With suitable investments, shuttered and shuttering coal plants can be redeveloped for new opportunities in the sustainable industries of the future.
Some of the most significant assets in coal communities are shuttered coal-fired power plants, once serving as the region’s primary source of good jobs and the foundation for the local tax base. Coal plant closures devastate both the workers and communities who depend on them. A critical component of any sustainable development strategy for coal communities includes redeveloping these properties for sustainable industries taking advantage of its assets while providing new opportunities for the skilled workforce.
In the four states of Central Appalachia–Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania—88 coal plant sites were no longer in operation in 2024, and another 21 operated only on stand-by mode. Many of these plants have been blighted and unused for years. Today, there is opportunity for redevelopment.
Coal Plant Site – Assets
Coal plants connect to significant transportation networks, often including extensive rail and water networks (more environmentally friendly ways of transporting goods). They also contain heavily reinforced electrical grid infrastructure and energy-generating assets that can be repurposed for cleaner energy technologies. The places where the shuttered coal power plants are located often have a highly experienced workforce with foundational skills in energy production that are transferable to the new energy economy.
Overview of shuttered coal plants in Central Appalachia Download the PPT
Overcoming Barriers to Redevelopment
Without focused effort and targeted resources, these sites are more likely than not to sit indefinitely as brownfields,blighting their communities as some sites long shuttered have already done. Something similar happened following the collapse of the nation’s steel industry due to global outsourcing. Too many former steel facilities still scar their hollowed-out communities five decades later.
Significant barriers may impede redevelopment:
- Lack of community acceptance of closure or pending closure
- Lack of alternative vision for a site’s highest and best use developed with broad stakeholder input and community buy-in;
- In some cases, but not all, a reluctant property owner
- Environmental hazards on-site with unknown remediation costs
- Information barriers: Who owns the site? What can be done with it? What regulations apply? What resources can we access? What laws apply? Do we need policy changes? Who do we need at the table? Are there best practices?
- Lack of community resources in long-exploited regions, high-poverty areas
- Distrust among key stakeholders of property owners (utility companies, elected officials, organized labor, racial justice groups, and environmental organizations).
This webpage serves as a “handbook” for redeveloping shuttered coal plants. It is designed to empower community stakeholders with the information they need to have a meaningful say in what will become of these community assets while working toward achieving a site’s “highest and best use”–building on existing assets and skills of the workforce to create jobs equivalent to those of the coal industry, generate equivalent tax base for the communities housing these sites, and promote sustainable, climate-friendly options that are healthy for neighboring residents.
- Chapter 1 – Guiding Principle “Highest and Best Use”
- Chapter 2 – Getting Started – Visioning for redevelopment
- Chapter 3 – Know Your Site
- Chapter 4 – Turning Liabilities into Assets
- Chapter 5 – Know Your Community
- Chapter 6 – Federal & Technical Assistance for Redevelopment
An Overview
Shuttered Coal Plants in the Ohio River Valley of Appalachia (aka Coal Country)
With a changing energy market and mounting community pressure, the aging technology in many coal-fired power plants has been decommissioned – closed – across the country. Stories from across the nation of communities in the trenches of the coal transition illustrate why comprehensive redevelopment planning is essential.
Few places have been harder hit with coal plant closures than Central Appalachia.
Some shuttered coal plants in Central Appalachia have been vacant for 30 years; others, while still operating, are slated for before 2030. Technology and changing market conditions have rendered the plants obsolete.
In the four states of Central Appalachia–Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania–88 coal plant sites are no longer in operation and 21 only in stand-by mode in early 2024.Many of these plants have been unused for years. Today, there is an opportunity for redevelopment.
Coal plants that are or are slated to be retired in the eastern United States
Click here to see the IWG Site Review Tool
Today’s growing economy presents opportunities to redevelop shuttered or closed coal plant sites.
In some places, new technologies are transforming coal waste remaining on a site into products used in construction materials. Growing sectors like artificial intelligence and data centers are driving the construction of new facilities, and the decommissioned power plants, with abundant electricity connections, are attractive to these plants. Overseas factories are moving back (“reshoring”) and looking for sites for heavy industrial production.
These operations need the heavily reinforced electric power connections, acres of industrial-use land, water, sewer, fiber optic, and other infrastructure elements essential to industrial sites; multiple forms of transportation access; and the skilled workforce of nearby communities.
Substantial federal and state funds are available to redevelop these sites – grants, loans, and tax credits – from the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act, as well as from state programs.
This online toolkit reviews important terms, elements, and steps in redevelopment. Along the way, many case studies of the redevelopment of shuttered coal plant sites are provided. This first section gives an overview of the toolkit; read the other three sections for more detailed information.
Remember to be in touch with your local development districts to access information about the complex system of public support to develop a new regime of sustainable economic activity that builds prosperity in Appalachia. See Chapter 6 – Technical Assistance