BUSINESS
A8 • HERMISTONHERALD.COM
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 17, 2020
Oregon bids goodbye to coal power
Fifteen years ago, the newspapers at EO Media Group published a landmark series of stories on climate
change. In April, we began a new series, Climate Changed, that will revisit many of the sources we talked with
then and look at what has happened in the intervening time.
By NICK ROSENBERGER
EO MEDIA GROUP
BOARDMAN — Since
1980, the Boardman Coal
Plant has produced reliable
energy capable of powering
500,000 homes. But keep-
ing the lights on has come at
a cost.
The plant can burn up to
8,000 tons of coal a day, mak-
ing it the largest single source
of greenhouse gas emissions
in the state. In 2019, the plant
sent roughly 2.5 million met-
ric tons of carbon dioxide into
the atmosphere.
That production — both of
energy and emissions — will
come to an end in just a few
months. The Portland Gen-
eral Electric-owned facility,
the last coal plant operating in
Oregon, will close by the end
of 2020. And though about a
third of the electricity used in
Oregon will still be created by
out-of-state coal, Boardman’s
closure will mark the end of
an energy era.
Located 160 miles east of
Portland along the Columbia
River in Morrow County, the
Boardman Coal Plant oper-
ates within the environmen-
tal rules set down by both
the state and federal govern-
ments. It is nowhere near the
end of its design life.
“There’s no expiration
date for a plant like Board-
man if it’s well maintained,”
said PGE spokesperson Steve
Corson. Yet, the company
made the unprecedented deci-
sion to shut it down.
“It was the fi rst volun-
tary plant closure in the U.S.
of its kind,” said Rebecca
Smith, a senior policy analyst
at the Oregon Department of
Energy.
The plant no longer pen-
ciled out economically and
environmentally, according
to Corson. In 2010, Oregon
passed strict emission con-
trol laws. Meeting those regu-
lations would require PGE to
make more than $600 million
in upgrades to the plant, a sig-
nifi cant investment that “over
the long term ... just wasn’t
going to make sense,” said
Corson.
PGE instead made cheaper,
short-term fi xes that limited
sulfur and nitrogen emissions,
then started making plans to
shut the plant down within a
decade.
“2020 ended up being the
compromise date,” said Cor-
son. “It gave our employees
at the plant time to plan for
the transition. It also gave us
time ... to think about how our
resource mix would change
with Boardman leaving the
picture.”
Boardman isn’t the only
coal plant facing pressures,
both economic and cultural.
There are nearly 600 coal-
fi red plants still operating in
the U.S., though more than
200 others have closed in
the last two decades due to
declining revenue or envi-
ronmental regulations. Those
regulations are an attempt to
reduce the effects of burning
coal, the largest human-made
contributor to carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere.
regulators nor customers. And
while cleaner than coal, nat-
ural gas would still produce
signifi cant carbon emissions.
Corson said the company
then considered torrefaction
as a fi nal option before clos-
ing the plant for good. Simi-
lar to roasting coffee, torre-
faction chars woody biomass
to a level similar to charcoal.
This torrefi ed wood can then
be used as an energy-dense
fuel with a much smaller car-
bon footprint than coal.
Torrefi ed wood “cer-
tainly could be a viable
fuel” at a plant like Board-
man, said Matt Krumenauer,
vice president of the U.S.
Endowment for Forestry and
Communities.
According to Krume-
nauer, torrefaction has ben-
efi ts beyond the bottom line.
It fi nds use for low-value
wood, which in turn supports
local timber jobs and can help
make rural Oregon safer. Kru-
menauer, who is also the CEO
of Restoration Fuels, said tor-
refaction can lead to a “reduc-
tion in wildfi re smoke, reduc-
tion of overall wildfi res.”
Currently,
Restoration
Fuels is focused on export-
ing torrefi ed biomass to fac-
tories in Europe and Asia. But
the long-term goal is to cre-
ate a local market for biomass
and the power it can create.
Krumenauer and Restoration
Fuels are currently building
the fi rst North American com-
mercial scale facility in John
Day, set to open this summer.
Due to high transporta-
tion costs, however, it can be
expensive to implement torre-
faction in less-wooded terrain.
Just driving the biomass three
hours from the dry pine for-
ests of John Day to the sage
desert of Boardman would
cost about $300 per load —
and that doesn’t include the
costs of cutting, loading or
chipping the lumber.
Because of that, “you’re
at a loss for every single ton
of biomass you use,” said
Krumenauer.
That proved a fatal blow
to the transformation of the
Boardman plant. It would
simply cost too much to trans-
port tons of torrefi ed biomass
to be worthwhile. Torrefac-
tion was axed from consid-
eration, and with it any hope
that the plant would remain in
operation.
“That story is over,” said
Corson. “We will decommis-
sion it.”
Human cost
For all the environmen-
tal benefi ts, the closure of the
plant has a human cost. In
addition to prior staff reduc-
tions, Boardman employs 67
full-time workers who earn
an average salary of nearly
$110,000 per year — well
above the county, state and
national average. In addition,
contractors and local vendors,
such as Boardman’s fuels and
lubricants distributor, will also
lose an important customer.
