EIA report outlines planned closures of power plants in 2023
An analysis from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said that 15.6 gigawatts (GW) of electric-generating capacity will be retired in the United States in 2023.
The EIA’s Preliminary Monthly Electric Generator Inventory said that most of the retired plants will be natural gas-fired (6.2 GW) and coal-fired (8.9 GW) power plants.
A substantial amount of U.S. coal-fired capacity has retired over the past decade. Annual coal retirements averaged 11 GW a year from 2015 to 2020, with a record 14.9 GW retired in 2015. Capacity decreased to 5.6 GW in 2021 and then increased to 11.5 GW in 2022. In 2023, power plant owners and operators plan to retire 8.9 GW of coal-fired capacity — about 4.5 percent of the total coal-fired capacity.
The largest coal-fired power plant expected to retire this year is the 1,490 MW W.H. Sammis Power Plant in Ohio. The second largest to be retired this year is Pleasants Power Station (1,278 MW). Energy Harbor, which plans to become a 100 percent carbon-free electricity supplier by the end of this year, owns both W.H. Sammis and Pleasants.
In terms of natural gas-fired plants, about 6.2 GW of U.S. capacity is scheduled to retire this year. That represents about 1.3 percent of the operating natural gas fleet. Most of the retiring natural gas capacity is made up of older steam and combustion turbine units, which produce electricity less efficiently than many of the newer combined-cycle natural gas units.
Specifically, three aging natural gas-fired plants in California (Alamitos, Huntington Beach, and Redondo Beach), with a combined 2.2 GW of capacity, are scheduled to retire by the end of 2023.
Finally, about 0.4 GW of U.S. petroleum-fired capacity is scheduled to retire this year. Petroleum-fired power plants make up a small portion of generating capacity in the United States – about 2.2 percent.
