Los Angeles Will Be Off Coal by 2025, Says Mayor

By Chris Clarke

February 26, 2013

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755px-Navajo_generating_station-thumb-600x476-46027 — The Navajo Generating Station. | Photo: R. J. Hall/Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons License

According to ReWire's pal Molly Peterson over at KPCC, Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will be "signing papers" in the coming weeks that will wean L.A. from coal-fired power within 12 years. About 39 percent of L.A.'s power now comes from coal-fired plants.

The mayor dropped the bombshell Tuesday morning at UCLA, at an event on green cities sponsored by UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.

According to Peterson, the audience greeted Villaraigosa's news with surprise. The city's coal habit has been the topic of a significant amount of environmental campaigning in recent months. Of the coal fired power in the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power's grid, two thirds comes from the 1,900 megawatt Intermountain Power Plant in Delta, Utah, while the remainder is generated by the 2,250-megawatt Navajo Generating Station in northern Arizona.

Peterson offers a quote from Mayor Villaraigosa:

"We'll be out of Navajo, 2015. Intermountain looks like 2025," Villaraigosa said. "It will be a big deal."

It will indeed.

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