Allen Best

Utilities continue to shove coal to the side and see renewables as the way the wind is blowing

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The Martin-Drake Coal plant in Colorado Springs will process its last lump of coal Friday. The Martin Drake Power Plant will burn its last load of coal Friday, ending a century of coal-burning near downtown Colorado Springs. All but one of Colorado’s remaining coal plants will also close in this decade. What will replace the electricity generated by coal combustion in times when neither the wind blows nor the sun shines? The answers remain unclear.

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Wyoming seeks to stall Colorado’s exit from coal-generated electricity

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In 2009, Wyoming was riding high on coal. It supplied the coal that provided roughly half the nation’s power generation. The trains out of the Powder River Basin were almost non-stop, delivering the sub-bituminous low-sulphur coal from Wyoming’s subterranean to plants as far as Florida. The Sierra Club had mounted a campaign in which it made fun of coal as a “dirty fuel.” One striking video had a lively young couple in the upper bunk delighting in the company of one another, and in the lower bunk a more pudgy young man fondling lumps of coal. Still, when this author visited Gillette, the center of the Powder River Basin, in April 2009 for a story published in Planning magazine, no evidence of great worry was evident.