POWER December 2014 - 54

COAL PLANT INFRASTRUCTURE
Tricky Business: Taking Down Old
Coal Plants
With the advance of natural gas, increasing regulatory challenges, and anti-coal
politics, U.S. coal-fired power plants are facing unprecedented retirements.
A key question is what to do with them once they have shut down.
Kennedy Maize
A
ustin, Texas, is one of the hottest realestate
markets in the U.S. One of the
prime new properties in the Texas
capital is Seaholm, a $130 million project on
some eight acres of prime downtown land,
featuring residential, office, and retail space
on the southwestern edge of the city (Figure
1). Next door will be a new public library.
The development's website notes that the site
is an " architectural gem built in the 1950s. "
What may be more significant is that this
gem is the site of a former coal-fired power
plant, with a handsome Art Deco-Art Moderne
building, once a key generating plant for
Austin's municipal electric utility. The plant
was designed in two phases in 1948 and 1955,
under the direction of the noted Kansas City
engineering firm of Burns & McDonnell, and
named for Walter Seaholm, long-time Austin
city manager.
The plant ran on coal for many years, then
switched to fuel oil and natural gas, and went
into standby service in 1989. It finally shut
down for good in 1996. The Austin muni
started thinking about demolishing the plant
in 2006, but many in the community wanted
to save the plant's distinctive shell and its
unusual and attractive design. A grassroots
movement saved the structure, which is now
part of a major urban redevelopment project.
Austin's Seaholm story is a positive example
in what has become a major new trend
in energy: dealing with old, uneconomic coal
plants.
Big Business
Demolishing and decommissioning coalfired
power plants, once a small part of the
energy landscape, has become a big deal
in recent years, driven by the economics of
cheap natural gas and the march of environmental
regulation across the generating
landscape. According to the Government Accountability
Office (GAO), the congressional
watchdog agency, since 2012 generators have
retired or announced retirements of some 42
GW of coal-fired capacity-roughly 13% of
the nation's coal-fired fleet. Two years ago,
54
www.powermag.com
POWER | December 2014
the GAO predicted between 2% and 12% for
coal plant retirements by 2025.
The GAO said between January 2012 and
May 2014, 15 GW of summer coal-fired capacity
had been retired. The Department of
Energy's Energy Information Administration
has even higher estimates of coal plant closings,
some 50 GW-or 16% of capacity-
from 2012 through 2020. About three-quarters
of the retirements will occur by the end of
2015.
An analysis a year ago by Navigant Research
found, " While retirements will occur
in many countries, the majority will take
place in North America and Western Europe,
as countries in Asia Pacific, for example,
continue on a path of major coal generation
additions in the next two decades. Navigant
Research forecasts that the market for coal
plant decommissioning in North America
and Europe will grow from $455 million in
2013 to $1.3 billion by 2016, declining rapidly
thereafter. Cumulative revenue from 2013
to 2020 will total $5.3 billion. "
Chris Dowdell, a business development
manager at the eastern office of Brandenburg,
a veteran demolition firm, told POWER
that his company views retired coal-fired
power plants as a major business opportunity.
" It started in 2009-2010, " he said, " and we
are hitting a peak right now, looking at the
2015-2016 period. " He said his company is
actively bidding on some 20 coal decommissioning
projects. Brandenburg has been in
the demolition business for 40 years and has
been working with power plant projects for
the last 30 years.
Brandenburg's eastern office, located in
Bethlehem, Pa., is well positioned to play
in the market for coal plant demolition and
decommissioning. Ironically, the company
is located quite close to the headquarters of
1. Urban gem. Austin Energy's former Seaholm Power Plant, which once burned coal, is
being repurposed as the centerpiece of a redevelopment plan. Courtesy: Austin Energy
http://www.powermag.com
POWER December 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of POWER December 2014
