Retirement of two coal-fired units at Oak Creek Power Plant delayed for a year

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We Energies will use two of its coal-fired units at its Oak Creek plant for another year.

The utility on Wednesday announced it will extend the operating lives of units 7 and 8 at the Oak Creek Power Plant through the end of 2026, citing high energy demand as the reason to keep going. The units went online in the 1960s and were scheduled to retire at the end of 2025.

We Energies officials said the decision to postpone retirement was based on tightened energy supply requirements in the Midwest and the need to serve customers with reliable energy. However, environmental groups said the decision will push higher costs to ratepayers and called for more renewable energy sources.

“Reliability is at the forefront of everything we do. This decision will help us keep the lights on every day and every season,” said Mike Hooper, president of We Energies, in a statement. “Just this month, national grid experts raised the alarm of elevated risks of power supply shortages and price spikes due to plant closures and increasing energy demand in the upper Midwest. We will continue to evaluate the future of the plant based on capacity needs, available generation and what is financially prudent,” he added.

The utility is actively planning, permitting or building more than 6,300 megawatts of new generation including natural gas, wind, solar and battery storage over the next five years, officials said. Extending the Oak Creek units is not expected to delay those projects, officials added. Units 7 and 8 have a total capacity of 610 MW, officials noted.

In May, the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin approved plans to convert the Oak Creek gas plant to generate 1,100 MW with natural gas and another 128 MW natural gas plant in Paris, Wis. Data center and manufacturing centers in southeast Wisconsin have been the demand driver for roughly $2 billion in gas-generated electricity.

The Oak Creek and Paris projects will go unaffected, and projects will continue current schedules for construction, said Dan Bukiewicz, president of the Milwaukee Building & Construction Trades Council.

Clean Wisconsin, an environmental nonprofit, slammed We Energies’ decision to hold off retirement.

“This is a company that time and time again has taken a shortsighted, profit-driven approach to energy production and planning, and its customers are paying for it,” said Ciaran Gallagher, the energy and air manager of Clean Wisconsin. “We Energies has once again failed to plan for the future, failed to appropriately invest in cheaper clean energy sources, and failed to keep costs down for Wisconsinites. We Energies is going back on promises it made to communities long burdened by toxic air emissions from that plant,” she added.

We Energies said its decision to delay retirement because of higher risks of energy supply shortages in the Midwest, which Gallagher said was overblown.

“We know that a diverse portfolio of solar, wind, battery storage and demand response is the best way to support a resilient grid,” Gallagher said. “This is just another harmful decision from the state’s largest, most profitable energy company,” she added.

Clean Wisconsin officials noted the utility in 2020 announced it would begin closing the plant in 2023; the date was pushed to 2025 and now it will close in 2026.