{"id":18377,"date":"2014-02-10T16:30:46","date_gmt":"2014-02-10T22:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=18377"},"modified":"2014-02-10T16:30:46","modified_gmt":"2014-02-10T22:30:46","slug":"federal-government-approves-psos-plan-to-retire-coal-fired-power-plants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2014\/02\/10\/federal-government-approves-psos-plan-to-retire-coal-fired-power-plants\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal Government Approves PSO’s Plan to Retire Coal-Fired Power Plants"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"MeterPic\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Mark Turnauckas \/ Flickr<\/p>\n<\/div>

Public Service Company of Oklahoma \u2014 which provides electricity to more than a half-million Oklahomans \u2014 can move ahead with plans to retire its coal-fired power plants, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Monday.<\/p>

The agreement between the utility, state, and EPA is expected to bring PSO into compliance with regional haze regulations<\/a>, the federal government’s effort to clear the air at national parks and wildlife refuges.<\/p>

From\u00a0The Oklahoman<\/em>‘s Paul Monies<\/a>:<\/p>\n

PSO’s plan for regional haze calls for it to retire one coal unit at Northeastern by 2016. It would install some emissions-control equipment on another coal unit before retiring it by 2026. To make up for the loss of the coal-fired unit in 2016, PSO will buy natural gas generation from Calpine Corp. under a 15-year power purchase agreement.<\/p>

The utility also recently signed three 20-year contracts for a total of 600 megawatts of wind power from wind farms to be built in northwestern Oklahoma and the Panhandle by 2016.<\/p><\/blockquote>

PSO President and Chief Operating Officer Stuart Solomon told the paper the alternative was a federal plan that would’ve cost $650 million more, and customers can expect the approved plan to increase electricity rates “by about 11 percent starting in 2016.”<\/p>

PSO took a different tack than its counterpart and the state’s largest utility, Oklahoma Gas and Electric. OG&E continues to fight the EPA in court over the federal agency’s authority to enforce the regional haze rule.<\/p>

Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt recently asked the U.S. Supreme Court<\/a> to take up the case, after lower courts sided with the EPA.<\/p>

“At stake is the ability of Oklahoma and other states to develop and implement state-based solutions. The EPA exceeded its authority when it denied the state’s plan to address regional haze,” Pruitt said in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>

Whitney Pearson, with the Oklahoma branch of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign, reacted to Monday’s approval of PSO’s plan by calling on OG&E to follow its lead.<\/p>

“The clean air plan will cut dangerous sulfur dioxide and other air pollutants that have been pumped into our air for decades by coal-fired power plants,” Pearson said in a statement. “While Oklahoma Gas and Electric is still fighting this process in court, PSO can move forward and focus on providing cleaner, reliable electricity for their customers.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The agreement between the utility, state, and EPA is expected to bring PSO into compliance with the regional haze rule.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":18385,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[490],"tags":[532,499,229,552,545],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18377"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18377"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18396,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18377\/revisions\/18396"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}