“Those are coveted jobs,”
said Morrow County Com-
missioner Don Russell, who
said the plant has helped sup-
port the Boardman economy
for decades.
Plant manager Dave Rod-
gers said he was able to send
his children to college thanks
to a career at the plant. His
daughter now works for
NASA and his son is an
accountant in Portland.
In addition to provid-
ing livable paychecks, PGE
supported the community in
other ways.
“If you needed someone to
coach a Little League team or
be involved in the local cham-
ber of commerce, there’s
always been PGE employees
involved in that,” said Com-
missioner Russell.
When the plant closes,
Corson said some employ-
ees will retire, some will be
transferred to other plants
around the state, and others
may attend Blue Mountain
Community College, where
PGE is funding a scholarship
program.
“No employee in good
standing will leave the com-
pany without the benefi t of
our support as they make this
transition,” said Corson.
A new wind
Even though the coal plant
will close, residents of Mor-
row County are already pre-
paring for a new energy
future. The county will con-
tinue to remain an important
seat in the regional energy
transmission system, and for
PGE.
“We’ll have a very strong
presence in Morrow County
for a long time to come,” said
Corson.
As part of the state’s push
toward renewable energy
and away from high emis-
sions produced by coal, PGE
and Pacifi c Power, along with
organizations including the
Oregon Environmental Coun-
cil, Northwest Energy Coa-
lition, and Sierra Club, came
together to support the 2016
Oregon Clean Electricity &
Coal Transition Plan. The
plan called for Oregon to dou-
ble the use of new renewable
energy in the state to 50% by
2040 and end coal generation
entirely.
PGE developed its own
goal to reduce 80% of its
1990 level emissions by
2050. To help meet that mark,
they partnered with NextEra
Energy.
According to NextEra,
the company is the “world’s
largest generator of renew-
able energy from the wind
and sun.” The company has a
generation capacity of 21,000
megawatts, a majority of
which is produced by their
119 wind farms spread across
North America.
The two companies are
working together on build-
ing a renewable energy facil-
ity across both Morrow and
Umatilla counties that is one
of the country’s largest. The
380-megawatt Wheatridge
Renewable Energy facility
will convert wind and solar
EO fi le photo
A stacker reclaimer digs up scoops of coal to feed a conveyer belt that fuels the Boardman Coal
Plant.
energy to produce roughly
two-thirds of the energy that
the coal plant did — with
none of the air pollution
emissions.
Port of Morrow Director
Ryan Neal said Wheatridge,
and projects like it, “are crit-
ical to the growth and econ-
omy of the region.”
The new energy facil-
ity will also have an impact
through Strategic Investment
Program agreements that will
help fund educational pro-
grams for Morrow County
students. A SIP agreement
means that after the fi rst $25
million in taxable income, the
companies will pay a portion
of their income to local enti-
ties in lieu of property taxes.
The county has a 15-year
SIP agreement with Wheat-
ridge. If built to its full poten-
tial, the project could lead to
nearly $5 million in annual
SIP payments to Morrow
County.
Legislation
When Gov. Kate Brown
signed the Oregon Clean
Electricity & Coal Transition
Plan in 2016, she committed
Oregon to be the fi rst state in
the nation to end coal-fi red
power.
Rebecca Smith saw the
Boardman closure as a sign
that “Oregon was on the
bleeding edge” of America’s
transition away from coal.
“In Oregon we like to do
it our own way,” she said.
“We’re not following the
‘California solution’ or any-
thing like that. We’re like,
‘OK, we have this much
hydro, we have these peo-
ple, these are our costs, these
are the protections we want,
this is how we’re going to
approach it.’”
Across the country and the
world, the economic argu-
ment for renewable energy is
strengthening, while the eco-
nomic and environmental
arguments for coal weaken.
The cost of generating solar
energy has dropped 89% in
the last decade, while wind
power costs have dropped
70%, according to global
fi nancial advisors at Lazard.
A company that generates
power with solar energy
rather than coal now makes
an additional $69 per mega-
watt hour.
“I see this as the future of
electricity generation,” said
Smith. “Oregon is moving
towards cleaner, and frankly
cheaper, electricity.”
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Once PGE decided it
would no longer use coal to
power the Boardman plant,
PGE had to decide what to do
with the facility.
The company briefl y con-
sidered using natural gas as
a fuel, but that did not please
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Companies have noticed
the economic forces at play.
Over the next two decades,
more than 30 coal projects
from Montana to Arizona are
scheduled to close. Many, like
in Boardman, are closing well
before the end of their design
life.
“The push for decarbon-
ization and clean electricity
is also happening globally,”
said Smith. “And Oregon is
defi nitely part of that march
forward.”
In Morrow County, that
march includes the closure
of the state’s last coal plant
and the construction of one of
the nation’s largest renewable
energy facilities.
The closing is hard for
people like Dave Rogers,
who spilled a career’s worth
of sweat at the plant, and for
Commissioner Don Russell,
who must pay the county’s
bills and balance its budget.
But both said there is
a sense of pride in Board-
man and hope for the future
of energy production in the
region.
“I can honestly say I feel
really proud about what we
did here” said Rodgers. Later,
he noted that “change hap-
pens … life goes on.”
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