Regulators approve $90M pollution controls despite plans to phase out coal

Regulators have approved plans for three Wisconsin utilities to spend nearly $90 million on pollution controls required to continue burning coal at a power plant slated for conversion to natural gas.

Completed in 2011 at a cost of more than $2 billion, the Elm Road Generating Station in Oak Creek is jointly owned by We Energies, Madison Gas and Electric and WPPI Energy, a Sun Prairie-based cooperative that provides power to 51 municipal utilities.

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Ken Notes: Closing coal plants is very difficult. We are quick to say just switch to solar and wind, but the "process" is much more complicated. Also we need to make decisions as to how we establish the new grid, big solar and wind farms or more distributed smaller arrays. Next what is acceptable for co-gen. Finally we have not even started our bio RNG story yet. We need to seek a seat at the table and work with the utilities instead of against them...