Why Austin Can’t Seem to Quit Its Despised Coal Plant: Locals continue to get

For decades, Austinites have been calling for the closure of the Fayette Power Project, the coal plant responsible for about a quarter of our city’s greenhouse gas emissions. It would seem an achievable goal: Austin Energy is a public entity, controlled by our elected City Council, and the electorate has voted time and time again for climate-conscious candidates. As a result, the city of Austin has committed to be fully carbon-free by 2035. That requires rejecting coal. So why is 13% of our energy still coming from Fayette?

The answer lies in the plant’s two owners, Austin Energy and the enigmatic state entity called Lower Colorado River Authority. Council can put pressure on AE to kick coal to the curb, but without LCRA’s cooperation, Fayette will likely keep chugging along. And indeed, negotiations between LCRA and AE that would have allowed the city to quit Fayette years ago stalled to a halt in 2021. That’s despite the fact that Fayette’s operations interfere with LCRA’s and Austin’s shared water problems. Eventually closing Fayette would free up a massive amount of water in our increasingly drought-stricken region.

There will be a new opportunity for Council to put pressure on Austin Energy to quit coal early next year when it considers an update to the public utility’s 2030 resource plan. But that pressure, and even an updated plan, might not be enough. In the 2020 rendition of that plan, AE committed to withdrawing from its share of the coal plant by 2022, but missed that deadline when AE and LCRA couldn’t agree on an affordable price for AE to buy its way out. Both parties declined to define what price that was. Two years later, there appears to be have been zero movement on the issue despite increasing public pressure and protests from environmental advocates.

Meanwhile, good reasons to get out of the coal business have been mounting. Climate change-related drought conditions have been severe, and researchers from UT-Austin and Harvard University recently found that coal plant emissions are more dangerous to humans than previously thought. Their Nov. 23 study shows that particulate matter from coal plants specifically carries twice the mortality risk of all other sources of that pollution. More tangibly, it notes that in the last two decades, coal emissions killed at least half a million people in the United States – and that’s a conservative estimate.

Still, AE told the Chronicle there is currently no revised timeline for withdrawal in its upcoming update to the 2030 resource plan, which City Council will consider in February 2024. In anticipation of that process, consumer advocacy group Public Citizen has urged Council to pressure AE to part ways with LCRA: “Until council members decide to exercise their authority as the governing and regulatory body of the city’s electric utility, Austin will continue to have coal on its hands.” In a statement to Council last month, Sierra Club’s Shane Johnson urged Council members to consider their legacy: “This City Council has the opportunity to be remembered as the leaders who finally shut down the last remaining coal plant used by Austin.”

When asked if she’ll support withdrawal from Fayette, Council Member Leslie Pool (who chairs the Austin Energy Utility Oversight Committee) said she is “eager to review Austin Energy’s proposed updates. … I expect the City’s long-standing, fundamental goal to reach zero carbon emissions by 2035 to remain unchanged.”

Cleanin’ Up

Even if Austin pulls out of Fayette, LCRA will likely continue to operate it. But Environment Texas’ Luke Metzger says Austin rejecting Fayette would be “more than symbolic. We would have to make up that generation somewhere – Austin Energy would invest in new wind or solar that the grid wouldn’t otherwise have. The coal plant won’t shut down, but the grid ultimately becomes cleaner by Austin getting out of it.”

Energy experts have suggested that there’s little financial incentive for AE to pull out of Fayette, which allows AE to sell energy to the market to keep utility bills reasonable for ratepayers. The exit price is a factor – “certainly if we have to pay LCRA billions of dollars, that would ultimately come down to ratepayers,” says Metzger. Plus, Austin Energy would also have to increase its dependence on transmission line infrastructure – notoriously lacking in Texas – to get energy from renewable projects elsewhere in the state….