SAN ANTONIO – A San Antonio-area coal power plant was named one of the top 50 environmental polluters in the United States in 2022, according to a study published last week by the Frontier Group.
Texas is home to eight of the top 50 facilities emitting the most greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the United States, according to an analysis by the research and policy arm of Environment Texas.
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Most of the state’s GHG emissions arise from the electric, industrial and transportation sectors. For example, according to San Antonio’s climate action plan, in 2021, a third of all emissions in the city were related to the transportation sector.
One of those Texas facilities, eighth on the list, is CPS Energy’s J.K. Spruce coal power plant, part of the station near Calaveras Lake in far southeast Bexar County.
Frontier Group’s data found that the 1,444-megawatt Spruce plant released “seven million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions in 2022, making it the 42nd-worst climate polluter in the country.”
The Spruce plant, which came online in 1992, emitted more than 5.7 million tons of GHGs in 2020, according to the most recently available EPA data at the time. The site saw its highest emissions, 15 million metric tons, in 2014, according to the EPA’s data.
The plant was also found to be responsible for 170 excess deaths attributed to coal-powered plant pollution from 1999 to 2020, according to 2023 research published in the journal “Science.”
The now-retired J.T. Deely plant was liable for an estimated 1,100 deaths, the research showed.
CPS Energy’s board of directors voted last year to shut down coal operations at Spruce by 2028. CPS Energy will retire one unit of the pant completely while converting the other to run on methane gas, the study’s authors said.
Other sites included are Port Arthur’s Motiva Refinery, considered one of the largest refineries in the nation. In April, the Beaumont Enterprise analyzed EPA data and found that the site was one of the top three emitters of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane in southeast Texas.
According to Environment Texas, the worst polluter in Texas is the Martin Lake Power Plant, which sits southeast of Longview in East Texas.
The 2023 study, published in the journal “Science,” found that the site was responsible for an estimated 4,100 excess deaths from 1990 to 2020.
The plant is ranked as the fourth worst polluter in the nation, according to the Frontier Group study.
Frontier Group notes that coal-fired electricity production was passed by renewable energy in 2022.
A map of the eight sites in Texas can be viewed below: