March 28, 2017
On March 21st, the Public Utilities Comission will be hosting an important workshop to discuss accelerating the depreciation of Idaho Power's Nevada coal plants. While this is about depreciation for the plant, the Sierra Club wants our Public Utitlies Commissions to tell Idaho Power to stop spending our money on an old, expensive, dirty coal plant, and instead to commit to closing the Valmy plant by 2019.
Idaho Power is already requesting a schedule to stop burning coal at Valmy in 2025-- but our position is that sooner is better.
9 reasons why we should shut down Valmy by 2019:
- Idahoans are ready for a new clean energy economy, but the North Valmy coal plant, owned by Idaho Power and NV Energy, is standing in the way.
- Every year, Idaho Power customers send tens of millions of dollars to Nevada for a coal plant that pollutes our air and atmosphere rather than use Idaho’s abundant clean, renewable energy resources to build jobs at home.
- In the last four and a half years, Idaho Power has spent more than $70 million on new capital expenditures to repair and maintain the aging Valmy plant. That figure doesn't even include the millions of dollars spent each month for fuel and operations.
- Economic analyses show that continuing to run the Valmy coal plant is more expensive compared to other resources, including solar and wind, and getting ever more risky for ratepayers with the need for new pollution controls likely in the near future.
- Idaho Power found in its 2015 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) that retiring Valmy Unit 1 in 2019 instead of 2025 would save customers $74 million. Nonetheless, they chose not to pursue that path.
- Idaho Power recently acknowledged that its preliminary results from the 2017 IRP show that the benefit of closing Valmy early has increased.
- The Valmy coal plant is one of the region’s largest sources of carbon pollution, emitting 2.9 million short tons of carbon annually. That’s equivalent to all the emissions produced by the energy use of nearly 250,000 American households - more than the entire population of Boise.
- Idaho Power should close Valmy by 2019 so Idaho can save money, create clean energy jobs, reduce toxic pollution, and get rid of the one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the region.
- Despite the substantial evidence that Valmy has become increasingly uneconomic and that reliability is no longer a concern, there has been no firm commitment to stop burning coal at the plant.
-Zack Waterman, Idaho Chapter Director