Portland General Electric plans to shut down its coal plant by 2020

by: Mateo

Fri Jan 22, 2010 at 05:01 PM CST

Austin is not alone in preparing for clean and affordable energy.

When good news like this comes across the internet like this, we have to share. From the cloudy northwest:

Portland General Electric Co. would shut down the state's only coal-fired power  plant 20 years earlier than planned under a proposal it hopes to finalize with  state and federal regulators in the coming months.

Based on its analysis of carbon and natural gas prices, however, PGE maintains  that a 2020 shutdown would be the low-cost, least-risk plan for utility  ratepayers and shareholders [emphasis mine]. Under the existing plan, both face the risk of  making the huge investment to control haze causing pollution - which does  nothing to control the plant's carbon emissions -- then seeing the plant close  anyway if global warming legislation or a carbon tax makes its output  prohibitively expensive.

Austin Energy has similar plans to get out of its only coal plant, the Fayette Power Project. No target date is set yet, but the utility's 2020 generation plan would reduce Austin's dependence on it by 20-30%. The next two years will be important as Austin works with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas  (the grid operator for most of Texas) and the Lower Colorado River Authority (co-owner of Fayette) to see what the most practical and fair way out. Learn more about the resource plan and some excellent additional recommendations at www.cleanenergyforaustin.org. You can also learn a lot from AE's website www.austinsmartenergy.com.

Original post found at Texas Vox.