The expected closure of four nuclear plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania will dramatically harm efforts to reduce carbon emissions that contribute to climate change, and significantly raise electricity prices for consumers in those states and beyond, according to a report released Monday morning.
The report, by economists at the Brattle Group, found that keeping the Ohio and Pennsylvania nuclear plants running would avoid more than 21 million metric tons of carbon emissions annually, compared to replacing the power source with natural gas and coal.
If these nuclear plants remained open, customers’ annual gross electricity costs could be as much as $400 million lower in Ohio and $285 million in Pennsylvania, the Brattle Group said.
About 72 percent of the electricity that replaces the nuclear plants would come from natural gas generation and 28 percent from coal, two power sources that produce carbon emissions, the report found.
Nuclear’s importance is especially acute in the PJM Interconnection system where the plants operate. PJM is America’s largest competitive power market, spanning 13 states. Across all of PJM, electricity costs could be as much as $1.5 billion lower if the four nuclear plants keep operating.
The three nuclear plants that FirstEnergy plans to shut down by 2021, plus Exelon’s Three Mile Island nuclear plant — scheduled to close next year — produced more energy than all of the wind and solar generation combined in PJM, the report said.
The report’s findings highlight the challenges associated with the closure of nuclear power plants, which are struggling to compete on price with cheap natural gas and renewable energy, but are valued for their carbon-free attribute and around-the-clock energy generation capacity.
“As this report makes clear, policymakers should take note of the critical environmental and economic contributions of our nation’s nuclear plants, especially where their continued operation is threatened,” said the study’s authors, Dean Murphy and Mark Berkman. “Any discussion of Pennsylvania’s and Ohio’s energy futures must recognize the significant environmental and economic risks associated with allowing these four plants to close. The impending closures indicate a significant concession in their clean energy commitments.”
Brattle Group conducted the study at the request of Nuclear Matters, a coalition group supporting nuclear energy.
The report’s release comes as the Energy Department is expected soon to decide whether to grant FirstEnergy’s petition to grant an emergency order under section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act to save coal and nuclear plants in the Midwest.
The measure is not meant to be used for economic reasons, but rather for emergency circumstances that include war, energy shortages, or sudden surges in demand.
FirstEnergy’s coal and nuclear divisions recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and critics have said granting the emergency request would amount to a bailout that would undermine competitive wholesale power markets that have reduced prices for consumers.
Before FirstEnergy made its request, it announced that absent state or federal relief, it will retire the Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear plants in Ohio, and the twin-reactor Beaver Valley plant in western Pennsylvania, over the next three years.
Exelon, the owner of Three Mile Island, had previously said it would retire that plant in 2019. Exelon is not seeking emergency relief.
Retiring these plants would more than reverse the emissions benefits of all the renewable generation in the PJM market installed over the past 25 years, the Brattle Group report said.
More broadly, the U.S. depends on the nation’s 99 nuclear power plants for 60 percent of its carbon-free electricity, twice as much clean energy as renewables provide combined.
Six nuclear reactors closed in the last five years, and plant owners have announced their intention to close 12 more in the coming years.
Some clean energy advocates, however, argue that wind and solar, which have seen huge reductions in development costs, are ready to replace nuclear power. They say modeling the carbon emissions consequences of lost nuclear is difficult to do today, because innovations such as battery storage will spread in the future as costs fall, allowing renewables to be used when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun is not shining.
Most of America’s new power-generating capacity over the past two years has been wind and solar, supporters note.
Wind and solar account for about 8 percent of the nation’s grid, rising from less than 1 percent a decade ago.
“Technology is going to rapidly improve more than a lot of our expectations,” Dylan Reed, head of congressional affairs at Advanced Energy Economy, a trade group advocating clean energy, told the Washington Examiner. “The ramp-up of energy storage in the next decade and pairing it with other technologies that will have emissions benefits is something hard to model, but will surpass expectations.”
