By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondentthey
The news today about the fight over saving failing coal and nuclear plants is that Energy Secretary Rick Perry won’t take into account the importance of low electricity prices in favor of creating mythical “energy security” based on the outdated concept of baseload power. It’s a frivolous, short-sighted idea, fueled by coal barons and fossil-fuel interests.
And yet, in a state as far removed from Washington as one can imagine, officials are preparing to build the state’s largest utility-scale solar plant in a tacit admission that the future of coal is dim.
Wyoming is currently the country’s largest coal-producing state. It accounts for 41% of the country’s coal production and mines more coal than the next seven coal states combined (remember that next time the national media imply the country’s only coal miners work in West Virginia).
And yet even in this deeply coal-steeped state, solar is about to bloom.
As the Associated Press reports:
The first major solar energy plant in the nation’s top coal-mining state cleared a significant regulatory hurdle Tuesday when the U.S. Bureau of Land Management determined it will cause no environmental harm.
The 80 MW Sweetwater Solar plant, which could power approximately 17,000 homes, could begin production as soon as the end of this year. Rocky Mountain Power will purchase the electricity from the plant.
To say this development in Wyoming is startling is an understatement. After all, this is the state whose legislature in January 2017 passed a “reverse RES (Renewable Energy Standard)” and decided to penalize utilities who sold electricity generated from solar in a misguided and failed attempt to protect the coal-produced electricity in the state. And Rocky Mountain Power was begging the state’s regulators to slash reimbursement rates under PURPA, the federal law designed to encourage renewable energy development.
So the decision to build the Sweetwater plant – and for RMP to be purchasing the electricity – is a clear sign that even in coal country, solar is quickly becoming king. Now if only the policymakers in Washington were listening.