Four nuclear plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania are due to retire early because of economic conditions, namely power markets that do not value the environmental attributes provided by these plants. FirstEnergy Solutions will close the Davis-Besse and Perry plants in Ohio, and Beaver Valley in Pennsylvania. Exelon Generation also previously announced the closure of Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania.
The Brattle Group developed an estimate of the environmental and electricity price impacts of these announced nuclear plant retirements. Their report found negative impacts of these early retirements:
- Retiring these plants would more than reverse the emissions benefits of all the renewable generation in PJM installed over the past 25 years.
- Replacing the zero-emission output of these four nuclear plants with zero-emission renewable generation could cost around $2 billion annually.
- Without these plants, customers’ annual gross electricity costs could be as much as $400 million higher in Ohio and $285 million higher in Pennsylvania.
- The plants currently provide over 3,000 direct jobs as well as other non-employee contractor jobs, most of which would be lost by the plants’ retirement.