UPI.com reports:
Officials with FirstEnergy Generation told Pennsylvania lawmakers on Thursday that their massive 1,710-megawatt facility in Greene County and 370-megawatt plant in Washington County will close for good next week.
The coal-fired power plants “are losing money today and will lose money in the future,” said FirstEnergy president James Lash. “Our plans are not to run those units again.”
Lash painted a bleak picture of the future of coal, saying the low price of electricity and dropping demand for power make the expense necessary to meet environmental regulations unaffordable.
Pennsylvania also has an abundance of cheap natural gas in the Marcellus shale reserves.
Lash says it would take another $270 million to bring both plants into compliance with environmental regulations, including the pending Mercury and Air Toxic Standards rule, which would result in the plants being even bigger money-losers.
Those investments would be necessary even after the previous owner of the plants, Allegheny Energy of Greensburg, spent $715 million in 2009 to install scrubbers at Hatfield’s Ferry.
While fewer coal-fired plants may be good news for air quality, some 380 union workers will lose their jobs as a result of the closure.
Years ago there was in family in my neighborhood with a retarded child who used to talk to his sock. There was a fire in the house and the boy went into a closet for solace. “A Ha”, i thought, “Intelligence has value.” So it is with the horrible EPA regulations. Lack of Intelligence has great cost.
By the way, the family figured out where the boy would go and he was taken unharmed from the house. The fire department did an excellent job in restricting the fire to a single room.
It is unfortunate that the public can not understand the foolishness of the Mercury restrictions although informed people are getting it. “it’s our babies!” says the public to its socks.