Washington’s biggest polluter ordered to keep burning coal by Trump administration

Two weeks before Washington state’s biggest source of climate pollution was required to end its five decades of burning coal, the Trump administration has given it a new lease on life.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright issued an emergency order on Tuesday to force the TransAlta power plant in Centralia, required by state law to stop burning coal Dec. 31, to keep operating for another 90 days.

“The reliable supply of power from the Centralia coal plant is essential for grid stability in the Northwest,” a Department of Energy press release states.

The emergency order states the coal power is necessary to get the Pacific Northwest through the winter without risking blackouts.

Washington state officials and environmentalists dismissed that claim and accused the Trump administration of manufacturing a fake emergency to prop up a dying industry.

“Rather than help our state, this absurd move by the Trump administration is more likely to drive up costs and expose Washington communities to more pollution,” a joint press release from Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson, Attorney General Nick Brown, and Washington Department of Ecology Director Casey Sixkiller states.

Ferguson and the ecology department declined an interview request.

The shutdown has been in the works since 2011, when the state Legislature required the coal plant to turn off its first boiler by 2020 and its second boiler by 2025.

Forecasts for rapidly increasing electricity use have utilities scrambling to meet long-term demand as data centers and electric vehicles consume more power.

“We definitely have a consensus in the region that there is a longer-term challenge, and we're going to have to build a lot more resources in order to meet our needs going into 2028, 2029, 2030, but that is not what constitutes an emergency,” Lauren McCloy with the nonprofit Northwest Energy Coalition said.

The emergency order says a shortage of electric energy has created an emergency in the Northwest. To support this claim, it cites a winter reliability assessment by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, an international regulator that aims to maintain the reliability and security of the North American grid.

“There is sufficient capacity in the area for expected peak conditions” this winter, according to the reliability assessment.

During extreme winter weather, the Pacific Northwest would likely have to import electricity from other parts of the North American West, as the continent’s power grid is designed to support.

If extreme winter weather hits all of the North American West at once, other parts of the region might not have excess power to sell to the Northwest.

“External assistance may not be available during region-wide extreme winter conditions,” the winter assessment states.

That extreme scenario is the Department of Energy’s primary justification for its emergency order forcing the Centralia plant to keep burning coal.

“This kind of federal overreach is incredibly unproductive,” McCloy said. “We're working very hard in the Northwest right now, across the industry and policymakers and regulators and other environmental interest groups to plan for, acquire, and actually build the new resources that we need to have a clean, affordable, and reliable grid.”

In an email, a TransAlta spokesperson said, without identifying themselves, that the Canadian company was evaluating the emergency order.

Puget Sound Energy, Washington’s largest utility, has a long-term purchase agreement for most of the coal power from the Centralia plant through Dec. 31.

PSE spokesperson Gerald Tracy declined an interview request Wednesday, saying the utility is reviewing the emergency order.

McCloy said Puget Sound Energy pays above-market rates for Centralia power and that the plant shutting down would lower the utility’s energy costs.

On Dec. 9, TransAlta announced it had reached a deal with Puget Sound Energy to run the Centralia plant on natural gas for another 16 years.

It would become Washington’s largest gas-burning power plant.

Though the fossil fuel industry and some politicians promote natural gas as a cleaner-burning, transitional fuel, it is mostly methane, a superpollutant of the global climate.

In western Canada, where most of Washington state’s gas supply originates, enough unburned methane leaks from gas wells and pipes to make the fuel as harmful to the climate as coal.