WEST PADUCAH, Ky., Nov. 15 (UPI) -- Alice Howell, a regional director for the Sierra Club, lauded the planned closing of two coal-fired units at a power plant in western Kentucky.
"Kentucky is proving that it can move beyond coal," she said in a statement Thursday.
The Tennessee Valley Authority, a federally owned utility and economic development corporation, is retiring the units at the 50-year-old Paradise power-generating facility, the Sierra Club said.
The advocacy group said the plant has 13.6 million tons of emissions every year.
The TVA will compensate for the loss of power with a 1,000-megawatt natural gas plant, the Sierra Club said.
The New York Times reported Thursday the closings are part of the TVA's strategy to use less coal as a power source. The closings extend to coal-fired plants in Alabama. The TVA offered no deadline for when the plants' coal units would shut down.
The World Meteorological Organization said in a report last week there was a 32 percent increase in the warming effect of greenhouse gases between 1990 and 2012. It said carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels like oil and coal accounted for 80 percent of the increase.
