ABERDEEN, Ohio — Despite the decision by the U.S. EPA last week to roll back emissions standards to save the coal-fired plant industry, dozens of power plants in Ohio, Iowa, Michigan and other states are scheduled to be retired over the coming years, victims of a slumping coal industry and efforts by environmentalists fighting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

 

Ohio is one of the latest states to announce the closing of coal-fired plants. The American Electric Power Co. (AES) said three weeks ago it is shutting its four-unit, 2,318-megawatt plant here by 2018, to be joined by another AES plant closing at the same time in Wrightsville. Both are operated by the AES subsidiary Dayton Power & Light (DP&L).

 

Tests have shown that power plants burning coal release a mix of toxic chemicals into the air that can cause serious health problems to people, damage crops and be harmful to farm animals.

 

President Trump signed sweeping executive orders March 29 aimed at unraveling former President Obama’s EPA policies in his Clean Power Plan Act intended to cut GHG emissions from the nation’s electric plants. But Trump’s order may have come too late to save 73 power plants already slated to close by 2030. Since 2010, 175 plants have shut down across the country, according to the Sierra Club; the most in a single year were 94 in 2015. At the beginning of the year, there were 614 coal-fired plants still in operation in the United States.

 

In Michigan, 25 coal-fired plants are due to close by 2020, an effort pushed by Republican Gov. Rick Scott, who has sought increased energy efficiency. And he’s not alone.

 

Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner, also a Republican, has signed a $200 million-ayear renewable energy investment measure requiring power plants to reduce GHG emissions by 56 percent by 2030. Under Obama, the Clean Power Plan would have required only 32 percent.

 

Fellow Republican Ohio Gov. John Kasich has fought coal-plant supporters and vetoed a bill that would have weakened the state’s renewable energy standards. He instead has pushed investments in wind and solar development to strengthen the state’s energy goals.

 

Ohio was forced to close its two plants because they were uneconomic, DP&L said, adding it intends to sell off its three other Ohio coal-fired plants in Conesville, Miami Fort and Zimmer.

 

Indiana has 16 coal-fired plants owned by six different energy companies, representing the nation’s second-largest coal-fired electric generating fleet. Duke Energy of Charlotte, N.C., said it wouldclose its five Indiana coal-fired units at the Wabash River Station in West Terre Haute by June 2018.

 

The Northern Indiana Public Service Co. plans to close a two-unit plant at Bailly Generating Station at Lake Michigan by mid-2018 and idle two of its four units at the R.M. Schahfer Generating Station in Wheatfield by 2023. The closures represent half the state’s coal-power generation, replaced by combined-cycle gas turbines.

 

After the closures, the state will have shut down 27 plants.

 

In 2015, the Sierra Club announced it had marked the 200th closing of a coal-fueled plant after it targeted 523 plants across the country to convince states to end coal-fired energy. By the end of this year, the Sierra Club said it will have succeeded in helping to close more than 260 of them.

 

Iowa will close seven plants by 2025, leaving six in operation. Missouri hasclosed seven plants in the past five years and will retire four more by 2021. Coal production has dropped dramatically across the country, hurt by a variety of factors including falling prices for wind and solar energy and low prices for natural gas. The federal Energy Information Administration (EIA) is more sanguine about coal’s prognosis, saying it was being eased out of the electricity mix, even before the Clean Power Plan.

 

Before Trump ordered revamping  the Clean Power Plan Act, 85 percentof states were on track to meet the 32 percent emission reduction target, even

while the plan was under fire in federal court. The EPA’s new chief, Scott Pruitt, who was the former Oklahoma attorney general, sued the agency more than a dozen times then, challenging the climate change policies he now intends to reverse. Trump campaigned on a promise to coal miners he would bring back their jobs.

 

“I made them this promise,” he said during the executive order ceremony, “We will put our miners back to work.” The Sierra Club’s Mary Ann Hitt told the Washington Post, “There’s a structural disadvantage for coal in the marketplace. That’s not something Donald Trump can wave away with the stroke of a pen. We’re not building any new coal plants in this country and the existing ones are having a harder and harder time competing with ever-cheaper renewables.”

 

Under his March 28 order, Trump has ordered all federal agencies to no longer consider GHG emissions when permitting energy, infrastructure and other projects, and stops the agencies from factoring the “social cost of carbon” into their decisions.

 

Despite EPA rewriting the rules on these emissions, studies have showed that burning coal releases fine particles into the air mixed with a combination of toxins, including benzene, mercury, arsenic and selenium.

 

One of these was a 2009 report from Physicians for Social Responsibility, based in Washington, D.C., titled Coal’s Assault on Human Health, which can be read online at www.psr.org/resources/coals-assault-on-human-health.html World Health Organization studies stated that 7 million people died from breathing air pollution five years ago, 1 in 8 of the total number of global deaths that year.