NRG Energy will continue to burn coal at its Avon Lake power plant rather than switch to natural gas
NRG Energy will add new pollution controls to its Avon Lake power plant in 2016 rather than switch to natural gas. PRINCETON, NJ -- NRG Energy said Friday it would continue to burn coal, for now, at its Avon Lake power plant. The company had been planning to switch to cleaner natural gas in order to meet new pollution standards.
NRG instead will add new pollution controls in 2016 to the two existing coal-fired boilers in order to meet federal rules limiting mercury and other toxic metals from coal-fired boilers.
The company did not provide an estimated cost of the new controls.
NRG last year announced it would switch the plant from coal to cleaner-burning natural gas.
But that switch requires a new 20-mile, 36-inch diameter gas pipeline from Grafton in southern Lorain County north through LaGrange, Elyria, North Ridgeville, Eaton Township, Avon and into the NRG plant on Lake Road in Avon Lake.
Delays at the Ohio Power Siting Board prevented the company from removing trees along the proposed path of the gas line before April 1 and the start of the mating season of the endangered Indiana Bat, which presumably would be nesting in some of the trees. The siting board did approve the project in June.
New rules issued recently by PJM Interconnection, the company responsible for keeping the high-voltage grid stable from Ohio to the East Coast, also figured into the decision to stick with coal.
The company is dropping is plans to build the $40 million pipeline. For now. And it will continue to negotiate easements and seek other construction permits.
"The decision to remain on coal does not preclude doing gas down the road," said David Gaier, NRG spokesman.
But for now "cleaning up the coal-fired boilers in order to keep the plant open and provide reliable power in Northeast Ohio is strategically, economically and environmentally the right thing to do," he said.
NRG ran into resistance from many of the 100 property owners in the path of the proposed line. Residential property owners either did not want the pipeline at all or asked that be be buried deeper than the 36 inches proposed by the company.
NRG by April had begun eminent domain lawsuits against more than two dozen property owners.
The decision to add pollution controls and stick with coal saves the jobs of about 76 people now employed at the power plant. Conversion to gas would have eliminated more than half of those jobs.