Texas coal plant to shut down by 2020



>>Companies and brands expected to die in 2018. A north Texas coal-fired power plant will shut down claiming it couldn't make money in the Texas power market.

>>Companies and brands expected to die in 2018. A north Texas coal-fired power plant will shut down claiming it couldn't make money in the Texas power market. Photo: LUKE SHARRETT /NYT Photo: LUKE SHARRETT /NYT Image 1 of / 29 Caption Close Texas coal plant to shut down by 2020 1 / 29 Back to Gallery

A north Texas coal-fired power plant will shut down in 2020 after it couldn't make money in the Texas power market.

The nearly 700 megawatt Oklaunion plant near Vernon couldn't compete in the market run by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas or ERCOT said AEP Texas spokesman Greg Blair.

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"The owners voted to close the plant between April and Oct. of 2020. There's a lot more approvals that need to be gotten before that happens, but really the plant was no longer competitive in the ERCOT market," Blair said.

He added that approximately 80 workers would be affected by the closure. AEP and its subsidiaries own a 70 percent stake in the plant, with the City of Brownsville and Oklahoma Municipal Power Authority owning 18 percent and 12 percent, respectively.

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It would grow a list of at least five coal-fired power plants that have either closed or announced their closure date. Three were shut down by Luminant in early 2018, which cited low prices as the reason for closing the plants. Another run by San Antonio's city-owned utility, CPS Energy, will close by the end of the year instead of spending hundreds of millions of dollars on environmental controls.

While there are no current deals to sell the power plant, Blair said the company is "always looking for opportunities."