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US Energy Producer Plans To Scrap Two Major Coal Plants To Meet U.N. Climate Targets

by Thomas Catenacci
January 23, 2024, 7:10 AM
in News and Opinion
Reading Time: 5 mins read
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sherburne county coal plantA major U.S. energy developer has initiated the process of shuttering two major coal-fired power plants serving more than a million homes in the upper Midwest, helping the company meet its corporate climate commitments.

Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy announced this month that it closed one of three coal units at Sherburne County Generating Plant [pictured], Minnesota’s largest power plant, as part of its plans to deliver 100% carbon-free electricity to customers and shut down all of its remaining coal facilities. [emphasis, links added]

The company is planning to retire the two remaining units at the plant and another coal plant in Minnesota, the Allen S. King plant, by 2030.

In response to Xcel Energy’s shutdown of the unit at Sherburne County Generating Plant and plans to shutter all remaining coal generation, the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission (SDPUC) fired off a letter urging the company to reconsider those plans.

The company — which has pledged to replace the plants with electricity generation from green energy like solar — provides power to customers in both Minnesota and South Dakota.

“The North American Electric Reliability Corporation [NERC] recently released a long-term risk assessment that showed the MISO region as having a high-reliability risk around the time the plants are planned to be closed,” SDPUC Chair Kristie Fiegen told Fox News Digital.

“One of the main contributors to that reliability risk is the premature retirement of dispatchable baseload generation before the appropriate replacement resources are added to the system.”

“While Xcel may have plans to replace part of the lost capacity from the early retirements with new solar and storage, the Commission is concerned that the replacement resources will not be dispatchable and, thereby, not as dependable as the Sherco and King plants have been for South Dakota’s customers over the years,” Fiegen continued.

In December, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation — a nonprofit organization that makes periodic recommendations to boost reliability — published its annual Long-Term Reliability Assessment.

According to the report, the region managed by the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), which oversees much of the Midwest including Minnesota and South Dakota, faces some of the highest grid risks as a result of coal generation retirements that are projected to outpace new green energy development at certain points in the future.

Xcel’s shutdown of the Sherburne County Generating Plant and Allen S. King Generating Plant would account for a sizable share of that existing coal generation scheduled to soon be taken offline.

The two plants have a total capacity of nearly 3,000 megawatts, enough to power more than a million homes.

MISO spokesperson Brandon Morris, though, said in a statement to Fox News Digital that the grid operator is both fuel-agnostic and policy-neutral and would continue to support the clean energy goals of its states and member utilities “across a diverse and complex system undergoing an energy transition while also maintaining system reliability.”

Under Xcel’s plans, it will build a 710-megawatt solar farm at the site of the Sherburne County Generating Plant and solar projects with a total capacity of 650 megawatts to replace the Allen S. King Generating Plant.

However, those plans wouldn’t produce enough power to replace the electricity generation of the two retiring coal facilities and would further represent intermittent forms of power that are dependent on weather conditions.

“Being in a northern climate, the Commission’s main concern is that there are enough dispatchable resources on the system to meet South Dakotans’ winter heating loads during long cold spells when there is a chance that renewable resources are not producing energy,” Fiegen added. “Keeping the lights on and making sure we have a reliable, affordable electric grid is one of our greatest priorities at the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission.”

“Premature closure of reliable baseload energy could put lives at risk if the electric system isn’t ready to absorb those retirements,” she said. “To this Commission, the NERC risk assessment is a flashing, bright-red warning light that there is a good chance this could be the case.”

Energy experts have long warned that replacing fossil fuel power generation with green energy could present risks since those alternatives produce a smaller share of their listed capacity.

Solar panels, for example, produce just 25%, and wind turbines produce 34% of their listed capacity, according to federal data. Coal, natural gas, and nuclear power plants, meanwhile, produce 49%, 54%, and 93% of their listed capacity, respectively.

“You have people in hospitals, you have low-income people who are affected. You have farmers, you have small businesses,” Michelle Bloodworth, the president and CEO of America’s Power, a coal power trade group, told Fox News Digital in an interview. “They certainly, obviously, rely upon electricity, whether that’s for health and human safety.”

“But, also, coal provides an insurance policy when other resources, like intermittent [energy], are not available, or natural gas prices. We saw a lot of high natural gas prices. Consumers can put food on the table instead of having to spend a significant portion of their income — which they really can’t afford to — on their electricity bill which, as we are seeing, continue to climb across the United States.”

Overall, Xcel — whose largest shareholders include BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, massive asset managers that have forwarded so-called environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives — has issued some of the most aggressive corporate sustainability goals of any developer in the nation, vowing to lower its electricity emissions 80% by 2030 and fully decarbonize its electricity generation by 2040.

