American Electric Power (AEP) has received approval from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio (United States) to retire the first 1,300 MW unit of its 2,600 MW Rockport supercritical coal-fired power plant in 2028. The coal-fired power plant is located in Spencer, Indiana (United States) and its units were commissioned in 1984 and 1989.
AEP had previously agreed to reduce SO2 emissions at the Rockport power plant to achieve a plant-wide emissions rate of 10,000 t/year or less. AEP has committed to operate enhanced dry sorbent injection equipment on both Rockport power units as of 2021, accelerating SO2 emission reductions targets by 8 years. AEP will also operate selective catalytic reduction to reduce NOx emissions from Rockport-2 by June 2020 and will retire Rockport-1 by the end of 2028.
The court order also eliminated the requirement estated in a previous order to install scrubbers (air pollution control devices) at the plant, which would save the company up to US$1.4bn of investment. AEP has already shut down 8.6 GW of its coal-fired capacity and plans to retire another 1.1 GW by end 2020. AEP aims to cut the annual SO2 emissions from its coal-fired power plants in the Midwest to 89,000 t/year by 2029, compared with the current cap of 113,000 t/year.
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