BALTIMORE — A federal commission approved a two-year extension this week allowing two Anne Arundel County power plants to continue operating past their planned retirement dates.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved the extensions for the Brandon Shores and Wagner power plants. The extensions apply to the plants' reliability must-run agreements, which are contracts that keep plants operating beyond their intended retirement dates to prevent reliability problems, according to trade organization America's Power.
Brandon Shores is Maryland's only remaining coal-fired power plant. The extension means the plant will operate 11 years beyond Talen Energy's first announcement that it would stop burning coal, according to the Maryland Sierra Club.
The Maryland Sierra Club criticized the decision in a statement.
"This decision demonstrates the need for PJM, the regional grid operator, to swiftly improve its generator retirement and transmission planning processes. RMRs are not only costly for ratepayers, but they also enable outdated fossil fuel plants to continue emitting harmful greenhouse gas emissions into our atmosphere," the organization said. "Increasingly old and expensive fossil fuel power plants will continue to retire. The need for energy reliability will only increase as new technologies like data centers continue to grow, and extreme weather events call for more energy use. Deploying clean renewable energy and storage capacity is the most cost-effective way to meet these challenges. PJM should never allow a repeat of what's happened with these two power plants."
