Will the EPA partially close a Wyoming coal plant that’s one of the nation’s largest polluters?

The Jim Bridger power plant in south-central Wyoming is one of the nation’s largest polluters as well as the third-largest cause of haze pollution in national parks, according to a 2020 report by the National Parks Conservation Association. The plant consists of four coal-fired units. Now, two of them may be forced to close, with potentially far-reaching implications for the local economy, Wyoming’s air quality and the regional power grid at large.

Eight years ago, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency told the plant’s owners that it had to reduce the pollution it emitted to comply with a regional haze plan. The plant is Wyoming’s largest source of haze pollution, according to EPA data compiled by the NPCA. Those pollution controls were supposed to have been installed by the end of 2021. But the plant did not do this. Instead, late last year, its owners, along with the state of Wyoming, filed an alternative proposal that claimed to fulfill the requirements of the regional haze plan. In January, however, the EPA ruled that the alternative plan was insufficient. 

What happens next is uncertain. There’s a strong possibility that Jim Bridger Unit 2 could be forced to close in a few weeks, while Unit 1 might be shuttered by the end of 2022.

The plant’s majority owner is the Western utility giant PacifiCorp, which is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett’s investment firm. PacifiCorp was already planning to convert Jim Bridger’s units 1 and 2 to natural gas in 2024, according to a 2021 company plan, although it’s unclear whether that would stave off closure. The other two units, according to the plan, would continue to burn coal until 2037.

Moving to natural gas would require permit modifications, which PacifiCorp says it intends to get. That can be a lengthy process, however. And since this plan involves another two years of burning coal, the company would still need to install the pollution controls that the EPA required in 2014, unless the agency were to modify its decision. Meanwhile, Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon has filed an emergency suspension order to the EPA, Wyofile reported, hoping to block the impending shutdown of Unit 2. In a statement, Gordon criticized the agency’s “recklessness,” citing the fallout on the local workforce. Between Jim Bridger and a nearby coal mine that feeds the plant — also owned by PacifiCorp — the operation employs nearly 900 workers.

The Jim Bridger plant supplies power to six states — Wyoming, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Utah and California — through PacifiCorp (which goes by Rocky Mountain Power in Wyoming, Idaho and Utah) as well as through its minority owner, Idaho Power, a public utility that serves southern Idaho and parts of Oregon. The Wyoming plant is one of Idaho Power’s largest single sources of electricity. In its most recent plan, the utility noted that despite Jim Bridger’s reliability, cheap renewables and the cost of installing the pollution controls required by the EPA make the “economics” of coal plant ownership “challenging.” The economic viability of Jim Bridger’s units 1 and 2 has also been called into question by PacifiCorp. In 2019, the utility released a study of its coal fleet, the West’s largest, in which it identified the two Wyoming units as “being less economic to operate beyond 2022 than alternatives and are candidates for early retirement.” 

If the two units were to close, it’s possible that renewables could make up that gap on the Western grid, according to Lindsay Beebe, a senior campaign representative with the Sierra Club who works on utility issues. Because large utilities like PacifiCorp control the production, transmission and distribution of power, it can be hard for new, fossil fuel-free projects to break into the market, even though renewables have often proven cheaper than coal in recent years. But the absence of Bridger’s two units could create a new opening. “When there is a coal plant that is reduced or closed, you open up opportunity for new third-party projects,” Beebe said. “From our perspective, this is a good thing, because it creates innovation and gives renewable companies the opportunities to sell onto the grid.”

“When there is a coal plant that is reduced or closed, you open up opportunity for new third-party projects.”

There’s no guarantee that the EPA’s ruling on Jim Bridger will lead to less coal pollution right away. Even if Bridger Unit 1 is forced to close in February, it’s possible that other coal units in PacifiCorp’s system could be ramped up in response, said Shannon Anderson, an attorney with the Powder River Basin Resource Council in Wyoming. (The group is in ongoing litigation with the state over its implementation of the regional haze plan.) Anderson said that the state of Wyoming and PacifiCorp created this tangle by assuming that the EPA would side with their alternative proposed haze plan. “They were banking on a decision they shouldn’t have banked on,” she said. “This is textbook how not to do energy transition.”

Nick Bowlin is a correspondent at High Country News. Email him at [email protected] or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy. Follow @npbowlin

• Pollution
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