Those goals, according to Xcel, are based on United Nations climate projections and targets.

To achieve its goals, Xcel has pledged to shutter fossil fuel power generation and vastly expand its green energy development while maintaining the size of its existing nuclear power fleet.

In a statement to Fox News Digital, Xcel Energy spokesperson Theo Keith said the company appreciated the SDPUC’s feedback, but that it is in alignment with the commission’s “priority to ensure reliability throughout the clean energy transition and ensure South Dakotans have a dependable supply of electricity at all times, including periods of extreme weather and high demand.” …snip…

According to Keith, Xcel’s nuclear fleet will continue to provide dispatchable power generation, the company plans to build new dispatchable generation, mainly hydrogen-ready combustion turbines, and Xcel will also construct up to 700 miles of new transmission lines.

“Utility companies are becoming increasingly aggressive in their pursuit of so-called ‘sustainability efforts.’ As part of their ESG priorities, Xcel is claiming to be a leader in the ‘energy transition’ and to provide consumers with ‘safe’ and ‘reliable’ energy at a competitive price,” Will Hild, the executive director of watchdog group Consumer’s Research, told Fox News Digital.

“Yet, their plan to close the King and Sherco generating plants would not only hike energy costs in the MISO area but threaten reliable energy for consumers in an area that is already at high risk,” Hild continued. “Just like other ESG advocates, Xcel claims to protect the consumers they serve while pulling the rug right from beneath them.”

“Unsurprisingly, Xcel’s largest shareholders are made up of the biggest champions of the ESG cult: BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street.”

Top image via Xcel Energy

Read full post at Fox News

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Comments 8

  1. SPURWING PLOVER says:
    1 year ago

    Wind Turbines and Solar Panels are Harmful to Birds especially the larger ones like Eagles, Vultures, Hawks Falcons and Owls(Raptors)their also a terrible eyesore as well and take up way too much land t hat would be better off left as pastureland for Livestock and Wildlife as well

  2. grumblingthunder says:
    1 year ago

    Solar panels don’t work when covered with snow. Are they really that stupid? YES!

    • Steve Bunten says:
      1 year ago

      And they don’t work every night which in the winter time is much longer than summer. Also when the temps really drop low the winds tend to be quite still. So here Xcel’s “green energy” debacles are producing little electricity.

  3. SPURWING PLOVER says:
    1 year ago

    Its time to Kick the United Nations Out moved the whole rotten thing to Moscow and turn the UN facility into a Homeless Shelter

  4. Sonnyhill says:
    1 year ago

    Former Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynn wasn’t content to shutter our coal-fired generators, taxpayers paid for her order to demolish them. Minnesota must ensure that their generating stations survive, as insurance against the inevitable. ESG shareholders need to shiver in the dark eating snow .

  5. Bruce Vinnola says:
    1 year ago

    The electricity in Minnesota is regulated which means Minnesota power company investors reap their greatest earnings from capital investment, which is usually 8 to 12% of the investment. This is significant because compared to mature coal generating facilities, earnings per customer, is multiples more than the earnings from the coal plants. That is why Xcel promotes the climate fear dogma like a televangelist; they want to make more profit at the expense of the people. It should be noted that because of shorter days and the indirect angle of the sun experienced in the winter, solar power is at its absolute worst when Minnesotan’s need their power the most.

    • Steve Bunten says:
      1 year ago

      Xcel Energy is also the main provider of electricity and natural gas here in Colorado where they are going down the same path. Even worse is the only nuke plant they operated was shuttered a few decades ago converting it to natural gas. They are in the process of shuttering the coal plants that they currently operate in the state while rolling out the wind turbines and solar panels. Being further south we do get more hours of sunlight than MN and also have more clear days. But suffer from the same issue of no electricity every night and reduced hours in the winter. But it’s as if no electric power engineer has asked them how they plan to provide electricity 24×7 for our modern economies.

      Also I remember a few years ago when MN was suffering some of its typical bitter cold winter weather and the wind was very still. Xcel was asking its customers using gas for heating their homes to turn down their thermostats so that there would be enough gas to run their power plants. Natural gas is good for providing the marginal electricity requirements but shouldn’t be used for base load since the natural gas can only be a just-in-time delivery since unlike coal it cannot be stored in quantity onsite.

  6. Russell Johnson says:
    1 year ago

    Energy suicide in America! The New World order views America as a puzzle piece and a place exists in their puzzle. Problem is we’re too big, powerful, rich and free to fit the space. As a result we must be reshaped to fit and the cutting tools are: Climate change, DEI, De-Dollarization, endless wars, unrestricted migration, inflation, lawlessness, wokeism, terrorism, gender confusion and constant chants of racism and division. Obama and O’biden are 100% behind this globalist attack. Wake up people it’s working……….

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