by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow
The Daily Sentinel
It is ironic to see preservationists lobbying to save power plants with smokestacks, but that is the strange case of the Zuni power plant in Denver. The coal-fired steam plant was built in 1901 and provided electricity to a growing metropolis until decommissioned by Excel Energy in 2021. Xcel doesn’t want it anymore, having switched from coal to natural gas, and wants to tear it down to avoid future liability issues.
Neighborhood preservation activists, with Denver City Council support, have been working to convince Xcel not to do that, hoping to turn it into a market, restaurants, galleries or something. Xcel delayed demolition while it tried to convince Denver that if it wanted to save the industrial site, the city could buy it. Denver has now been given 30 days to make up its mind, as Xcel reminds leaders that it is in the power business, not the community development business.
What is the highest and best use of such a unique facility? Here is an idea: turn it back into a power plant. Not the old facility that spewed black smoke into the air a century ago, but a more modern installation that includes clean-burning technology — like the one Xcel was operating there until deciding to flip the switch in 2021. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent building new power plants that use natural gas instead of coal, while the old plants were simply switched off.
Those decisions — on the part of Xcel and dozens of other utilities around the country — were not based on economics or consumer demand. They were based on wrong-headed government policy. Newly appointed Energy Secretary Chris Wright is already calling attention to the problem, saying the U.S. should stop closing coal plants. He has no pro-coal bias, as a highly successful entrepreneur from the competitor natural gas industry, but he understands, and is now explaining to Washington politicians, that America’s cheapest and most abundant energy source is critical to meeting energy demand. Demand that is growing, not shrinking.
