Buddy Hasten sees a lot of sun power in Arkansas’ future, but he also forecasts some dark moments as American utilities continue to turn away from burning coal to create electricity.
His long-term solution includes a rarely mentioned generation source: nuclear.
Hasten, CEO of the Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas, said the kind of rolling blackouts seen in Texas and Arkansas during extreme cold snaps the past few years could become more frequent and dire occurrences, especially if the U.S. fails to envision new baseload sources of power.
“You’re going to see a lot more solar in places that haven’t had it” in the near future, Hasten said, noting that 60,000 megawatts of coal generation are set to retire nationwide in the next four years. That’s enough juice to power maybe 30 million typical homes. “Under the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law, a lot of that capacity will be replaced by renewable energy.”
But one possibility could cause policy-makers to reconsider closing coal plants, Hasten said.
“That is if we really do start to experience something worse than what I’ll call inconvenient blackouts” when utilities cannot meet peak customer demand. “Right now, you lose power for a few hours and then we bring it back on. Texas was the worst case: They lost power [in February 2021] for several days, and it cost $50 billion in damage. So the reality is that if we start having longer-duration energy shortages, that could cause people to hit the pause button on closing all these coal plants.”
Rolling blackouts in peak-demand times were “something that never happened in my childhood or young adult life in America,” he recalled. “Now the federal government is running a clean energy transition, but [the North American Electric Reliability Corp.] and [the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission] are sounding reliability alarms. Something dispatchable is required to back up all this energy.”
Coal is one form of dispatchable power, electricity that power plants can generate on demand — rain or shine, still or windy.
Entergy Arkansas, the state’s largest electric utility and investor-owned, has the luxury of dispatchable power from Arkansas Nuclear One, and it hopes to keep its nuclear units running through 2050 and beyond. Entergy is planning to shut down 3,000 megawatts of coal generation capacity by closing coal-burning power plants in Redfield (Jefferson County) and Newark (Independence County) in 2029 and 2030.
Entergy is the majority owner, but the state’s cooperatives own 35% of the plants, and they hate to see them go.
Intermittent renewable resources like the solar fields both Entergy and the co-ops are building in east Arkansas need dispatchable backup. That has led to a large increase in natural gas-fired power generation in the past 40 years, Hasten said.
In 1984, coal generated 55% of American electricity. “Natural gas was 12%, nuclear was 14%, hydro was 14% and oil was 5%,” Hasten said, adding that nuclear generation was at 14%. “Flash forward to 2023 — and this is an estimate from the federal government — coal was at 20%, natural gas was at 40%, wind was at 10%, and hydro and solar were at 5% each.” Nuclear generation was up to over 18%.
Hasten predicted more renewable energy, more efficiency, more EVs, more heat pumps and a world and nation powered by ever more electricity.
“You have to think, well, what resources can supply all that power and do it reliably and affordably?”
Hasten helped operate U.S. Navy nuclear submarines for years. He’s a fan of nuclear power, which he guesses Nuclear One produces at a cost of $18 a megawatt, cheaper than coal or gas. Building nuke plants is hugely expensive. “But once you’ve paid for all that capital investment, it is cheap energy,” he said.
“If we want to stay competitive and technologically advanced, and if we don’t want to cede international leadership to China or Russia, and if [slowing] climate change is a national goal of ours, nuclear power has to be in our future.”
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