue to grow their economies with low cost coal-fired power generation.
The new rules require coal-fired power plants to capture 90 percent of their CO2 emissions by 2040.
Biden EPA Administrator Michael Regan said utilities can “avoid most requirements by agreeing to shutter their coal units by 2032 or by 2035 if they run them only occasionally. Plants that will retire by 2040 but don’t meet those criteria would co-fire with natural gas, meaning that they would use 40 percent gas to lower their emissions.”
The Biden Administration is taking this action despite warnings from utilities and regulators that closing any more baseload generation capacity will lead to widespread blackouts and total grid failure. Today’s announcement is an open declaration of war against America’s coal miners, their families and the communities across this nation that depend on coal. It will drive tens of thousands of American onto unemployment lines and electric bills beyond many Americans’ capability to pay, forcing millions into energy poverty for millions. It will bring an end to economic development for Kentucky and the other states that depend on coal-fired generation for low industrial electricity rates to attract business investment.
Here in Kentucky, we’ve seen first-hand what the radical policies of the Obama and Biden Administrations have done.
Kentucky Power (KP) stopped coal-fired power generation at its Big Sandy plant in 2015. Since its closure KP customers have seen their electric bills increase by 78 percent – from 9 cents per kWh to 16 cents per kWh today. The shutdown of Big Sandy’s coal generation was largely the result of a decade-long regulatory assault by the Obama-Biden Administration that was designed to force utilities to close coal-fired power plants. Kentuckians were not alone in seeing their bills rise, average electricity prices across the nation increased by almost 30 percent between 2011 and 2021, as coal-fired generation went from 42% to 22%.
As a harbinger of things to come, this past December, Kentucky Utilities instituted rolling power outages as temperatures plummeted due to a polar air mass because they did not have the ability to meet the electricity demand. Yet, Kentucky Utilities and its sister company Louisville Gas & Electric are currently before the Kentucky Public Service Commission requesting approval to close 1,500 MW of coal-fired generation, that’s enough power to service over 600,000 homes.
Just a few weeks ago, PJM, the grid operator for the nation’s largest electricity market, projected it will lose 40 GW of generating capacity by 2030 – 21% of the market’s existing capacity – with only 31 GW of additions in the same period. Of the 40 GW of projected losses, PJM expects 25 GW to be pushed off the grid due EPA rules and state-mandated clean energy targets.
PJM believes that just three EPA rulemakings – part of the suite of six the agency is promulgating – could force 10,500 MW of capacity off the grid. Even the Biden Administration’s own regulators say the pace of coal plant closures is too fast.
FERC Commissioner Mark Christie has said traditional sources of power are shutting down “at an unsafe pace” to keep up with the transition to wind and solar and that “The red lights are flashing everywhere. We’re not going to have sufficient power supply.”
Christie’s fellow FERC Commissioner James Danly said, “We know that there is a looming resource adequacy crisis. Our market operators have been explicitly telling us as much for years. Both MISO and ISO-NE have warned about upcoming scarcity and PJM, the nation’s largest wholesale [electricity] market, and the one that serves Washington, D.C., has recently raised the alarm about impending shortfalls.”
Even the Biden-appointed Chairman of FERC, Willie Phillips, testified: “I am extremely concerned by the pace of retirements we are seeing of generators that are needed for reliability on our system.”
In fact, in 2022, as many as 40 planned coal plant retirements were postponed or scrapped largely due to acute grid reliability challenges where utilities and grid operators have made it clear closing plants would be reckless.
Today’s action by the Biden Administration must not be allowed to move forward. We urge you to call your Congressmen, your Senators, to contact your neighbors and friends and tell them our nation is being threatened by President Biden’s reckless disregard of reality, of the needs of average Americans who depend on reliable, affordable electricity. Urge them to take action to stop these policies from being enacted. The time is short. The threat to our way of life is real.
For more information contact Tucker Davis at the Kentucky Coal Association at (859)233-4743 or via email at tdavis@kentuckycoal.com.
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