This is a coal-fired power plant. It’s located in eastern Kentucky and runs on one of the state’s most abundant natural resources to provide electricity to some 600 thousand homes.

The following is a transcript of a report from “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson.”
Watch the video by clicking the link at the end of the page.

But an aggressive new rule by the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, could change that for this plant and some 200 others.

They must cut 90 percent of the carbon dioxide they release into the air by 2032, or shut down.

The problem is, America gets about 80 percent of its total energy from fossil fuels, while renewables provide 13 percent. Energy producers say the new EPA mandate could lead to critical energy shortages and increased costs for customers.

According to Tony Campbell, CEO of the power plant’s operator, Eastern Kentucky Power Cooperative, the cost of complying with the EPA could exceed 10 billion dollars — more than double the value of what he says they own.

Tony Campbell: Our balance sheet’s only $3.8 billion, $3.9 billion dollars. Well, how are we going to afford that? Our current average residential member is about a bill of about $157 a month. After we build all this, it’s going to be somewhere between $257 and $308 a month, and our end consumers aren’t going to be able to afford that.

Renewable sources of energy, like wind and sun, have inherent issues with cost and reliability. In addition to needing coal or gas to back them up, wind and solar projects aren’t being built fast enough to meet energy demands met by the coal plants.

Tony Campbell: We think we’re going to have a reliability problem in the not-too-distant future.

Campbell says that the “reliability problem” would happen when power needs surge, like during the hottest and coldest months of the year, and green energy alone can’t meet the demand. That could lead to power outages.

Tony Campbell: A lot of people think that we’re misguided and we believe we’re all in on coal. We’re not attached to coal at the hip. What we are attached to is the reliability that it supplies right now.

Lisa Fletcher: How do we make all these other energy sources reliable so people aren’t worried about whether the power is going to stay on when there’s an energy crunch?

Tony Campbell: It’s going to take time to prove this out. So here’s my hypothesis. Hey, we continue to put more renewables in and then we throttle our plants back, and then when it gets really cold or really hot in seasons, then we run them harder, run them up to speed. We keep them alive because if we close them, they’re going to be torn down. We closed one 1950’s vintage coal plant and we wanted to keep it alive for five years, but we found out after two years it just started falling apart. If you don’t use them, like anything else, they’ll deteriorate quick.

Almost 160,000 coal plants retired in the U.S. between 2000 and 2023, with cheaper forms of energy, like natural gas, driving many of the decisions.

But shutting down too quickly has proven to be difficult in Germany. After an aggressive government plan to close its coal plants, Germany ended up restarting 27 of them in 2022 and 2023 amid an energy crisis.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., the retirement of 31 coal-fired plants was recently delayed or reversed by public utility operators and regulators across 13 states to address reliability concerns. That number is expected to grow in the short term if the EPA rule is not withdrawn or overturned.

Lisa Fletcher: What does that tell you about the economics of fossil fuel versus green energy?

Tony Campbell: Well, I can tell you that the economics of green energy are going to be expensive. The people that really believe in it and are pushing us in that direction think it’s cheap, and it is cheap the energy coming out of it. But remember, they only run when the sun’s shining or when the wind’s blowing, and then you have to have another plant down there to run when it’s not.

For people living in Kentucky, the new EPA rule comes at a cost, according to State Senator Robert Stivers.

Robert Stivers: We don’t have the capacity through renewables, green energy, to keep up with our demands. And if you see the things I see, and there can be disagreement on it, you’re creating a secondary adverse impact when you put in, like solar panels, in areas that are highly productive areas for farming, and consuming farmland.

Lisa Fletcher: What do you mean by secondary adverse impact?

Robert Stivers: A secondary potential adverse impact is, when you have to go out and put it in a 50-acre flat area, a lot of times that’s productive farmland. You take productive farmland out of the inventory, that just puts more pressure on the farmer, the farming community, to be productive with less land. That’s where you get into, potentially, what are the consequences with fossil fuels versus renewables, or green energy? And what is the cost? And cost has many connotations.

While the government offers incentives for cleaner emissions, it’s taxpayers who end up footing the bill. Since 2011, more than 16 billion dollars in taxpayer money has been made available for research, infrastructure, and additional tax credits in the shift to green energy.

Tony Campbell: We recognize that the country has to decarbonize. Our only concern at East Kentucky is we think we’re moving too far, too fast.

One way or another, the EPA predicts that by 2045 the new regulations will likely close most, if not all, of the country’s coal plants.

For Full Measure, I’m Lisa Fletcher in Maysville, Kentucky.

Watch video here.