{"id":28137,"date":"2017-03-29T14:19:26","date_gmt":"2017-03-29T19:19:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=28137"},"modified":"2017-03-29T14:19:26","modified_gmt":"2017-03-29T19:19:26","slug":"oklahomas-utilities-moving-away-from-coal-despite-trumps-new-climate-order","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2017\/03\/29\/oklahomas-utilities-moving-away-from-coal-despite-trumps-new-climate-order\/","title":{"rendered":"Oklahoma\u2019s Utilities Moving Away From Coal Despite Trump\u2019s New Climate Order"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Oklahoma<\/p>\n

Logan Layden \/ StateImpact Oklahoma<\/p>\n

Oklahoma Gas & Electric's Muskogee Power Plant.<\/p>\n<\/div>

President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order to roll back many Obama-era rules meant to combat climate change. Politico<\/i>\u2019s Alex Guill\u00e9n reports<\/a> many of the directives in the order are geared toward making it easier to produce coal used for power generation:<\/p>\n

Trump plans to order the EPA to rewrite tough rules that make it virtually impossible to build a new coal-fired power plant, and he will tell the Interior Department to end Obama\u2019s moratorium on new coal mines on federal lands, among other steps, White House officials said.<\/p><\/blockquote>

Guill\u00e9n goes on to call the executive order a \u201csweeping directive telling agencies to stop trying to reduce the carbon pollution of electric utilities, oil and gas drillers and coal miners.\u201d<\/p>

But officials with Oklahoma\u2019s largest electric utilities say it likely won\u2019t have a big impact on their future electricity generation plans.<\/p>

\u201cFor PSO, the executive order \u2014 we do not expect it to have any effect on our current power supply plans,\u201d Stan Whiteford with Public Service Company of Oklahoma says. \u201cWe\u2019ll continue to do what\u2019s necessary to provide our customers economic, reliable, and environmentally responsible power supplies focusing really on Oklahoma natural gas, wind and solar, along with some coal for the next several years.\u201d<\/p>

Whiteford says PSO has already retired one of its coal-fired power generation units at its Oolagah plant, and installed air scrubbers on the remaining coal unit there. He says that was done to comply with other U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rules. He says coal isn\u2019t as economically viable as it was in the past.<\/p>

\u201cWe are somewhat less dependent on coal, and a lot of the reason for that is because of the underlying market realities that continue to affect coal,\u201d Whiteford says. \u201cNatural gas is relatively inexpensive and plentiful nowadays, and there\u2019s also increasingly economically advantageous renewable resources that continue to impact the comparable costs.\u201d<\/p>

Oklahoma Gas & Electric, the state\u2019s largest electric utility, is also in the process of moving away from coal to comply with previously proposed EPA rules. The utility company has no plans to change its power generation mix because of Tuesday\u2019s executive order.<\/p>

\u201cFrom our perspective today, we\u2019re going to continue to move forward with converting two of our coal units to natural gas,\u201d OG&E spokesman Brian Alford says. \u201cWe\u2019ll also continue to move forward with adding emission control technology to two other units.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order to roll back many Obama-era rules meant to combat climate change. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[490],"tags":[532,683,499,525,536,545],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28137"}],"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=28137"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28143,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28137\/revisions\/28143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}