‘Beneficial use’ for coal ash

Georgia Power announced plans Wednesday to recycle more than 9 million tons of coal ash stored at Plant Bowen at a pace of about 600,000 tons per year.

The largest beneficial use project for coal ash in the nation will excavate ash from the plant near Cartersville and convert it into concrete for constructing roads, bridges and buildings across Georgia and the Southeast.

“Finding and securing these opportunities to beneficially use coal ash will not only reduce and save space in landfills,” said Aaron Mitchell, Georgia Power’s vice president of environmental affairs. “(It) will also serve as a financial tool to help offset the cost of ash pond closures for our customers.”

In 2019, the company founded the Ash Beneficial Use Center at Plant Bowen to provide a place for testing new technologies to allow for the beneficial use of coal ash.

The center focuses on developing technologies and commercial applications of what would otherwise be a costly, and potentially hazardous, longterm storage of coal ash.

The hope, Mitchell said, is to find more economic and environmentally friendly opportunities for the power generation byproduct. The cost benefits derived from selling, and not storing, the coal ash directly benefits Georgia Power customers, he said.

There are currently 20 million cubic yards of coal ash stored at Bowen, Mitchell said.

Georgia Power is spending $9 billion on a multiyear plan to close all 29 of its ash ponds at 11 coalburning power plants across the state. While ash is be excavated and removed from 19 of the ponds, the other 10 are scheduled to be closed in place.

Coal ash contains contaminants including mercury, cadmium and arsenic that can pollute groundwater and drinking water as well as air.

The future of Plant Bowen is uncertain. Two of the plant’s four coalburning units were due to be retired by 2028 under a proposal Georgia Power submitted to the state Public Service Commission (PSC) last January.

But an agreement the Atlantabased utility reached with the PSC’s Public Interest Advocacy Staff this month would leave that decision up to the commission.

The PSC will vote next month on the agreement as part of Georgia Power’s Integrated Resource Plan, an update the utility provides every three years on the mix of energy sources it will rely upon for the next 20 years to meet the needs of its customers.