Michael ‘Moderate’ Bloomberg’s Coal-Fired Electricity Shutdown

Nov. 9, (EIRNS)—The fake news media are playing up Michael Bloomberg as a “moderate” among radical Democrats, now that he filed this week in Alabama as a national Presidential contender, all the while, his anti-coal, anti-carbon campaign proceeds to turn out the lights in the U.S. The “moderate” Bloomberg campaign to shut down all U.S. coal plants by 2030 is proceeding, to the fury of unions in Pennsylvania, and electricity-users with any brains, anywhere.

Addressing the June 7, 2019, MIT commencement, Bloomberg announced his Beyond Carbon campaign, to shut down all U.S. coal plants by 2030, and also stay construction of any new natural gas plants.

Bloomberg had already been working with the Beyond Coal campaign founded in 2011 by the Sierra Club, to shut down coal plants. As of this year, they claim to have shut down, or gained announcements to close down ahead of schedule, 289 coal power plants since 2010, which was more than half of those in the U.S. at that time. Bloomberg stated he wants his campaign to shut down the remaining 241 plants by 2030. Bloomberg boasted in June that 51 of these shuttered plants had closed since 2016, “despite all the bluster from the White House.”

The buffer for the loss of U.S.-generating capacity is Canada. Some 37 cross-border interconnections bring in power when required, as last year in Minnesota’s debacle when high winds shut down the wind farms! Coal, as a share of U.S. electricity generation, has fallen from 54%, down to a projected 20% in 2020.

Two major U.S. coal plants are shutting this month, adding to the destructuring of the U.S. power base, as Bloomberg wants.

In Pennsylvania, the state’s largest coal-fired generating plant began deactivation by its owner First Energy Solutions, on Nov. 6. The closure of the Bruce Mansfield plant, in Beaver County, western Pennsylvania, had originally been scheduled for 2021, but the company is going through Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization as of this summer, and recently announced that its only remaining Mansfield unit would now be closed. Its other two units were deactivated earlier this year. In the range of 250 employees are affected; the closure is to be complete as of May 2020.

In Arizona yesterday, the operators of the Navajo Generating Station (NGS,) the biggest coal-fired generating plant in the West, confirmed it will shut this coming week. The 2,400-megawatt plant is in northeastern Arizona. Salt River Project, the NGS operator, has been planning this for some time, but the closure is ahead of the original schedule. The NGS has already shut down one of its three units, and has been drawing down the coal on hand, toward a December target for close-out, but now this will happen in November.