Eco regulations force massive coal plant to shut down, sparking community uproar

While SWEPCO promised to provide severance, educational and retraining resources and other potential job opportunities to the hundreds of workers at the plant, the closure will directly impact workers at the nearby Sabine Mine, which provides the plant with its coal resources. The mine’s sole customer is the Pirkey Power Plant and is slated to close due to the shutdown.

Several workers at the mine, who asked to remain anonymous fearing repercussions, told FOX Business that the decision to close the power plant came as a shock.

“We have a little room that we gather in and have our safety meetings and stuff where they called a meeting and actually let everybody just go home that day because we were overwhelmed with stress, just so many emotions,” one miner told FOX Business.

“I told my wife that I don’t know what we’re going to do,” he continued. “We just had a baby, and she was going to school. It was a lot. You know, it’s the same impact on others, I’m not the only one. There’s 200 to 300 employees at the mine.”

The worker also said he was concerned as an energy customer who may have to pay higher bills due to the plant shutdown.

“I was shocked that this plant would be closing because over the years we have been a very efficient plant, low-cost, and we put in the features that the EPA asked for to keep down emissions. We’re doing everything on our end,” a second coal worker told FOX Business.

“It was just a whole change of life for me as far as my retirement because I’m 54 years old now,” he said. “So, I’m not old enough for retirement, but I’m too old to really get out and try to find another job.”

A third worker said any plan to replace Pirkey with renewable energy would lead to higher costs for consumers and lower reliability of the grid. He also lamented the widespread impact the closure would have on locals.

“You’re going to spend an astronomical amount of money to make that happen,” he said “All that money is going to transition over to the ratepayers.”

“It impacts me and then not just me. It’s my family and friends, everybody in the surrounding area and even the vendors that we deal with each and every day,” he added. “Coal mining supports a big group in this area.”

And a fourth worker said he had originally planned to work at the mine and provide coal for Pirkey until he retired. Now, he is forced to scramble to find another job.

“I came out here young,” the worker told FOX Business. “And this is it, this is my forever job.”

The mine’s operator — the Sabine Mining Company, a subsidiary of the North American Coal Corporation (NACCO) — said it supported keeping the plant open, adding that the closure would have an adverse effect.

“We believe the Pirkey Power Plant is a reliable and resilient asset, and the continued long-term operation of the facility is in the best interest of our employees, the local community, region, and state,” a spokesperson for NACCO told FOX Business.

“It provides thousands of Texans and other citizens in the SPP region with reliable and affordable electricity,” the statement continued. “We believe the U.S. electrical grid is becoming less dependable with the switch to intermittent energy sources, and keeping the Pirkey Power Plant online will help with grid stability and reliability.”

The Pirkey shutdown comes as the federal government, state governments and environmental groups continue to push a rapid green transition away from fossil fuel power like coal to clean energy sources like wind and solar. Proponents of the transition have argued that such an aggressive switch is vital to save the planet from climate change.

President Joe Biden, whose administration has supported the green transition, said earlier this month that he would work to shutter coal plants “all across America” and replace them with wind and solar power.

In August, the president signed the Inflation Reduction Act, a massive climate package that includes various incentives for renewable energy development.

“When you have the government coming in and putting their thumb on the scale to say, ‘We’re going to pay you a whole lot of money to build wind and solar and we’re going to regulate everything else out of existence,’ and then give a bunch of money to wind and solar, that’s what the utilities are, of course, going to try and build,” Brent Bennett, an energy expert at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, told FOX Business in an interview.

AEP, the owner of the Pirkey Power Plant, has committed to achieving net-zero emissions by 2045 and an 80% reduction relative to 2005 levels by 2030, plans which Bennett said could have factored into the decision to shut the facility.

And the company’s CEO, Nick Akins, visited the White House earlier this year, publicly asking for more tax incentives to build green energy projects.

“Partners in the federal government can enable … this industry to move much more quickly than we would have otherwise, particularly with the tax provisions, ITCs — investment tax credits — and so forth,” Akins said during the White House roundtable with Biden in February 2022.

“Those have really produced benefits for consumers, because those costs, those benefits actually flow through to our consumers and contribute to the economy,” he continued. “So, it’s a great opportunity for us to make that transition.”