By AINSLEY PLATT | Arkansas Advocate
Arkansas’ electric utilities scored poorly on the Sierra Club’s annual report on the transition away from fossil fuels, which was released earlier this week.
Some utilities, the report said, aren’t planning to build any green power at all.
Three Arkansas electric utilities were graded in the Sierra Club’s fifth annual “Dirty Truth” report — Entergy Arkansas, SWEPCO and Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corp. With the exception of Entergy, which was given a “C” grade, both SWEPCO and the cooperative were given an “F” by the report authors, who cited the energy firms’ trailing adoption of renewable energy sources.
The report evaluated 75 electric utilities nationwide on three criteria: efforts to retire coal plants by 2030, to not build new gas plants through 2035 and to build clean energy through 2035. The 2025 report notes that most utilities it evaluated have “failed to plan for the clean energy transition” since it first began grading in 2021.
The average score of the graded utilities was an “F” this year — a drop from consistent “D” grades in the first four years of the report. While 65% of graded utilities have improved the clean energy component of their ranking since 2021, overall, 51% have seen their overall score worsen since the 2021 report due to many also “doubling down on fossil fuels.”
“This year, the U.S. faces dual pressures: a shift in federal support away from clean energy due to the effective elimination of much of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and a surge in projected electricity demand, also known as load growth,” the report says.
Despite these pressures, the report says it is imperative that utilities still transition away from fossil fuels by 2035, as “the window of opportunity to create and implement cost-effective plans is closing.”
Entergy’s score, which dropped considerably compared to its “A” on last year’s report, was in large part due to the impending shutdown of two coal plants in the coming years and its plans for additional solar and wind generation, the report said. The Sierra Club said the utility could score better “if it’d focus on renewables more than expensive gas generation to address future load growth.”
Entergy announced in July plans to build a 754-megawatt natural gas-fired generating plant near its White Bluff coal-fired power plant in Jefferson County, which is scheduled to stop burning coal in 2028.
In response to a request for comment on the Sierra Club report, Entergy Arkansas spokesperson Matt Ramsey said the utility “is maintaining our goal of achieving net zero emissions by 2050.”
The Sierra Club criticized the utilities it ranked for not moving faster to adopt cleaner alternatives to coal, especially as increases to the cost of electricity outstrip overall inflation. According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, electricity bills in the South increased 6.7% in the 12-month period ending in August. The region’s overall inflation rate over the same span was 2.6%.
The Sierra Club called out Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corp. specifically for having “one of the lowest renewables scores in the entire United States,” with the club saying this was due to AECC not having any planned solar or wind power despite projected increases in demand.
An AECC spokesperson said the cooperatives use a “balance of power approach” in order to provide customers with reliable power, and criticized the Sierra Club’s efforts to “prematurely” shut down the coal plants.
“While the preferred generation of Sierra Club, neither wind nor solar generation resources are capable of providing the necessary reliability, at an affordable cost, to serve as replacement generation for these important baseload generating assets,” Marine Glisovic wrote in an emailed statement. “AECC will always continue to meet its obligation to serve in a responsible manner that meets all state and federal environmental regulations and remains an advocate for reliable, responsible, and affordable power for present and future generation of its members.”
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