After deciding to shut down other aging coal-fired generators in Kentucky and West Tennessee during the past year, the Tennessee Valley Authority will take a different approach with a pair of 58-year-old units at its Shawnee Fossil Plant near Paducah, Ky.
TVA directors voted unanimously Tuesday to spend $185 million to retrofit units 1 and 4 at the Shawnee plant with coal scrubbers and selective catalytic reduction devices. The pollution controls will allow the units to keep burning coal and bring Shawnee into compliance with a consent order TVA signed in 2011 to either clean up or shut down the aging units by 2017.
TVA had until today to tell the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of its decision.
Environmental groups opposed to TVA’s use of coal-fired generation wanted the units shut down as TVA has done or soon will do at 32 of its other smaller and older coal units.
But TVA Director Peter Mahurin, the chairman of TVA’s finance committee and the lone Kentucky representative on the 8-member TVA board, said TVA needs the power from Shawnee.