NEW YORK – Electricity company Dayton Power & Light said on Monday it would shut down two coal-fired power plants in southern Ohio next year for economic reasons, a setback for the ailing coal industry but a victory for environmental activists.
Republican President Donald Trump promised in his election campaign to restore U.S. coal jobs that he said had been destroyed by environmental regulations put into effect by his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama.
Dayton Power & Light, a subsidiary of AES Corp. (AES), said in an emailed statement that it planned to close the J.M. Stuart and Killen plants by June 2018 because they would not be “economically viable beyond mid-2018.”
U.S. power companies retired or converted over 14,000 MW of coal-fired plants in 2016 after shutting a record of over 17,000 MW in 2015, according to Thomson Reuters data.
In 2015, coal used to produce electricity fell to its lowest level since 1984, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission data showed. That year, coal-fired generators produced 33 percent of the nation’s total generation, down from over 50 percent in 2003.
