This week, the Mid-Atlantic Conference of Regulatory Utilities Commissioners (MACRUC) held its 30th Annual Education Conference in Louisville, Kentucky. It was an excellent conference for coal generation, with many commissioners acknowledging the urgent need to maintain dispatchable generation and coal electricity in particular.
At a roundtable discussion on the Future of Coal Generation, America’s Power President and CEO Michelle Bloodworth put a spotlight on the many reasons why coal generation is indispensable, including substantial load growth and the additional costs , such as the need for new transmission, associated with replacement resources. Kiera Zitelman, Technical Director at NARUC, noted that the Department of Energy has already invoked Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act four times this year to keep critical baseload plants online, with further use widely expected.
At a separate Hot Topic session on Grid Reliability and Policies moderated by Chair Charlotte Lane of West Virginia, East Kentucky Power Cooperative CEO Tony Campbell discussed long-term risks posed by the retirement of dispatchable generation, outlining how the premature closure of coal-fired power plants undermines economic growth, industrial onshoring, and development of data centers needed to power AI technologies. As he explained, “This country needs to be building coal plants right now. With fuel security and other risks of natural gas, it cannot be the only bridge [to decarbonization]. We need coal too, and we need new coal plants.”
FERC Chair Mark Christie stressed additional short-term risks, noting that during this week’s extreme heat wave, when PJM set a record for peak demand, more than 83% of the region’s generation came from dispatchable resources. Put simply, “We can’t keep the air-conditioning on without predominantly dispatchable resources.”
We are grateful to MACRUC for again convening this critical forum and look forward to continuing these important conversations with commissioners across the Mid-Atlantic Conference and nationally.