Rocky Mountain Power announces new life for two Utah coal plants

Alixel Cabrera
Utah News Dispatch

Two major coal plants in Utah will continue to operate four to 10 years longer. At the same time, Rocky Mountain Power plans to cut back on renewables in the coming decades.

That’s according to an update to Rocky Mountain Power’s recently released Integrated Resource Plan. The new plan shows coal-fired units in the Hunter Power Plant, located in Emery County, are scheduled to remain operative until 2042, delayed from the 2032 date established in an earlier version of the plan first released in May 2023. Additionally, the utility extended the life of generators in the Huntington plant, also located in Emery County, from 2032 to 2036.

The plants have been a hot topic of conversation since they are fueled by coal, a resource that many utilities across the country are planning on phasing out in the coming decades. However, the Utah Legislature is betting on the reliability of fossil fuels, passing a package of bills that would allow the state to take action to stop the “premature” closure of coal generators.

PacifiCorp, Rocky Mountain Power’s parent company, highlighted in the updated document that some key changes are due to the Environmental Protection Agency’s approval of Wyoming’s Ozone Transport Rule and an order from a U.S. district court that would prevent the enforcement of a more strict federal air quality rule in Utah while a lawsuit is still pending.

“While the expected operational lives of Huntington and Hunter is a change from the last edition of the Integrated Resource Plan (May 2023),” David Eskelsen, a PacifiCorp spokesperson, said in an email, “the nature of our resource planning has always emphasized flexibility as change occurs in regulatory requirements, customer needs and technological opportunities.”

Legislation passed in the states that PacifiCorp serves did not have a major influence on the update, Eskelsen said. It’s part of the company’s regular programming to have a “quite mature” modeling analysis by the end of 2023, before the session started.

“Of course, new legislation passed this year will be fully evaluated in our next edition, the 2025 (plan),” Eskelsen said. “Work on that began in January, with public input meetings that will continue this year and into 2025. The target date for the 2025 IRP to be submitted to utility commissions is March 31, 2025.”

The update also shows that PacifiCorp is expecting to dramatically decrease its solar and wind portfolio. The initial plan called for a portfolio with new solar capacity of about 8,000 megawatts from 2034 to 2042. That changed to a starting point of over 2,000 megawatts in 2034, with progressive increases to reach 4,000 megawatts in 2042.

The new wind capacity decreased slightly in the 2042 projections. And new storage capacity also dropped from 8,000 megawatts to 4,000 megawatts.

Utah climate advocates expressed disappointment with the coal closure delays, calling it a “setback for our clean energy future and our economy.”

“Utah has the opportunity to lead the way on renewable energy,” HEAL Utah said in a statement. “But, in order to realize that potential, the state should reduce its reliance on fossil fuels and accelerate investments on solar, wind and energy storage. The time to do this is now, when we have historical opportunities to benefit from federal programs to invest in workers, in energy communities, and in cleaner generation.”

Those decisions, the advocates said, risk leaving communities and workers behind who could be benefiting from clean energy investments, “while placing a greater cost burden on ratepayers.”

The Sierra Club called the update “a significant regression for customers and the climate, unnecessarily extending reliance on expensive and dirty energy sources.” The club criticized the company’s decision, describing it as a move to double down on fossil fuels rather than lean into cleaner sources.

“PacifiCorp’s 2023 IRP update irresponsibly assumes that the Hunter and Huntington coal plants in Utah can operate without any pollution controls moving forward, a major oversight given EPA’s impending regulations to limit pollution in national parks, ozone crossing state lines, and greenhouse gas emissions, all of which will impact Hunter and Huntington,” Rose Monahan, Sierra Club’s staff attorney, said in a statement.

This story originally appeared on Utah News Dispatch and is republished under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.