The Trump administration’s Department of Energy on Monday extended its emergency order keeping coal-burning Craig Unit 1 open against the wishes of its owners as well as Colorado regulators and environmental advocates.
The plant, scheduled for a Dec. 31 permanent shutdown by Tri-State Generation and Transmission long before the first Trump emergency order, will now stay open and available to bolster Western power supplies through at least June, the order says.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser and other states are challenging the coal plant extensions in federal court, but have not yet won reversals. Opponents of the extensions renewed their criticism, calling coal power needlessly costly and dangerous to the health of Colorado residents.
“The Trump administration has doubled down on an order that no one seems to want except the coal industry,” said Leslie Coleman, senior attorney with Earthjustice’s Rocky Mountain Office. “Craig’s co-owners have had to pour money into this aging and unreliable unit to keep it available, and those costs are likely to be passed on to Coloradans. It is time for the administration to stand down and allow this unit to retire as utilities and state regulators had long planned.”
Tri-State Generation, a power-supplying co-op that co-owns the northwestern Colorado unit, has said it completed repairs earlier this year and the plant has been available to respond to demand orders from regional power coordinators. But the plant still hadn’t been called on for actual power as of Monday, said Tri-State officials, who are reviewing the new order.
Tri-State and environmental groups have said the federal orders have not offered any information about who will pay to keep Craig 1 operating, which could cost more than $80 million over a year.
“The emergency conditions resulting from increasing demand and shortage from accelerated retirement of generation facilities will continue in the near term and are also likely to continue in subsequent years,” according to the order by Secretary of Energy Chris Wright. “This could lead to the loss of power to homes and businesses in the areas that may be affected by curtailments or power outages, presenting a risk to public health and safety.”
Colorado clean energy officials and advocates counter that Craig’s power is not needed, and that the state had planned carefully for years to make sure cleaner sources came online while state rules required retirement of the last six coal plants by 2030. Colorado says it needs the coal plants to close to meet a number of clean air goals, including an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector by 2030.
Instead, Colorado’s life as a coal state keeps getting extended. In addition to the Craig order, Xcel has been allowed to extend the life of the Comanche 2 unit in Pueblo while it completes repairs on the damaged Comanche 3. Colorado Spring Utilities, meanwhile, is asking the state for permission to keep burning coal at its Ray D. Nixon plant in Fountain past the previously scheduled closing in 2029, while it builds replacement power.
The Craig Station owners have also noted the double-whammy they face with the unit’s coal energy: There’s only so much transmission capacity in northwestern Colorado, and if they have to force coal power out onto the lines, they won’t be able to use solar electricity generated by the newly added 145MW Axial Basin solar farm in Moffat County.