The two coal plants located in Washington and Oregon appear to be living on borrowed time. Portland General Electric has moved to close the Boardman coal plant by the end of the decade, and Washington’s governor is negotiating with the owners of the Centralia plant to phase out the coal it burns. That would reduce a sizeable chunk of each state’s greenhouse gas emissions. But does that mean that the states will be coal-free?
Not exactly.
In broad swaths of the Northwest, there’s a decent chance that some of the power consumers are buying comes from the Colstrip coal-fired power plant in eastern Montana. And depending on how far away you live, chances are also good that you’ve never heard of it, even though it’s a giant power producer that in 2008 generated nearly twice as much power as Centralia and more than four times more than Boardman. Accordingly, Colstrip is also a pretty giant polluter, as the charts below show:
So where does Colstrip’s dirty electricity go? The utility with the largest ownership stake is Puget Sound Energy, which supplies power to more than a million homes and businesses, mostly in Western Washington. Its delivery area includes King, Kittitas, Kitsap, Island, Jefferson, Pierce, Skagit, Thurston and Whatcom counties. Even though the Colstrip plant is hundreds of miles away from PSE’s closest customer, its coal-fired power accounts for nearly a quarter of the power that the utility generates.
The other owners of the Colstrip coal plant include utilities that electrify toasters in Spokane, hair dryers in Astoria, washing machines in Walla Walla, light bulbs in Bend, laptops in Hood River, clocks in Coeur D’Alene and blenders in Butte and Bozeman. In short, Colstrip’s coal-fired power is all over the place, contradicting common perceptions that the Northwest’s power grid is super green.
Here’s a closer look at the utilities with an ownership stake in Colstrip — the second largest coal plant west of the Mississippi—and to what degree they rely on it:
COLSTRIP’S TOTAL GENERATING CAPACITY = 2094 MW
- Puget Sound Energy = 677 MW
PSE owns roughly one-third of Colstrip’s output. (If you’re a PSE customer who doesn’t want to buy coal-fired power, your best bet is to participate in their green power program that supports independent renewable energy projects.) - Portland General Electric = 296 MW
PGE is looking at phasing out its Boardman coal plant in Eastern Oregon, but it also gets about 12 percent of its generation from Colstrip. - PacifiCorp = 148 MW
PacifiCorp, which does business in Oregon, Washington and Idaho as Pacific Power and Rocky Mountain Power, is such a giant utility that Colstrip represents less than 2 percent of its generation. But it relies so heavily on other plants that coal accounts for 60 percent of its power. - Avista Corp. = 222 MW
Avista, the Spokane-based utility serving Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho, gets about 13 percent of its generation from Colstrip. - NorthWestern Energy = 222 MW
This Montana utility relies on Colstrip to meet nearly a quarter of its customers’ needs across the state. - PPL Montana = 529 MW
The company that operates Colstrip also sells some power to wholesale and industrial customers and electric cooperatives.
Why bother to elaborate on this? Because as Washington’s and Oregon’s leaders start to talk about going coal-free, it’s important to remember that energy generation — and air pollution—doesn’t stop at state borders. In calculating a state’s greenhouse gas emissions, for instance, it’s not quite enough to look at how much coal is burned within its borders. To get a fair picture, you should probably consider how much electricity consumed in-state comes from coal — even if the coal is actually burned somewhere else.
So if Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire is successful in weaning Centralia off coal and reducing its emissions, that would be a great accomplishment; just as PGE’s phaseout of Boardman is welcome news. But let’s not forget that there may still be millions of customers in Oregon and Washington getting their power from the even bigger coal plant next door.
Notes on sources: CO2, MWh, NOx and SO2 data come fromthe EPA’s Clean Air Markets Data and Maps.
Colstrip photo courtesy of flickr user ambimb under a Creative Commons license.
Bill Mitchell
Interesting assessment of Colstrip 1-4. Some 35 years ago a rural agricultural/conservation group, Northern Plains Resource Council, challenged the permitting for Colstrip 3-4. Working closely with the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, this southeastern Montana ranchers group almost succeeded in stopping development of the coal plants by Montana Power Company. MPC, in conjunction with PP, WWP, PSPower, Portland General Electric and BPA sought to provide more than 80% of the generated electricity to the Pacific NW and California through the N/S Intertie. This is certainly not new news but I find it humorous that even now people in this region would assume the only coal-fired power in the region would come from Boardman and Centralia when they have been only small contributors.
charlie weiss
I hadn’t thought of this “resource” before, but we in the US have been genius at exporting our resource abuse. Example: California, where logging rarely happens due to its own environmental protections, but where lumber is still very much available—from BC. Example: manufacturing, which is pretty dirty, is almost all happening in China and other parts of Asia. Is this an “environmental justice” issue? Who pays the price of Colstrip’s pollution? Not us (in the NW), but folks downwind… Downwind, downstream, down-the-economic-chain, are not good places to be. Painting the “fair picture” is worth doing. Thanks.
cole smith
they sure know how to twist things. Hopefully a new election will help the future of coal and we can all enjoy cheap power.
RJ
People don’t realize that if you eliminate coal-fired power, their power bills are going to increase 5-fold. I’m not against green-energy but it’s gross expensive is far from replacing fossil fuels.