In a small plane flying west out of Farmington, N.M., America’s energy transition appeared to be proceeding in an orderly fashion — a sea change measurable in megawatts, acreage and emission particle parts per million.
Mike Eisenfeld of San Juan Citizens Alliance was our tour guide, his voice crackling over the intercom. “We’re heading toward the San Juan Solar Project,” he said. “It’s the biggest project going right now, economically.
” Rows and rows of black rectangles planted in bone-dry earth stretched out below us. Then the plane headed south, where two enormous coal-fired power plants crouched on the landscape. “At one point San Juan Generating Station and the Four Corners Power Plant, according to Los Alamos National Lab, were the largest source of point-source pollution in the United States,” Eisenfeld said.
But on this day, the San Juan Generating Station sat dark and inert — it shut down two years ago. As we flew over the Four Corners Power Plant, puffs of white smoke told us it was still producing energy. “This is the last coal plant up here,” Eisenfeld said of Four Corners.
“All the others have been retired. Gone.” When Eisenfeld first moved to the area nearly 20 years ago, coal mining and coal power were on the rise in northwest New Mexico.
Today, several large-scale solar projects are in the works. He’d scheduled these tours with EcoFlight on Aug. 24 to showcase these big changes but also to witness the demolition of the San Juan G.