GOP congressman blames Biden for shutdown of largest coal plant in Pennsylvania
Heather Hunter
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Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA) blasted the Biden administration for the shutdown of the Homer City Generating Station coming on July 1.
“The largest coal plant in Pennsylvania, 50 miles east of Pittsburgh, announced it is shutting down – costing hardworking Americans their jobs and livelihoods,” Reschenthaler tweeted on Sunday morning.
“Among the reasons for ceasing operations? Biden’s burdensome and disastrous Green New Deal agenda,” the Pennsylvania Republican added.
https://twitter.com/GReschenthaler/status/1647595950964178944?s=20
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Homer City Generating Station made the announcement in early April that it would be decommissioning all of its coal units.
“This is an unfortunate day for us at Homer City because we did everything possible to maintain our operations,” President and CEO William A. Wexler said in a statement. “Everyone at Homer City was committed to helping power our community and no one embodied that commitment more than our workers.”
The shutdown will occur over the course of three months, along with tiered layoffs.
The plant has operated since 1969. At full capacity, the plant could power up to 2 million homes, but according to the Sierra Club, it has been running at less than half-capacity since 2015 and only at 20% capacity in 2022.
Sierra Club Pennsylvania Chapter Director Thomas Schuster recently said that the shutdown process of the plant is already resulting in cleaner air.
Some of the reasons why the plant is closing include high coal prices, warm winters driving down energy demand, changes in ownership, gaps in maintenance, and economic and staffing struggles.
The power company has been warning about “stringent” emission limits impacting it in its annual reports to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) dating back to 2010.
“State and local environmental regulations, particularly those that impose stringent state specific emission limits, could put the Homer City plant at a disadvantage compared with competing power plants operating in nearby states and subject to less stringent state emission limits or to federal emission limits alone. Potential future climate change regulations could also put the Homer City plant at a disadvantage compared to both power plants utilizing other fuels and utilities that may be able to recover climate change compliance costs through rate-base mechanisms,” the company’s form 10-K said in its annual SEC filing.
“In addition, the ability of these plants to compete may be affected by governmental and regulatory activities designed to support the construction and operation of power generation facilities fueled by renewable energy sources,” the company said in the report.
Reschenthaler, the House chief deputy whip, is no stranger to confronting the Biden administration about its climate change policies. The Pennsylvania Republican pressed Department of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm in a House Appropriations Subcommittee hearing last month about her previous comments praising China’s environmental policy, when she suggested that Americans can “learn from what China is doing.”
“Secretary, on March 10, 2023, you said, ‘We can all learn from what China is doing’ — obviously about the environment,” Reschenthaler said in the hearing. “At the time you made that comment, were you aware that 30% of the world’s CO2 emissions came from China?”
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He went on to blast the Biden administration’s double standard of China’s continuous construction of coal power plants in the country while pressuring the shutdown of coal plants in the United States.
Reschenthaler recently tweeted that the president “destroyed America’s energy independence – and his agenda is detrimental to Pennsylvania.”