Kentucky has a long history of coal-fired power plants, but the electricity generation landscape is expected to change in the decades to come. A state public service commission hearing last week focused on L-G and E/KU’s plan to retire nearly a third of its coal generation by 2028. Rodney Andrews is director of the University of Kentucky Center for Applied Energy Research. He foresees a move to more natural gas and solar-supported power plants, but not a complete change of course.
“While I think we will see more shifting, I don’t think we’re gonna see closure of all of our coal plants. They’re too valuable. Most of them are paid for. Most of them are operating at base load and in Kentucky coal is not terribly more expensive than anything else,” said Andrews.
Andrews said there is ongoing interest in reducing carbon emissions along with a federal push against the use of fossil fuels. And he added costs for establishing natural gas-powered plants have come down.
Still Andrews said reliability remains an issue with renewables like solar.
“Solar you’re producing during the day. We use a lot of electricity during the day, so that’s not necessarily a downside but to then bridge overnight you would need storage. That storage while you’re starting to see some installations of larger scale storage in some parts of the country, it’s not really considered that mature,” said Andrews.
Andrews said an unknown is whether or not incentives for renewable investments will continue long-term. The director of the Applied Energy Research Center noted nuclear could be a larger participant in the future. He added it takes a long time to develop a nuclear project.
Here's more comments from Rodney Andrew:
