This old Michigan coal plant is being reimagined to provide solar power

Old coal-fired power plants are a sustainability nightmare for surrounding communities, creating smoke, ash, and smog that taint the landscape and cause all manner of health problems.  But what if there were a relatively easy way to turn this kind of fossil fuel infrastructure into not just a green space but also a site to generate renewable power? An initiative to reuse a retired plant in Michigan would clean up the site—and use the existing power lines to plug in solar power.  “They’re a brownfield and an eyesore,” said Howard Lerner, president and executive director of the Environmental Law and Policy Center (EPLC), which has worked with the Saginaw Basin Land Conservancy to put together a blueprint for redeveloping the Dan E. Karn coal plant site in Essexville. “This is seizing a once-in-a-generation opportunity.” [Photo: Consumers Energy] Consumer Energy, which operated the plant from 1959 to 2023, recently announced plans to build 85 megawatts of solar energy on the site, enough to power roughly 20,000 homes. By taking advantage of the existing transmission lines, setting up solar will be relatively easy, skipping the challenges with connection queues and transmission buildout that’s slowing down other renewable power projects. It’s expected to be operational by 2026.  Parallel to that effort, local nonprofits and officials have voiced support for a plan to turn wide swaths of the plant into green space, trails, and waterfront parks, with hundreds of acres of habitat restoration. The full cost and details haven’t been fleshed out, and the plant still needs to be demolished, but Lerner believes some form of land grant and tax write-off for the utility will make turning this into a new park both relatively rapid and cheap. [Image: ELPC] “The real breakthrough is that you have environmental groups, utilities, key local officials, and the [Bay Area] Chamber of Commerce all saying that this makes sense,” said Lerner. A number of local officials have already signed on to the plan. Transforming old coal power plants tends to drag on due to the challenges of environmental remediation and sorting through the legal ramifications of such efforts. A 2014 study by the Delta Institute, an environmental nonprofit, found that redeveloping coal plants took an average of 27 years. But two big changes have helped accelerate these kinds of projects: The advent of environmental liability transfer, which lets utilities discharge their responsibilities via structured asset sales, and the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes incentives for transforming fossil fuel infrastructure. Lerner said that fully cleaning up the Michigan coal plant will take years. Coal ash needs to be removed from the site. But in the meantime, the solar site will be rapidly set up, and planning for the park space can begin immediately.  [Image: SBLC] Karn is just the first example of EPLC’s larger vision, according to Lerner, since roughly 60 plants with similar potential in the Midwest are either retired or being shut down. The organization has long envisioned more plant-to-park transformations; many coal power plants sit on waterfront property, since lakes and rivers provided the water and steam needed for turbines. The organization is already working on a similar initiative for the J. H. Campbell generating plant in West Olive, Michigan, and the Trenton Channel power plant near Detroit. “Utilities are sometimes pretty conservative,” Lerner said. “They often tend to be followers. . . . Everybody wants to be the third to step up to do something, right? This breaks the ice.” ​​