In 2010, environmental advocates, elected officials and executives from TransAlta, a Canada-based electricity supplier, assembled a plan to close down Washington’s last remaining coal-burning power plant by the end of 2025.
The 15-year-long project acted as a benchmark of sorts for transitions of this kind – it included comprehensive financial support and educational opportunities for employees and their families.
It eventually lent itself to Washington’s clean energy goals passed in 2019, one of which declared that all state utilities must cease purchasing and using coal-powered energy by the end of 2025.
But late last month, right as the plant was on track to shut down its operations, the Department of Energy issued an emergency order, ruling that the plant must remain operational for another 90 days.
This posed many questions for the future of the plant, due to the long-term effort to close its doors and the lack of customers for coal-powered energy because of the Clean Energy Transformation Act.
The plant remains shut down despite the emergency order, but its future hangs in limbo. Joining us to discuss the details is Amanda Zhou, a climate and environment reporter at the Seattle Times.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Fifteen years ago, environmental advocates, elected officials, and power company executives hammered out a plan to close Washington’s last coal burning power plant by the end of 2025. The deal was hailed by many as a model of the transition to cleaner energy. But late last month, just before the plant was scheduled to close, the U.S. Department of Energy issued an emergency order saying that it had to remain operational for another 90 days. Amanda Zhou reports on climate and the environment for the Seattle Times. She’s been covering this story and she joins us now. It’s great to have you on Think Out Loud.
Amanda Zhou: Thanks so much. I’m excited to be here.
Miller: As I mentioned, this plan to shut down the plant, it goes way back. Can you tell us about the agreement that was approved about 15 years ago?
Zhou: Yeah, so as it might not surprise you, environmental advocates for years had been calling for the end of coal, and specifically in Washington state. This plant, which is sort of right between Portland and Seattle, is one of the largest carbon emitters in our state. Coal is also linked to toxic pollution like mercury. And also, specifically because the plant is close to Rainier, that had also been a concern of folks who had been following this issue. So towards around 2010, the plant in Centralia was facing a number of upgrades that would have had to make it compliant with air emission standards.
So essentially environmentalists sitting down with the governor and the owner of this plant, they all got in a conference room in Seattle, banged their heads together for I think a couple of days, and came up with this really striking deal where they agreed 15 years prior to when the plant was actually scheduled to close, they agreed to close this plant at the end of 2025.
Miller: Let’s go through what the different parties got. First of all, this Canadian company TransAlta, what did they get?
Zhou: What they got is partially the agreement was that the environmental advocates wouldn’t sue them for not being in compliant with the clean air emission laws and in sort of response, they said, well, we’ll set aside a pot of money, I think it was $55 million dedicated to helping workers in the community transition off of the jobs that the coal industry has provided them. And also, in return, the environmental advocates will get a firm closure date for this plant.
Miller: All right, so we’ll let you operate without following the latest more stringent emissions rules. You’ll give the community and soon to be former employees or future former employees $55 million, and everybody gets something. That was the plan 15 years ago. What did the company do over the last few months or years as it was getting ready to shut down? What does it take to shut down a coal-fired power plant?
Zhou: So there are actually two units of that plan. The first one, as a part of this agreement, closed in 2020. That sort of happened without event. The other side of this is that these funds were starting to be distributed. I heard from someone involved with this that these funds are, the use of them is really wide. Like some workers were like, I am OK leaving my job, but I want a way to pay for my daughter’s tuition, and they got money for that. Or other workers were like, “I have a small business, I would like money to expand that small business,” and the plant gave them money to do that.
Miller: Is there a stockpile of coal to burn?
Zhou: I have not been there myself. I have heard that there is a small amount of residual coal that’s around there that is there in case the plant wants to run, very specifically, in the language of the federal order, is that the plant has to be available to operate. The keyword is available. It doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be running now. And it’s a little bit complicated, even if they were to decide to turn on the plant and actively burn coal for electricity, because this plant isn’t owned by a specific utility, they would have to find someone to buy it, essentially buy that electricity, and it’s not clear who would be the buyer in that case.
Miller: Right, because can you tell us about the state law that is important to understand the context of what you’re just saying?
