13 July 2016
Enviros issue poorly organized press release on Colstrip 1 & 2 shutdown
Thanks to an agreement announced yesterday, the Colstrip 1 and 2 generating units will be shutting down by 2022 — but Colstrip units 3 and 4, which are newer and larger, will remain online, burning coal, belching smoke, making money, and employing Montanans.
Updated 15 July Units 1 and 2 each have 358-megawatt nameplate ratings, and a net capacity of 307 MW. They began operating in 1975 and 1975. Units 3 and 4, approximately twice the size, went online in 1984 and 1984. (Source: IEEFA.)
The continued operation of units 3 and 4 is as important as the shutdown of units 1 and 2, but the Montana Environmental Information Center and the Sierra Club did not make that clear in their press release (PDF) on the agreement until the eleventh paragraph. Here are the first three:
BILLINGS, Mont. – Montana Environmental Information Center (MEIC) and Sierra Club reached a historic agreement today with Puget Sound Energy and Talen Energy to retire the oldest and most financially risky coalburning units at the Colstrip coal plant in Colstrip, Montana.
Units 1 and 2 – which were built in the 1970s and lack stateoftheart pollution controls – have faced serious problems remaining competitive as energy markets shift dramatically. Meanwhile, Washington and Oregon, which are the main customers for Colstrip’s electricity, have sent clear signals that they no longer want coalgenerated power and prefer more clean energy. Under the agreement, which was filed with the District Court in Missoula, Pennsylvaniabased Talen and Seattlebased PSE have until July 2022 to retire the two units.
Today’s decision marks an opportunity to use Colstrip’s existing transmission system to build out more clean energy and export it to Washington and other states. The American Wind Energy Association ranks Montana third for wind power potential in the United States. Montana’s wind resource has the potential to power 6.4 million average homes by 2030 according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
And here’s the eleventh paragraph, which should have been the third:
Colstrip’s two newer units, built in the 1980s, are not covered by the agreement and will continue to run.
The shutdown agreement may have blindsided Governor Steve Bullock. It certainly won’t help his re-election campaign, as the organized interests that will be hurt by the shutdown may decide that Democratic energy policies are bad for both business and labor.