Contact: Megan Wittman, megan.wittman@sierraclub.org
Madison, WISCONSIN – Columbia Energy Center owners announced plans to push back the coal-fired power plant’s retirement date to the end of 2029. This is the second time the coal-fired power plant has been delayed to close. Originally slated to retire in 2024, its owners – Alliant Energy, Madison Gas and Electric (MG&E), and Wisconsin Public Service Corporation (WPS) – pushed back Columbia’s retirement date to 2026. Now, the owners have stalled for another three years to the end of 2029– five years exceeding its original retirement date.
Gas plants are “disproportionately vulnerable to failure” and are the most unreliable energy source during extreme weather events, especially during the winter. Yet across Wisconsin and nationwide, utility companies like Alliant, MG&E, and WPS are turning to methane gas not for the sake of their customers, but for a higher internal rate of return. Gas plants are more expensive and less reliable than clean energy, but “utilities are able to pass the entire cost [of gas plants] onto their customers– plus a guaranteed profit margin on top.” A greater financial investment, like a gas plant, means more room to gouge customers for an even higher profit.
The Columbia Energy Center’s owners are looking to convert the plant to methane gas, an expensive fossil fuel that is 80 times more destructive to our climate than coal. If the station is converted to methane gas, surrounding residential areas will be polluted with nitrogen oxides that impact people’s health, causing coughing, wheezing, asthma attacks, reduced lung function, and respiratory inflammation, and customers will be stuck with the bill.
In response, Cassie Steiner, Senior Campaign Coordinator for Sierra Club Wisconsin, released the following statement:
“We are enraged that Alliant, MG&E, and WPS have once again kicked the can on the Columbia Energy Center’s retirement date, and further exasperated with their considerations to convert the station to deadly methane gas. Make no mistake: methane gas is not a ‘transition fuel’; it’s a way for utilities to keep exploiting captive customers for an even greater corporate profit while polluting those same communities they are supposed to serve.
“Clean energy sources can reliably meet customers’ needs at a far cheaper cost and at no risk to their health. Utilities like Alliant have continued to backpedal on their clean energy commitments and then hold their customers hostage to pay for their poor decisions. We simply cannot afford to extend our dependency on costly, polluting fossil fuels like coal and methane gas.”
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About the Sierra Club
The Sierra Club is America’s largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization, with more than 3.5 million members and supporters. In addition to protecting every person’s right to get outdoors and access the healing power of nature, the Sierra Club works to promote clean energy, safeguard the health of our communities, protect wildlife, and preserve our remaining wild places through grassroots activism, public education, lobbying, and legal action. For more information, visit www.sierraclub.org.
