Tell BPU: replace the wasteful Nearman Creek coal plant with clean, affordable energy!

Adopt an Affordable Energy Plan for Wyandotte County

Dear Board Member, I am a resident of Wyandotte County and a BPU customer. I am writing to urge you to adopt an affordable road map to a clean energy future that includes investing in efficient customer homes and buildings and closing the Nearman Creek coal plant. BPU should protect our health, decrease pollution, improve our health outcomes, and ensure our economic development dollars go toward building a better environment, especially for folks in the disinvested east half of the county, where Nearman burns coal. Many families in KCK are struggling to make ends meet and already facing much higher levels of air pollution than our neighboring counties. 17.5 percent of Wyandotte residents--or around 29,000 people--in our community live below the poverty line with residents spending 6 percent of their income on average on energy bills, almost double the national average. Meanwhile, fuel and market energy costs will skyrocket in the coming years, and our most vulnerable customers will end up paying unless the board continues improving BPU's plans. Investing in new energy efficiency and clean energy options through 24/7 clean capacity agreements with new large customers over the next few years is a path to an affordable future, and will save customers tens of millions of dollars every year by closing the Nearman plant by 2030 (before the next big investment is required to keep it running). Any large new electricity user in Wyandotte County, such as proposed data centers, should have to negotiate 24/7 clean energy capacity power agreements with BPU that allow our utility to invest in building efficiency and other clean energy throughout the county, creating hundreds of jobs and saving lives by eliminating Nearman's pollution. I hope the Board will vote to accept an affordable, clean energy plan before 2026. Your constituents need to see a path to removing Nearman's high costs from our monthly bills and its pollution out of our air.