Following ELPC’s and Iowa Environmental Council’s effective advocacy, Alliant Energy will close its Lansing coal plant by the end of 2022 and convert its Burlington coal plant to natural gas by next year. Alliant will add 400 MW of utility-scale solar by 2023 and 100 MW of distributed generation, or smaller-scale solar and battery storage, by 2026. In 2019, we intervened in Alliant’s rate case before the Iowa Utilities Board and, among other things, achieved a rate case settlement requiring Alliant to complete an analysis of the economics of its coal plants.
As ELPC Senior Attorney Josh Mandelbaum said, "uneconomic coal plants are in nobody’s interest. The voluntary resource planning process we agreed to last year in our rate case settlement … is a step forward for the state, and we are seeing the benefits of that process. Retiring the uneconomic Lansing plant and the commitment to adding solar will benefit consumers and the environment."
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