Pair of Coal Plants Closing in Pennsylvania, New Jersey

• Marie Cusick
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Marie Cusick was the Harrisburg reporter for StateImpact Pennsylvania.

More bad news for coal. Last week Bloomberg reported U.S. demand for coal has dropped to a 63-year low.
This week, NRG Energy announced it’s closing two coal-fired plants in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, according to the Patriot-News:

NRG announced that it would cease operations at its Titus Station power plant in Cumru Twp., Berks County, by April 2015. The company cited the high costs of complying with increasingly stringent environmental regulations in making the announcement. The plant employs 75 workers.
Overall, NRG and the Houston-based GenOn Energy are shuttering nine coal-fired plants, including four others in Pennsylvania. The two power companies merged last year. And their planned coal plant closures will begin in June and run through 2015.

Part of the blame for the decline in coal is the boom in shale oil and gas production, according to Bloomberg:

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has unlocked shale deposits that previously were uneconomical to produce. The losses in coal may be more than made up by the gains in shale. About 3.5 million new jobs will be created by 2035 as the U.S. exploits its shale reserves, a 2012 IHS study sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute, the Natural Gas Supply Association and others estimated.

According to 2011 data from the federal Energy Information Administration, Pennsylvania is the fourth-largest coal producing state in the country, behind Wyoming, West Virginia and Kentucky.

Editor's Picks