Zhou: The agreement to close the plant that happened in 2011. Around 2019, Washington also set a different set of laws that was intended at trying to green up our electricity supply. And the very first of that goal kicked in actually at the end of last year, which is that all utilities are forbidden from essentially giving their customers electricity that’s been generated by coal. So for our state’s largest utility, they previously had been buying coal-fired energy from Centralia. They’d also been buying coal-fired electricity from Montana. And at the end of 2025, all those contracts were set to expire. So it’s actually illegal for utilities in Washington right now to be buying electricity that was made by coal, including if the Centralia plant was to turn on.
Miller: If it were to turn on, so just to be clear, even though the Trump administration said no, we don’t want you to close, it’s not in operation today?
Zhou: That is what it is implied. The company has been pretty closed off to answering any questions about this, but the thing is, when plants turn on for electricity, it doesn’t happen in a vacuum. There’s all these different organizations and companies that kind of facilitate the sale of that electricity across our really complicated grid, across the entire country. So looking at some public data around one of these grid operators, it does appear that the plant hasn’t dispatched electricity from the Centralia plant since December.
Miller: Would there even be workers to operate it? I don’t think I mentioned the number, but these workers were supposed to get $50,000 each to transition away from working at the coal plant, and as you’re saying, some of them use it for their kids’ education or to start a small business. If the company were to decide, yes, we do want to turn this boiler back on and burn coal, make steam, turn the turbines, are there people to do that?
Zhou: I don’t know. I think your guess is as best as mine. Imagining the situation, I imagine there maybe are some workers who are on call or the company could call or at least has them on a list to show that they’re compliant with the federal order. Something we haven’t discussed is actually before all of this federal order stuff drove a lot of confusion into the folks following this, the plant had announced that they were planning to transition the facility into burning gas for electricity, and the company still says that this is a priority for them. So it’s not like this building, even before the federal order, was going to be completely abandoned. They do have plans to use this building in the future.
Miller: And it’s anybody’s best guess as to if that is still the plan, or the company says that is still the plan?
Zhou: They say it’s still a priority for them. That’s the exact language, but they also say that they’re available to operate and that they’re in compliance with the federal emergency order.
Miller: What were the reasons that the Trump administration gave for that order?
Zhou: Yeah, so as a lot of listeners might be aware, we’re sort of as a country, but also in the Pacific Northwest, facing a time of unprecedented electricity growth. Part of this is being driven by natural population growth. Some of this is being driven by buildings that are electrifying, people plugging in more EVs, this is also being driven by large industrial users like data centers, cloud computing, or AI.
The Trump administration, the DOE, in their emergency order, pretty much cited the threat of a reliability event or essentially like rolling blackouts because there isn’t enough power. A lot of our Washington leaders and environmental advocates who have sued the Trump administration for this order, they say that’s totally a manufactured emergency because all the utilities in Washington had already been preparing to turn this resource off.
Miller: This emergency order goes for 90 days, and those 90 days will end on March 16th. What happens after that?
Zhou: So if we look at what’s been happening at some of the other plants, Washington isn’t the only state that’s had this situation happen where there was a coal plant, it was going to be turned off. The DOE comes in and keeps it online. When we look at some other places where this has happened, what the DOE has done, the Department of Energy, is that they’ve just reissued this emergency order every 90 days. So this one plant in Michigan that has continued to run, to the cost of ratepayers, actually, they have had three reissues of this order, and each time their state AG has tried to sue to stop it.
Miller: Can you give us a sense for how much the company would have to spend to retrofit this plant to actually, if it were going to somehow stay in operation going forward as a coal-fired plant, which is not their plan, wasn’t their preference as of 15 years ago, what it would take to actually follow state law that is now the law of Washington?
Zhou: Oh man, I don’t know because as far as I’m aware, it’s illegal for a utility in Washington to be buying coal-fired powered energy. Maybe theoretically this plant could sell it somehow to a utility outside of Washington. I’m not quite sure legally how that would work. But you know, one thing to keep in mind is back in 2011 when this agreement was made, part of the reason the plant agreed to close the plant is because the upgrades in order to become compliant with clean air laws would have been so expensive and the building is really old. I’m not quite sure the exact age, but it was old enough that the company didn’t choose to close it because of the environmentalists. They chose it out of a financial matter.
Miller: Amanda, thanks very much.
Zhou: Thanks so much.
Miller: Amanda Zhou is an environment and climate reporter for the Seattle Times.
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