WA’s last coal power plant to switch to natural gasFree

TransAlta Corporation has signed an agreement with Puget Sound Energy to switch the last coal-fired power station in Washington to natural gas.

The deal, which TransAlta announced Tuesday, comes as the Centralia plant is set to fall silent at the end of the month.

Its closure is part of a deal the Legislature approved in 2011. The winding down of the last coal-fired unit represents a long-sought goal for Democratic state politicians: the move toward cleaner energy to reduce fossil-fuel emissions and combat climate change.

But it also comes amid rising concerns that the state could face a power crunch as it makes that transition.

In a statement, John Kousinioris, president and chief executive officer of the Canadian-owned company, said the switch to natural gas “will lower the emission intensity profile of the facility by approximately 50 percent.”

“This project demonstrates the valuable role that legacy assets can play in supporting the State’s clean energy laws and system reliability in a cost effective and timely fashion,” Kousinioris said.

Under the agreement, the conversion will deliver 700 megawatts of power under a 16-year contract that runs through Dec. 31, 2044.

With California experiencing power disruptions as it switches to cleaner energy, some key Washington officials have said they support adding natural gas to the facility.

In an interview conducted before the announcement, former Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire said she supported the company burning natural gas there as a backup while planned renewable energy projects around the state, like solar and wind power, get built.

During her tenure as governor, Gregoire, a Democrat, helped negotiate the agreement between TransAlta and the state that led to the winding down of the coal plant.

“Natural gas today is under the gun, but it is the backup for us … to avoid the brownouts, blackouts,” Gregoire said. “We do want to move to a clean energy future, but we have to do it in a way that we don’t deprive people and businesses and communities of the energy they so desperately need.”

She isn’t alone with that perspective. State House Majority Leader Joe Fitzgibbon — a key architect of Democrats’ clean-energy blueprint under Gregoire’s successor, former Gov. Jay Inslee — said he supports TransAlta putting a natural-gas facility there for the short-term.

Gov. Bob Ferguson’s office did not respond to emails seeking comment.

State Senate Minority Leader John Braun, a Republican from Centralia, said generating power through natural gas would help avoid California-style energy disruptions seen in recent years.

“We have to make the transition without hurting anybody,” Braun said.

‘Risk of power shortfalls’

The Centralia site had once included a neighboring coal mine, the largest such mine in Washington. By 2009, when Gregoire signed an executive order on climate change that declared an intent to strike a deal with the company, that mine had already shut down.

“They were having to bring coal in, there were all kinds of pressures,” Gregoire said. “Whether that was a safety issue, a health issue, whether that was a good economic future for the people of Lewis County.”

Subsequent negotiations led to the 2011 agreement being passed by the Legislature. The agreement spelled out the coal plant’s decommissioning by the end of 2025 and secured the company an expedited consideration for a gas-powered facility.

The deal also secured $55 million from TransAlta to be spent on several things, including energy efficiency and economic development projects for the Centralia-area community.

“You can shut it down, and walk away, but what you leave behind is untenable,” Gregoire said. “So it was really about trying to find the right way in which to leave the opportunity to help those people who would be out of a job, to retrain. And a new vision for Lewis County.”

A recent study commissioned by Puget Sound Energy, Seattle City Light, Avista, Tacoma Power and others contends that Washington is already on the cusp of an electricity crisis.

The shift toward wind and solar has prompted the region to retire fossil fuel power faster than it has been replaced, according to the report released in September.