State regulators criticize Puget Sound Energy over financial risks of their coal power

Washington State's Utilities and Transportation Commission had some strong words for Puget Sound Energy over their continued use of the Colstrip coal plant in Eastern Montana - the largest source of climate pollution in the Western United States.

The UTC accepted PSE’s proposed 20-year energy plan on Monday but said they are “deeply concerned with the direct costs of continued operation of Colstrip Units 1-4 and the magnitude of economic risk of continued investment in those units.” (Page 7 - letter available HERE) The UTC specifically cited the following costs, which PSE has yet to account for:

• The lack of a clear plan for paying for hundreds of millions of dollars of clean up costs when the Colstrip plant is retired. PSE agreed to start setting aside money for cleanup as part of an earlier settlement with the UTC, but has no idea how high the clean up bill will go.

• The fact that PSE doesn’t assume a price for their carbon pollution from the plant, though PSE’s customers and taxpayers across the state are paying for the continued burning of coal through the impacts of climate change, including increased costs of wildfires and ocean acidification. PSE ignores these costs even though efforts underway at the state level to put a price on carbon, including Initiative 1631, a statewide fee on greenhouse gasses that PSE admits would make Colstrip uneconomical.

• The growing maintenance costs of keeping a 40-year-old coal plant running. In a separate letter to Eastern Washington utility Avista Energy, the UTC estimates that the six owners of the plant will spend $314 million in the next three years just to keep the plant running. Meanwhile, a wind farm in Montana recently came in at less than a third of the price of electricity from Colstrip.

• The risks related to the Rosebud mine, a 40-square-mile strip mine that feeds the Colstrip plant. Westmoreland Coal Company, which operates the mine, is on the verge of bankruptcy and has cleaned up less than 3 percent of the mine. The UTC questions whether the bankruptcy will increase the fuel costs at the plant and whether PSE customers will be left to pay for clean up costs.
  
  

The UTC says PSE needs to answer these questions when it does its next long-range plan in 2019.

Doug Howell, Senior Campaign Representative for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, released the following statement:

“Getting off dirty coal isn’t just the right thing to do to fight climate change - it’s the right thing to do for the pocket books of Western Washington families. This is a clear message to Puget Sound Energy: it’s time to stop wasting your customers’ money propping up an expensive, aging coal plant and invest in cheaper, cleaner options like wind, solar, energy storage and energy efficiency.”