Evergy Inc. wants to delay by five years a plan to shut down its 485-MW coal-fired Lawrence plant west of Kansas City, Kan., a proposal concerning environmental groups that want the facility closed sooner.
In a 2023 annual update to its integrated resource plan filed with the Kansas Corporation Commission on June 15, Evergy also scaled back its near-term solar investment plans from 190 MW in 2024 to 150 MW in 2026. The utility spread its wind additions over a longer period of time.
"Driven by tight supply chains, increasing incentives for 'on-shoring' of manufacturing, and increased demand driven by the Inflation Reduction Act, there has been an increase in the construction cost for new renewable generation," Evergy wrote in its integrated resource plan.
The company also cited transmission constraints in the Southwest Power Pool, where "long lead times to receive approval by the SPP to connect new generation projects to the power grid" undermine a more rapid buildout of solar and wind.
New reserve capacity rules that the regional transmission organization put in place in 2021 following that year's bad winter storms are another reason the Lawrence coal plant must stay in operation longer, Evergy said. The company said earlier this year that it will invest $11.6 billion between 2023 and 2027 to support its transition to cleaner energy resources.
The Sierra Club's Kansas chapter had advocated for the earlier retirement of Evergy's coal plant. So did the Kansas City, Mo., City Council, which passed a climate plan in August 2022 calling for Evergy's 552-MW Hawthorn coal plant just outside the city to close in 2025 and all other plants by 2030.
Evergy expects to keep the Hawthorn plant, which the US Environmental Protection Agency said emitted 2.8 million metric tons of carbon in 2021, running until 2055.
"It's maddening that Evergy said it would close its Lawrence coal plant two years ago, yet here we are with the utility committing to burn fossil fuels at the plant years beyond the original plan," said Nancy Muma of the Sierra Club's Kansas Chapter. "That's not a decision utility leaders make while proclaiming to care about climate change and the cost to its customers."
When it released the resource plan in May 2021, Evergy said it would retire the two remaining units at the Lawrence plant in late 2023. The smaller of the two operating units has been running since 1960, the larger since 1971. Two units dating from the first half of the 1950s have previously been retired.
Evergy now says it will keep the Lawrence plant in operation until 2028 and after that date will keep one of the units available to run on natural gas. The plant emitted 2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2021, according to the EPA. The additional carbon releases from running the plant five years longer will not affect Evergy's emissions reduction target, the company said.
The updated plan calls for about 1,300 MW of "hydrogen-capable" combined-cycle generation to meet capacity requirements and maintain reliability.
Evergy has set a target to zero out carbon emissions from its power operations by 2045, assuming that "enabling new technologies and supportive regulations are in place."
In its updated integrated resource plan, Evergy took into account the 10-year production tax credit for wind and solar and the 30% investment tax credit for batteries provided by the Inflation Reduction Act. But it also noted that tight supply chains and increased demand for domestically sourced equipment driven by the 2022 law have pushed up construction costs for renewables.
"Transmission constraints and supply chain challenges are impacting our near-term plans and will continue to need to be addressed going forward, but our net-zero commitment is dependent on much more far-reaching technology change," Evergy spokesperson Gina Penzig wrote in an email. "Most importantly, new firm, dispatchable technology is required to provide non-emitting generation capacity while also maintaining reliability."
Evergy utilities Evergy Kansas Central Inc. and Evergy Metro Inc. serve about 1 million electric customers in Kansas. Evergy Metro and Evergy Missouri West Inc. serve about 700,000 electric customers in Missouri.
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