2 N.J. coal power plants close for good, ensuring cleaner air

The power plant’s smoke stacks have loomed over the western edge of Jersey City for nearly half a century, spewing soot, heavy metals, and other toxic chemicals that impaired the air quality of nearby neighborhoods, the broader North Jersey region and New York City.

The coal-burning plant, which occupies a 250-acre site along the Hackensack River, had been a target of environmental activists for years, and the NAACP ranked it the third worst plant in the country in terms of its disproportionate impact on low-income people of color.

But on Thursday, the Hudson Generation Station, operated by PSEG Power, is being disconnected from the regional electric grid, and will go dark for good. The company is also closing a coal-burning plant near Trenton on the Delaware River.

“This is a win for New Jersey residents and the environment because it will reduce harmful pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions,” said Mary Barber, director for New Jersey clean energy with the Environmental Defense Fund.

The move leaves New Jersey with just one coal-powered plant, the B.L. England facility in Cape May County.

PSEG’s decision to shutter the two coal-fired plants mirrors a trend nationally, as the costs of coal and maintaining the aging plants are no longer cost-effective.

Despite President Donald Trump's vow to bring back coal industry jobs, such plants have fallen victim to economic forces, including the declining cost of renewable energy such as wind and solar, as well as the influx of cheap, cleaner-burning natural gas used by newer facilities and the expense of keeping the old, inefficient plants operating reliably.

Since 2010, power companies across the country have shut or announced plans to close 253 coal-fired plants, according to a tally maintained by the Sierra Club.

“Coal continues to be uneconomic,” said Tom Schuster with the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign. “These plants are aging and continue to be uncompetitive compared to renewables. Trump is unlikely to be able to reverse the trend even though he says he wants to.

“No one is building new coal-fired plants,” Schuster said. “The new capacity has been in wind and solar generation, and some natural gas. These companies are making decisions based on 20- to 30-year time scales.”

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The last day PSEG’s Jersey City and Trenton plants were operational was Wednesday. PSEG starts de-energizing the systems Thursday and disconnecting them from the grid. That process involves isolating the relays, transformers, motors and pumps, said company spokesman Michael Jennings. The company will also start a general environmental cleanup of the sites.

PSEG has been moving the remaining coal off the two sites into storage, and is looking for a buyer for it. When the plants operated, the coal would arrive on barges that were floated up the Hackensack and Delaware rivers.

PSEG said it has been approached by a number of people about future uses for the sites. “But we are long way from choosing a plan,” Jennings said. “We are at the beginning of that process and evaluating the alternatives.”

A few years ago, PSEG Power spent a combined $1.2 billion to add pollution control devices at the Jersey City and Trenton plants, after agreements prompted by state and federal investigations that the plants had been modified without installing the latest pollution control devices as required under the Clean Air Act.

The equipment, as well as the 2008 economic downturn and reduced use of the facilities, helped bring down emissions in recent years. In 2006 the Jersey City plant emitted more than 3 million pounds of toxic materials, such as hydrochloric acid and sulfuric acid. By 2008 that had dropped 94 percent.

Likewise, in 2006 it emitted nearly 20,000 tons of sulfur dioxide, but that had dropped 99 percent by 2014. And it emitted nearly 7,460 tons of nitrogen oxide in 2006, which had declined 93 percent by 2014.

Carbon emissions have also declined dramatically.

But PJM Interconnection, which oversees electric transmission for 13 Eastern states, has imposed new rules to ensure reliability of power plants serving the regional grid, and modernizing the two aging plants to meet the rules would be too expensive, said Bill Levis, PSEG Power's president and chief operating officer, when announcing in October that the two plants would close.

“The sustained low prices of natural gas have put economic pressure on these plants for some time,” Levis had said. “We could not justify the significant investment required to upgrade these plants.”

The closures drew praise from environmental experts, health advocates and politicians alike.

“Transitioning from coal means that sulfur dioxide, mercury, and other air toxins formed when burning this fuel will no longer be injected into the atmosphere that is shared by millions of people in New Jersey,” said Monica Mazurek, an expert on urban air pollution at Rutgers University. “It is heartening to know that a major New Jersey power-producing company is transitioning to cleaner fuels and at the same time reducing air pollution for the region.”

Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop agreed. “We worked with environmental groups over the past few years to advocate for the closing of this plant, as it was a contributor to pollution and dangerous air quality for residents in Jersey City," said Fulop. "The closure this week marks a move forward and toward an improved quality of life for those neighborhoods impacted and we commend PSEG."

Coal-burning plants emit a variety of pollutants that affect the environment and human health.

They emit carbon and other greenhouse gases, which contribute to climate change; and nitrogen oxide, a component of ozone, which can exacerbate asthma and other respiratory diseases, such as emphysema and chronic bronchitis. Some health experts compare inhaling ozone to getting sunburn on one's lungs. Exposure can increase the risk of premature death from heart and lung disease.

Power plants also emit heavy metals, small particles and other toxic substances that target the lungs, the brain or other organs, and affect the overall development of children and fetuses.

Some nitrogen oxide gets blown into New Jersey from coal-fired power plants in the Midwest. But even there, such plants have been closing because of cheap natural gas and the expense of improving older facilities.

“We know from modeling that when an air pollution source is located in population centers, even if there’s a large stack, the local area is going to be disproportionately impacted,” said Kevin Stewart, director of environmental health at the American Lung Association of the Mid-Atlantic.

“The economic and health consequences of using coal have been massive,” he said.

“The Jersey City plant, despite pollution control devices, was bad for people’s health and for many years the external costs were borne by the public,” Stewart said. “The lung association wants the true costs to health to be recognized and accounted for when considering how energy should be generated and what facilities should be invested in.”

The Jersey City plant affected the environment in other ways. It used water from the Hackensack River to cool equipment. Fish and other aquatic life would get sucked into the system and killed.

Then, after cooling the facility's equipment, the water would reenter the Hackensack, often warmer than the river water, causing more harm to aquatic life, said Bill Sheehan, the Hackensack Riverkeeper.

In recent years PSEG Power has relied more on its large power plants in Ridgefield and Linden because they run on natural gas, which has become much cheaper to buy since production ramped up from the Marcellus Shale region of Pennsylvania. The company also operates a large gas-fired plant, the Bergen Generating Station, in Ridgefield.

The Jersey City and Trenton plants were each able to generate enough electricity to power about 600,000 homes.

PSEG Power is building a $600 million gas-fired plant in Woodbridge, as well as new plants in Connecticut and Maryland. The company also operates two nuclear facilities in Salem County, which produce close to 50 percent of the state’s electric output.