Tell the PSC of Wisconsin: deny the new gas plant in Kenosha County!

The Public Service Commission (PSC) of Wisconsin is about to make the decision on We Energies’ proposed gas-fired power plant in the town of Paris, Wisconsin, determining whether or not to grant We Energies approval to move forward with the project.

The PSC is accepting comments on the project through February 17, and we need your help to push the PSC to DENY this project that has such substantial negative impacts on health, environmental and electric bill affordability.

Take Action: Tell the PSC that they must fully consider the climate, health, environmental, and financial harms posed by building a new gas-fired power plant in Kenosha County and deny the project!

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Docket 6630-CE-316: Deny the Paris RICE project

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Thank you for the opportunity to comment on Docket 6630-CE-316, Application of Wisconsin Electric Power Company for a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity to Construct and Operate the Paris Reciprocating Internal Combustion Engines Project, Consisting of Seven Natural Gas-Fired Reciprocating Internal Combustion Engines (RICE) Generating up to 128 MW Total at the Lakeshore Capacity Improvement Project Regulator Station in the Town of Paris, Kenosha County, Wisconsin. I am asking you to deny We Energies’s request to build these RICE units in Kenosha County. We Energies is not in line with the values of its customers. New methane gas plants are polluting, harmful to public health and costly. A big concern that I have about We Energies's proposal is that the utility continues to invest in costly fossil fuel infrastructure. The utility’s build out of 3,000 MW of gas will lock us into paying for dirty fossil fuels that harm our climate and our health, and the Paris RICE project is part of this expensive, harmful proposal package. Methane gas is a fossil fuel more potent than carbon dioxide. In addition, We Energies lags far behind other utilities in the region in building new renewable energy sources like wind, solar and battery storage. There are reliable clean energy solutions - and gas is not one of them! National Institutes of Health research shows those living in a zip code with a fuel-fired power plant experience asthma hospitalization rates 11% higher, respiratory infections rates 15% higher, and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) rates up 17% higher than demographically similar zip codes with no power plant. Lower test scores are also correlated with proximity to fossil fuel plants. With Union Grove schools in close proximity to the proposed RICE units, the health of students will be put at risk. The need for this plant is dubious as well. The proposed data centers in the region are the main drivers for increased demand, yet are likely to receive better electric rates than residential customers, who are also the ones breathing the pollution and facing the impacts of climate change. Not only are customers at risk to bear the brunt of the plant’s pollution, but they are also on the hook financially. Across the country, gas plants are quickly becoming stranded assets. Many are uneconomic within a few years after they are built - much shorter than the plants’ proposed lifetimes. These costs are extremely harmful to customers and mirror the stranded asset problems that coal plants have created. We Energies customers are still paying the $2.3 billion price tag for the company’s Oak Creek “Power the Future” coal plant, also known as the Elm Road Generating Station completed in 2011, the most expensive construction project in the history of the state, while shareholders earned about a 12.5% rate of return profit on that project. Now they want customers to pay more to transition the plant, rather than retire it. I’m sick of paying for We Energies’s bad investments. This gas plant and We Energies’ additional gas proposals are an unreasonable cost to ratepayers like me. Please deny We Energies’s request to build these new RICE units in Kenosha County. We need an affordable, reliable and fossil-free Wisconsin, and you are in the position to make that happen.

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