What to do about Iowa’s coal-fired energy plants

It was never Emma Colman’s goal to do environmental advocacy work.

After growing up in Des Moines and spending summers as a child swimming in the rivers near her grandparents’ home in Madison County, water quality and Iowa’s other environmental issues slowly began to occupy her thoughts.

Initially, Colman, 32, didn’t want to stay in Iowa.

She attended college out of state — studying art and anthropology — and lived abroad for a couple of years. She wanted to move to Chicago, Minneapolis or abroad because she was nervous about how Iowa’s environment could affect her health as she aged.

But after speaking with volunteers at an Iowa Sierra Club protest in 2019, she became interested in environmental work and joined the local chapter of the national nonprofit.

“I was like, as long as I am going to be living in this state, this is the work that I want to be doing. I realized that part of the reason I was wanting to move so badly was because I am scared, to be honest,” said Colman, the nonprofit’s Beyond Coal senior campaign organizer focusing on the nine coal-powered generating plants still operating in Iowa.

“Cancer is a huge issue in our state and, as a young person, I didn't want to live here because of that health aspect. … Do I want to raise a family here? Do I want to subject my body to, like, whatever is in our water?”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: What does your role look like with the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign?

A: Beyond Coal is a campaign for Sierra Club that focuses on transitioning communities away from fossil fuels and to clean energy resources. … We have an Iowa Beyond Coal campaign because everybody thinks of Iowa as a huge wind energy state, which we are, but, unfortunately, our utilities have not retired fossil fuel generation.

For example, MidAmerican Energy has a tiny amount of solar, a huge amount of wind. But behind the curtain — they don't really brand themselves with this — they also have one of the biggest coal fleets in the country.

Our job as a campaign is to challenge that on a legal level, on a legislative level and on a community level, and to call attention to the health effects this has in communities and across the state.

When I started with the Sierra Club in 2020, it was news to me that we had a ton of coal plants because many people don’t really see them. Five years into the job, I feel like more people know.

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Q: With the recent closure of the Prairie Creek coal plant in Cedar Rapids, do you believe Iowa’s energy transition is heading in the right direction?

A: That has been a long-anticipated closure. That coal plant is owned by Alliant Energy, and it has this whole blueprint toward clean energy. Alliant is getting off fossil fuels, compared to MidAmerican Energy, the other primary utility in Iowa.

But because Alliant is retiring the coal plant, it is building out a new natural gas plant there. Obviously, that's not something we're huge fans of. But, ultimately, it will result in reduction of carbon emissions, and that's a win. It's not the best win we could have and that the community could have.

Q: Given the number of coal plants still operating in Iowa, do you feel the state is making meaningful progress toward a renewable transition, or is it stagnant?

A: It's stagnant. I would say the Trump administration is making it difficult on states and utilities to make decisions on this. The Trump administration’s policies and the influx of data centers — with this projection that the demand for energy generation will go up so much — is complicating things.

One thing that I think is important and that gets overlooked is the coal plant in Ottumwa, for example. They are what we call an energy community because of how close they are to the plant. There are jobs surrounding that coal plant. There's transmission and infrastructure that is really important.

So, when we talk about a coal plant retiring, that could potentially mean those jobs leaving. But it could also be an opportunity for a community to continue to be an energy community because they have that transition transmission infrastructure in place. They could be a new community for solar, wind or battery storage.

Q: What are you and your team at the Iowa Sierra Club currently focused on?

A: The legislative session is always a big one for us. We're out there at the Statehouse, advocating for different bills relating to renewable energy, carbon pipelines and data centers.

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Q: How are you and your team trying to move the needle on retiring coal in Iowa?

A: Ultimately, I think the future is in renewables. And I think everybody knows that coal is like an antiquated, dirty, expensive and a dangerous source of energy generation, and finite, too. The future is in renewables, period.

Iowa was making leaps and bounds in that we were early investors in renewables, and we continue to be. Even though the pace has slowed under the current administration and rollbacks from the Inflation Reduction Act, I still think we're going in the right direction. Our work just got a little bit harder with the challenges of the current administration and the demand increase from data center projections.

Q: Zooming out, what is upcoming for the Iowa Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign?

A: We’re keeping our eyes on the coal plant in Ottumwa. It hasn't been covered across the state, but I think they're a good example of a utility being a bad actor.

The plant has toxic discharge that goes into a coal ash pond, and those are notorious for leaking. They've had some discharge from their coal ash waste that has been leaking and ultimately getting into the Des Moines River, which is upstream of the drinking water intake for the city of Ottumwa.

The toxins that are in this are things like arsenic, lead, mercury, all really toxic things that now the city is having to handle, so we've been putting legal pressure on. It’s a big issue that could happen anywhere.

Water quality is a huge issue in our state … so I think it's important to keep eyes on all those polluters and the way they don't show up for communities.

Olivia Cohen covers energy and environment for The Gazette and is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues. She is also a contributing writer for the Ag and Water Desk, an independent journalism collaborative focusing on the Mississippi River Basin.

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Comments: olivia.cohen@thegazette.com