Elm Road Coal Power Plant Pollutes Less Because It Runs Less

As the federal government looks at cutting carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants, one large Wisconsin coal burner finds it isn’t polluting a lot, simply because it isn’t running much.

As part of its ‘Power The Future’ project a few years ago, WE Energies was allowed to build 1,200 megawatts of new coal-fired generating capacity near an existing power plant in Oak Creek. The new plant is called the Elm Road Generating Station. WE Energies concedes the plant only operated about 20 percent of the time last year. Company spokesman Brian Manthey says that’s due to orders from a Midwest power supply operator and low natural gas prices that made it cheaper to boost operation of a gas-fired plant. But Manthey says the Elm Road plant really cranked up when the weather got very hot last summer.

“The two new units actually at times were operating beyond their rated capacity, at a time when there was power needed from every possible source in the Midwest.”

Manthey says with natural gas prices going up this year, he expects the Elm Road plant to run more. He says it’s available to generate power more than 90 percent of the time. But Michael Vickerman, of Renew Wisconsin, says WE Energies rate payers still have to keep paying for Elm Road, and aren’t getting much for their investment.

“Considering that large plants like that are only cost effective when they operate at least 75-80 percent of the time, the rate payers are taking a soaking.”

Vickerman says WE Energies could get more power from Elm Road when the firm retires some older coal-fired units. But in the meantime, he says, rate payers are paying for a mostly sleeping giant with dollars that instead could have gone to finance more renewable energy projects like solar.