Indian River Power Plant to close in February

By Bradley Vasoli

Delaware’s only coal-fired energy power plant will cease operating in February, almost two years before its previously scheduled shutdown.

PJM, the regional transmission organization (RTO) overseeing wholesale electricity movement in Delaware and a dozen other states, determined with transmission-line owner Delmarva Power that Indian River Power Plant Unit 4 can deactivate without compromising reliability or worsening consumer costs. None of the Dagsboro-area station’s other three units have run for more than a decade. Delmarva finished the Vienna-Nelson line upgrade, a project the two entities say will assure service won’t be impacted by the fourth unit’s cessation.

Power Plant closing: Win for electricity customers?

PJM has touted the early shutdown as a win for electricity consumers, who the RTO says will save roughly $93 million, which customers would have paid in fees if plant owner NRG kept the plant open under its reliability must-run (RMR) arrangement. The RMR fees amounted to about $6.45 monthly.

“Delmarva’s good work to complete this project far ahead of schedule is a win for our customers, both from a reliability and affordability perspective,” PJM senior vice president of operations Mike Bryson said in a statement. “PJM regards RMR arrangements as a last resort to keep units temporarily operational to maintain system reliability while we make transmission improvements to balance the system, so the sooner we can get the work done, the better.”

Some energy experts credit coal-powered stations with providing a stable energy source. David Stevenson, environmental and energy policy director at the pro-free-market Caesar Rodney Institute, worries that Indian River’s deactivation will hurt consumers in the long run even though rates will go down for Delawareans presently.

Electricity availability cliff ahead?

He said Delaware and other PJM states face an electricity “availability cliff” that could eventually lead to blackouts due to a lack of reliable energy, citing the federal government’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory findings. The problem, he explained, is that baseload power plants are closing before dependable replacements are in place.

“What you need from electricity is it needs to be affordable, it needs to be clean, but it also has to be reliable,” Stevenson said. “And we’re facing this reliability cliff and it’s only about two years out. So for that reason, this plant closing is bad news.”

Stevenson also lamented the potential job losses the shutdown could cause for the 54 plant employees and about 30 subcontractors. However, he noted NRG has indicated it will work to find jobs for some of these individuals at its other sites.

He attributes Indian River’s inability to compete with other stations to the de facto carbon tax it paid due to Delaware’s membership in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). That multi-state pact is designed to incentivize renewables like wind and solar power, which Stevenson points out do not provide energy with the same constancy as fossil fuels or nuclear energy.

RGGI supporters favor the initiative to lessen global warming and other pollution, an issue many environmentalists have raised regarding the Indian River Station. In 2007, the Delaware Division of Public Health found cancer rates in communities near the plant exceeded the national average by 17 percent and the agency largely blamed acid gasses discharged from the plant. In 2019, the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project reported that the station released significant amounts of coal ash that polluted the surrounding groundwater. Environmentalist outfits like the Sierra Club have pushed for the plant to cease operation, citing coal ash output as a significant concern.

“We encourage the use of clean, renewable energy, such as wind and solar, to meet the energy needs of Delawareans,” former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency air enforcement attorney Charlie Garlow wrote in a Sierra Club statement in 2019.

Stevenson dismissed environmental objections to the station, recalling that it invested $340 million in air pollution controls 10 years ago, resulting in a 90-percent reduction in toxic emissions.

“It became one of the cleanest coal-burning plants in the country,” he said.

He recognized that the plant discharges carbon dioxide, though he added a caveat that Delaware’s entire carbon footprint adds only 0.004 degrees Fahrenheit to the Earth’s temperature.