San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
For Earth’s sake, the era of coal has to end
One of the most vexing challenges in addressing climate change is bridging the global-local divide. Climate change is an existential global crisis. One that fuels extreme weather, diaspora, coastal erosion and drought. It can be hard to wrap one's mind around how new coal-fired power plants in India, where there is a desperate need for electricity, can contribute to more triple digit-days in San Antonio. Likewise, it can be hard to see how any local action to reduce carbon emissions matters on a global scale.
But, of course, every step that reduces carbon emissions matters. Global change requires local action. San Antonio's CPS Energy's board of trustees, at long last, took a pretty big local step in approving a plan Monday to end the coal-fired power era here. Under this plan, the city will shutter its coal-fired J.K. Spruce plant no later than 2028. The older Spruce 1 unit will close, and the newer Spruce 2 unit, which opened in 2010, will be converted to natural gas at the cost of $50 million.
CPS Energy will also shutter two older natural gas plants by 2029 while adding 2,200 megawatts of natural gas capacity and about 1,100 megawatts of solar generation.
Environmental advocates were disappointed with the decision because it commits CPS Energy to natural gas. Methane, a key component of fracked natural gas, is also a major contributor to climate change. And they have, understandably, also raised concerns about doubling down on a power source that failed San Antonians and Texans during Winter Storm Uri, especially at a time of rapid advances in renewable energy. This plan does not meet the city's climate change goals.
These are fair criticisms. A keystone of advocacy is pushing for the higher and greater. We expect that push to continue. But let's also take a step back and appreciate what has been accomplished. Our local utility has just committed to closing a relatively new coalfired power plant, an unfortunate financial and climate albatross, one that produced 8 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2021. It is also expanding its solar energy footprint and has a new leader in President and CEO Rudy Garza, who is open to additional change.
We are at an inflection point when it comes to battery storage, carbon capture, and geothermal and nuclear energy, and this plan maintains flexibility for this promising and innovative future and the possibility of still meeting local goals. This plan also allows CPS Energy to continue running Spruce 2, which has an enormous amount of debt and can produce power that can be sold on the state's wholesale market.
Advocates wanted CPS Energy to commit to a different plan option, one that was less expensive and had a greater reduction in emissions, thanks to 2,300 megawatts of wind power by 2030. But this also came with a risk: CPS Energy would be more reliant on the state's volatile wholesale power market, which generally comes from natural gas- and coal-fired power plants.
Beyond this, as Reed Williams, a former District 8 city councilman and a member of the city's Climate Ready Advisory Committee, said in December, it was unclear if so much wind power could be brought online so quickly.
This decision comes at a time when yet another year has passed with record warming. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2022 was the world's sixth-warmest year on record. Each of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2010, and for 46 years in a row global temperatures have risen above the 20th-century average.
This reality underscores the importance of ending the use of coal-fired power in San Antonio, just as it underscores the need for continued evolution in CPS Energy's power mix. This is a big step, but it can't be the last.
CPS Energy will also be pursuing two 5.5 percent rate increases to cover the cost of this change. No one likes higher bills, but we view these rate increases as inevitable. The utility is saddled with $200 million in unpaid bills and has consistently faced pressure from ratings agencies to raise rates.
“The inability, or unwillingness, to implement planned rate increases would likely pressure CPS Energy's rating, a risk that is amplified by a more stressed economic environment,” Fitch Ratings analysts recently wrote.
The Spruce era is ending. This is a huge and welcome change.
CPS Energy takes local steps on power plants, but the benefits are global, too