The final approval to close the coal power plant came last week, when regional transmission services gave Henderson, Kentucky the OK.
Station Two is among a vintage of older, smaller coal plants that have been hanging on by a thread. But maintenance costs, compounded by a glut of natural gas and increasingly cheap renewable energy resources are pushing plants like Henderson’s into retirement.
Among them, is a power plant in Owensboro Kentucky that's expected to close in 2020.
Utility Manager Chris Heimgartner says a number of coal fired plants are closing for the same reasons.
“There’s a lot of coal plants where it still makes sense to run them. It’s just that there is quite a number of especially older smaller ones where it’s making less sense over time. So you’re seeing a lot of them drop out,” said Heimgartner.
Heimgartner says even the Trump Administration’s new plans to roll back environmental regulations for coal-fired power plants would not have been enough to keep the plant running,
Heimgartner said, “Yes, maybe we wouldn’t have to put some of the capital into it in the next three to five years, but you know you have a change of administration and this does 180 then you’ve got a real problem.”
Henderson has already received bids from nearly two dozen organizations on the future of its power supply. Heimgartner expects that any solution the city adopts will have a lower carbon footprint than Station Two.
