By Camille Erickson

January 21, 2020 - A utility cooperative operating across four Western states — including Wyoming — announced it will retire a majority of its coal fleet as part of a new energy plan published Wednesday. But the cooperative’s transition away from coal will not include closing any coal operations in the Equality State, a spokesman for the utility confirmed.

All of Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association’s coal operations in Colorado and New Mexico will be shuttered by 2030, affecting about 600 workers in the two states. Tri-State will not be making changes to its energy portfolio in Wyoming, where the cooperative is a partial owner of the Laramie River Station power plant.

Steam rises from two stacks in 2017 at Basin Electric's Laramie River Station power plant outside Wheatland. A utility cooperative operating across four Western states announced it will retire a majority of its coal fleet. The closures will not affect Wyoming coal facilities, however.

Photo, Star-Tribune

“We will continue that ownership (at Laramie Station) for the time being,” said Mark Stutz, a public relations specialist at Tri-State.

“There are no renewable projects at this time planned in Wyoming,” he added.

Tri-State provides generation and transmission services to 43 member cooperatives in four states. As part of its new renewable energy plan, Tri-State will shutter Craig State and Colowyo Mine located in northwest Colorado within the next decade. The power supplier aims to reduce emissions and accelerate investment in clean energy, according to its “Responsible Energy Plan.”

Escalante Station, a 253-megawatt coal power plant in New Mexico, will close by the end of this year.

To replace coal, Tri-State will launch six new solar and wind projects in Colorado and New Mexico, many in or near the communities now reliant on coal facilities.

Unlike an investor-owned utility, Tri-State is a nonprofit created and owned by its customers.

“It’s a fairly democratic process,” Stutz explained. “Each of the cooperatives has a member on our Board of Directors and they make the decisions and set the direction of the company. Our members in Wyoming were very much a part of the decision.”

The utility serves eight co-ops or public power districts throughout Wyoming, including in Basin, Saratoga, Powell, Riverton, Pine Bluff, Lusk, Wheatland and Torrington.

This month’s announcement comes at a time when utility companies have launched ambitious renewable energy transition plans to divest from coal, including Wyoming’s largest utility, PacifiCorp.

To save ratepayers significant costs, PacifiCorp will retire Jim Bridger’s unit 1 in 2023, four years earlier than the company once projected. Another unit at Jim Bridger will retire in 2028, nine years early. In addition, Naughton’s units 1 and 2 will shutter in 2025. Naughton’s unit 3 retired this year, but will transition to processing natural gas in 2020.

The anticipated retirement date of 2027 for Dave Johnston’s units will remain the same under the new preferred portfolio.

“(Declines in coal production) are due to technology and policy changes that have permanent impacts,” University of Wyoming economist Rob Godby told the Star-Tribune during an interview in December. “A lot of people have historically blown this off saying, ‘This is a cycle like all the other ones; we’ll get through it.’ It’s not going to be like that.”

Due in part to “significant economic pressure,” power companies retired 546 coal units from 2010 to early 2019 across the country, according to the Energy Information Administration.

“We need to come up with permanent solutions that fit what Wyoming is willing to do,” Godby added.