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Austin Has Coal On Its Hands
Email the Austin City Council
Austin Has Coal On Its Hands
Email the Austin City Council
Email the Austin City Council

Meet Austin’s Dirty Secret.

This is the Fayette Power Project. It’s actually not a secret, but it may not be common knowledge.

Located roughly 70 miles east of Austin — near La Grange in Fayette County — the plant is co-owned by Austin Energy and the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA). Fayette runs on coal and a broken promise to shut down Austin Energy’s portion of the plant by the end of 2022.

Retiring Austin Energy’s part of Fayette is necessary to meeting the city’s climate goals of reducing most emissions by 2030 and reaching net-zero community-wide emissions by 2040.

Coal Kills

Coal can’t become a relic of the past soon enough. We know nothing good happens when coal is burned.

As the dirtiest of the fossil fuels, coal is fueling the climate crisis that has brought a continuous and often overwhelming wave of weather disasters to Texas and the rest of the world.

Fayette is responsible for:

  • 80% of Austin Energy’s annual emissions and

  • nearly a third of Austin’s community-wide emissions

Fayette ranks high among Texas' most polluting facilities:

  • 4th for carbon dioxide (CO2) 

  • 2nd for nitrogen oxides (NOx) 

  • 4th for particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5)

Coal is harmful to humans. Coal plants have been linked to illness and premature deaths. Statistically, the pollution from Fayette causes 8 premature deaths per year.

A 2019 report by the Environmental Integrity Project confirmed that coal ash is contaminating groundwater near Fayette. Contaminants from coal ash include heavy metals and known carcinogens.

Austin must do its part to protect people and the environment by shutting down Fayette.

A Promise Broken

There have been community efforts to shut down Fayette dating back to at least 2009. The persistence paid off in 2014 when the then-Austin City Council voted to retire Austin Energy’s portion of Fayette by the end of 2022. It was a promise that was, unfortunately, broken.

Austin Energy has said it failed to meet the 2022 closure target because LCRA’s exit offer to the utility was too expensive. However, none of the details of LCRA’s exit terms have ever been revealed publicly, thanks to a nondisclosure agreement that Austin Energy signed with LCRA. Whether the deal could have been made affordable by spreading the cost over several decades, as other utilities have done, remains an unanswered question.

There is a lack of financial oversight of Fayette as well.

Fayette expenses aren’t subject to the City Council approval required for contracts or purchases over $72,000 annually. Austin Energy and the LCRA each have a 50% vote on the Fayette Management Committee, which sets annual budgets and capital expenditures. Those budgets and expenditures are simply buried in the Austin Energy budget each year after the utility has already committed to them. Why would our city keep spending money on a plant it says it wants to shut down?

What You Can Do

Austin Energy is in the process of updating its Resource, Generation and Climate Protection Plan, which outlines how it will meet the city’s energy needs. The update is a chance for residents to push City Council members to exert financial oversight of Fayette by directing Austin Energy to stop its investments in the plant with an eye toward replacing it with cleaner sources of electricity – like wind, solar, and battery storage – that are already more affordable than coal.

The stakes are too high. We can’t continue to power our city with dirty coal when there are better, cleaner, less expensive ways to generate electricity.

Join us in demanding that city leaders wash Austin’s hands of coal by retiring the Fayette Power Project.

Email Council

Public Citizen is a consumer advocacy nonprofit that champions the public interest in the halls of power. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., our Texas office, founded in 1984, works to protect the health and prosperity of our communities and families.

We support a just energy transition that creates green jobs, living wages, and a strong economy.

Visit us at citizen.org/texas

austin has coal on its hands

kwhite@citizen.org