Global warming has triggered worldwide action for years, but the city of Orlando and its electric utility have never considered publicly whether to shutter a pair of coal-burning power plants — until now.
On Tuesday, the Orlando Utilities Commission is expected to launch studies that cost $1 million, take 18 months, solicit customer input and address if or when its two coal plants should be retired.
Sierra Club’s Susannah Randolph and others urgently want Orlando and utility officials to quickly reach a decisive conclusion.
“We are very hopeful that OUC and the city will announce a retirement date for the Curtis Stanton coal plants,” she said.
A path to decommissioning, however, may not be swift.
“You can’t just walk over and shut the switch off,” said Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer. “We want to do this in a smart way. We are committed to it, but we also want to do it in a way that is accountable and affordable.”
Dyer and four appointed citizens make up the utility’s governing board, which operates largely independently from the city council.
Another sign that shutdowns could be years off is OUC’s upcoming upgrade of the oldest of the plants that will cost $27 million. “The return on investment is three years or less,” OUC spokesman Tim Trudell said.
In the context of climate change, the city of Orlando and the century-old utility it owns have exhibited dual identities.
One version has been steadfast in running coal plants even as the technology is blamed for many woes: mines that destroy mountains, landfills of toxic ash, mercury contamination of fish, worsening respiratory diseases, and prodigious emissions of gases heating up the planet.
OUC’s Stanton Energy Center’s Units 1 and 2 started up in 1987 and 1996 for about $1 billion each in today’s dollars.
They have been a point of pride for OUC, while the utility has been a key source of cash for running the city. OUC has sent nearly $1.5 billion to Orlando’s general fund since 2000.
The other identity is of a city hall that for a decade has been striving to burnish its environmental credibility.
Efforts have included equipping residents with composting bins, improving energy efficiency of city buildings and actively branding Orlando as prioritizing sustainability.
Those efforts were applauded from afar this year.
WalletHub, a personal-finance website that features surveys on everything from best places for vegetarians to worst places for work, ranked Orlando as the 28th greenest city in the U.S.
Touting the WalletHub ranking, Dyer noted the city topped all others in the Southeast, including Atlanta.
More recently, the National Geographic documentary “Paris to Pittsburgh” puts Orlando and several other cities in a flattering light for championing sustainability.
The title is from President Donald Trump’s put-down last year of international climate cooperation, stating he represents Pittsburgh and not Paris.
The film offers no explanation for Orlando’s coal plants but displays them with a sweeping, aerial shot. The Stanton units are the 50-story, exhaust-fuming landmarks a dozen miles east of downtown Orlando.
The documentary was produced by Bloomberg Philanthropies of Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York City, among the world’s richest people and a leading activist in climate action.
Asked about the mixed message of Orlando’s green initiatives coupled with running coal plants, a Bloomberg Philanthropies official said cities are challenged in retiring such costly investments “in a way that isn’t going cause utility bills to spike.”
“Our take on Orlando is they are doing things that are critically important to being leaders on climate change,” said Jeremiah Baumann, a member of the Bloomberg Philanthropies environment team. “They arguably have one of the best building-energy savings programs in the Southeast.”
The Natural Resources Defense Council, a national environmental group promoting the documentary, also was not critical of Orlando’s ongoing reliance on coal energy.
“As the film shows, we’re seeing a lot of great work happening in cities around the country already,” said spokeswoman Kate Slusark Kiely in an emailed statement. “But, of course, challenges remain.”
Bloomberg Philanthropies has been a key financial supporter of Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign to shut down a third of the 500 coal plants in the U.S. by 2020.
Locally, Sierra Club commissioned a study by a consultant, Synapse Energy Economics Inc., on the viability of retiring OUC’s coal plants.
In a July memo to Sierra, Synapse stated that it relied on “high-level publicly available data” to determine that with its coal plants, OUC has far more capacity to produce electricity than its customers need.
“These observations suggest that OUC likely has the ability to begin the process of retiring one of the coal-fired units immediately,” the Synapse memo states.
Linda Ferrone, Orlando Utilities Commission chief customer officer, said the coming studies by OUC will take a deep dive into the utility’s options from 2020 to 2040.
On Tuesday, OUC’s board is to approve an $800,000 contract with Siemen’s Industry Inc. for a far-reaching analysis of the utility’s electricity supply and demand.
Another contract of $226,000 is for “stakeholder services” by Essense Partners Inc.
“We can listen to our fixed-income stakeholders, we can listen to our environmentally minded stakeholders and we can listen to our large commercial customers,” Ferrone said.
Along with the fate of the coal plants, the studies will evaluate the role of solar energy, the potential need to rely more on natural gas and efforts to reduce customer demand for electricity, Ferrone said.
“It will mean a different business model for OUC and that’s exciting for us,” she said.
At the OUC meeting Tuesday will be Piper Vargas, initially a volunteer and now Florida field consultant for a rising, national environmental group, Moms Clean Air Force.
She is a mother who lives in east Orange County and is encouraging other parents in the sprawling communities of Avalon Park, Waterford Lakes and Stoneybrook East – all near OUC’s plants – to join her in speaking at the meeting.
“I was so unaware that in my backyard was a coal-burning power plant and what that means for my family and my kids’ health,” Vargas said.
“Orlando has gotten awards and recognition for becoming one of the greenest cities in the Southeast,” she said. “So why would you invest in coal?”
kspear@orlandosentinel.com
