On the day before Thanksgiving 2024, Utah’s largest coal-fired power plant—the 1,900‑megawatt Intermountain Power Project (IPP)—quietly went offline when the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) stopped buying its electricity. That single decision instantly removed about 11 percent of the Los Angeles metropolitan area’s power supply. Yet the grid held steady: no blackout alerts, no emergency conservation requests, and no visible disruption for nearly four million residents. For the first time, a major U.S. city eliminated coal from its electricity mix without any noticeable impact on daily life.
Built in the mid-1980s near Delta, Utah, IPP was long viewed as a flagship of coal generation, with two units of about 900 megawatts each feeding Southern California’s power needs. For decades it underpinned both the local economy in rural Utah and Los Angeles’ electricity system.
As wind and solar costs dropped and large-scale batteries became commercially viable, the economics shifted. Coal power grew increasingly uncompetitive. In early 2025, Utah lawmakers, worried about the loss of mining and plant jobs, tried to slow the transition. House Bill 70 created a Utah Energy Council to seek new power buyers and required that key switchyard equipment remain connected so the coal units could, on paper, restart.
The Intermountain Power Agency complied with the technical requirements, leaving the coal units intact and legally “functional.” But no utilities stepped up to purchase their output. The plant’s capacity now sits idle, with ongoing costs for security, maintenance, and environmental oversight but no revenue, while owners continue to search for a buyer in a market that has largely moved past coal.
Los Angeles Hits Its Coal Deadline
Los Angeles’ break from coal was the culmination of a pledge first made in 2013, when then-Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa committed the city to divest from coal-fired power. LADWP divested from the Navajo Generating Station in Arizona in 2016, steadily reducing its reliance on coal throughout the following decade.
On December 4, 2024, Mayor Karen Bass announced that Los Angeles had met its goal: the city was officially coal-free. With IPP’s coal units now dormant, all electricity serving LADWP customers comes from a mix of renewable sources, natural gas, nuclear power, and battery storage—but no coal. The end of Intermountain’s coal role also removed a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions from the city’s supply chain, while grid operators reported no reliability problems as the transition took effect.
Cleaner Power from the Same Desert Hub
Rather than abandoning the Utah site, project owners retooled it. Under the “IPP Renewed” initiative, Mitsubishi Power built two combined-cycle natural gas turbine units totaling 840 megawatts. The first came online in October 2024, the second in December 2024, backed by a $1.7 billion investment and long-term power contracts through 2077.
These turbines are designed from the outset to burn a blend of natural gas and hydrogen—up to 30 percent hydrogen initially—with plans to convert to 100 percent hydrogen by 2045. The gas-hydrogen hybrid design allows the plant to support the grid when solar and wind output drop, while providing a pathway to progressively lower emissions over time.
Adjacent to IPP Renewed, the Advanced Clean Energy Storage (ACES) Delta project is building what amounts to seasonal storage for renewable power. A 220‑megawatt electrolyzer facility will use excess renewable electricity to produce about 100 metric tonnes of green hydrogen per day. That hydrogen will be compressed and stored in two underground salt caverns, each capable of holding around 150 gigawatt-hours of energy. While lithium-ion batteries typically supply about four hours of power, these caverns are intended to store energy for weeks or months, covering prolonged periods of low sun and wind. In 2022, the U.S. Department of Energy backed the project with a $504.4 million loan guarantee.
California’s broader grid has been transformed in parallel. Utility-scale battery capacity in the state grew from 771 megawatts in 2019 to 16,942 megawatts by November 2024. Those batteries now hold enough energy to meet about one-quarter of California’s peak demand for several hours, allowing them to take over quickly when large fossil units retire or renewable output fluctuates. The rapid storage expansion meant IPP’s coal shutdown passed effectively unnoticed by consumers.
Local Job Losses, Temporary Boom
For Delta and surrounding Millard County, the shift away from coal has brought a mixed economic picture. The original coal plant employed roughly 300 workers. The new IPP Renewed gas-hydrogen facility needs only about 120 permanent staff, a net loss of around 180 long-term jobs in a region where coal-related work has been central to household incomes.
Construction of the new turbines and associated infrastructure created a short-lived surge in employment. Between 2022 and 2026, construction jobs peaked at roughly 2,000 workers, averaging about 450 positions per year—equivalent to about 10 percent of Millard County’s total employment. That temporary boom pumped money into local businesses but has tapered as building nears completion. The ACES Delta hydrogen project is expected to create only about 25 permanent positions, softening but not fully offsetting the decline in coal-related roles.
Despite concerns about reliability, California has not issued a Flex Alert—its public call for voluntary power conservation—since 2022. Environmental advocates argue that the seamless shutdown of IPP’s coal units, especially on a busy holiday weekend, demonstrates that a system anchored by renewables, flexible gas plants, batteries, and emerging hydrogen storage can maintain stability even as traditional baseload coal capacity disappears.
A National Turning Point for Coal
IPP’s transformation is part of a broader national trend. Across the United States, 34 coal-fired units totaling 14,532 megawatts of summer capacity are slated to retire in 2025—four times the capacity that went offline in 2024. Those units consumed nearly 40 million short tons of coal in 2023. Federal data show total U.S. coal capacity falling from 172 gigawatts in May 2025 to a projected 145 gigawatts by the end of 2028, with most closures concentrated in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic.
Efforts at the federal level to extend the life of some coal facilities through emergency actions have not reversed the overall trajectory. Analysts point to simple economics: utility-scale wind and solar are now among the cheapest sources of electricity, and battery storage prices have dropped more than 90 percent since 2010. Flexible gas plants and rapidly responding batteries outcompete coal in many power markets, making it difficult for aging coal units to recover their fixed operating costs.
California’s experience suggests what a large-scale transition can look like. The state added about 7,000 megawatts of clean capacity in 2024 alone, for a total of roughly 25,000 megawatts of new clean additions since 2019, mainly from solar and storage. Utility-scale solar now totals about 21,000 megawatts, complemented by an estimated 19,000 megawatts of rooftop and other behind-the-meter installations. Renewable sources generated 67 percent of California’s electricity in 2023, with the state maintaining strong renewable generation momentum through 2024.
Within that context, Los Angeles has set a target of 100 percent clean energy by 2035, while the state as a whole aims for carbon-free electricity by 2045. Projects such as the Eland Solar-plus-Storage Center—a 758‑megawatt solar facility with 300 megawatts of batteries that can power hundreds of thousands of homes and provide about 7 percent of the city’s demand—illustrate how large renewable complexes and storage can replace fossil units at scale.
For other metropolitan regions watching closely, the IPP story offers a working example: a coal-era complex evolving into a hub for gas-hydrogen power and long-duration storage, while a major city maintains reliability, cuts emissions, and moves closer to long-term climate and energy goals. The remaining questions center on managing local economic disruption, financing large infrastructure upgrades, and scaling similar models fast enough to match the accelerating pace of coal retirements nationwide.
Sources:
CleanTechnica, “Largest Utah Coal Plant Goes Quiet as Los Angeles Goes Coal-Free” (December 6, 2025)
Los Angeles Times, “Los Angeles says so long to coal” (December 4, 2025)
Utah Foundation, “The Economic Impacts of the IPP Renewed Project” (October 3, 2021)
U.S. Department of Energy, “Advanced Clean Energy Storage” Loan Guarantee Program (June 2022)
California Energy Commission, “California’s Battery Storage Fleet Continues Record Growth, Strengthening Grid” (November 12, 2025)