U.S. power company Ameren Corp asked Illinois for more time to meet the state’s emissions limits from the utility’s coal-fired power plants as weak power prices makes it uneconomic to pay the high cost of installing environmental controls.
“Current market prices simply do not allow further investment in pollution control equipment at this time,” Steven Sullivan, president and CEO of Ameren Energy Resources, said in a statement last week.
Ameren Energy Resources is a holding company for St Louis-based Ameren’s merchant generation unit.
Ameren asked the Illinois Pollution Control Board to extend the compliance dates for reducing sulfur dioxide (SO2) emission to Dec. 31, 2020.
Ameren said it has spent more than $1 billion on pollution control equipment that satisfies the state’s S02 emissions limits until 2015 but noted those limits are significantly reduced on Jan. 1, 2015.
In February, Ameren announced the deceleration of its planned scrubber project at its 1,197-megawatt (MW) Newton coal-fired power plant, which would have satisfied the state’s 2015 SO2 standards.
“If the requested relief is not granted, we will have to seriously consider mothballing two of our three remaining unscrubbed energy centers on Jan. 1, 2015,” said Sullivan.
Ameren said the three unscrubbed energy centers were Newton, the 715-MW Edwards and the 1,002-MW Joppa.
The six 167-MW units at the Joppa plant entered service in the 1950s. The three units at the Edwards plant entered service in the 1960s and 1970s, and the two units at Newton entered service in the 1970s and 1980s.
Approval of the request by Illinois regulators would allow additional time for economic recovery and related power price improvements necessary to support scrubber installations and other pollution controls, the company said.
“We are optimistic that the (Illinois regulators) will grant the requested relief,” said Sullivan.
Ameren also said it was working with power grid operators PJM and Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator (MISO) to remove barriers preventing Ameren’s downstate Illinois generators from moving power to the northern part of the state where prices are higher.
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PJM operates the power grid serving 60 million customers in all or parts of 13 U.S. Mid-Atlantic and Midwest states, including northern Illinois.
MISO operates the power grid in 11 U.S. Midwest states and the Canadian province of Manitoba, including Ameren’s southern Illinois territory.
“Solving this singular issue would be a first step in resolving our financial challenges,” said Sullivan. “It is time for the (U.S.) Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to direct PJM and MISO to solve this problem.”