Coal power plants in Ohio, Pennsylvania to close

COLUMBUS » An Ohiobased energy company said Wednesday it is closing its last coal-fired power plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania, a move decried by the coal industry and called inevitable by environmentalists.

FirstEnergy Solutions said it plans to shut down its remaining four coal plants by 2022. The three Ohio plants are on the Ohio River in Stratton. Its last Pennsylvania coal plant is in Shippingport. The plants employ a combined 550 people.

The company said it can’t compete in the regional wholesale markets that are managed by grid manager PJM Interconnection.

“Our decision to retire the fossil-fueled plants was every bit as difficult as the one we made five months ago to deactivate our nuclear assets,” said Donald Moul, FES Generation Companies president and chief nuclear officer, in a statement.

He said coal and nuclear power plants are losing out to cheaper energy sources such as natural gas and renewables.

Closure of the plants would leave about two dozen coal-fired plants operational in Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Agency.

Ohio state Rep. Jack Cera, a Democrat from the river town of Bellaire, called on state and federal officials to come together to avert “a regional economic crisis” that could be brought on by the plant closures.

The company’s coal-burning power plants in Eastlake, Ashtabula and Cleveland were closed in April 2015.