Peabody Energy is the latest coal giant to embrace the renewable industry.
The St. Louis utility announced plans last month to pursue the development, between now and 2027, of some 3.3 gigawatts of solar power and 1.6 gigawatts of battery storage capacity, according to media reports.
“It will be a success for St. Louis if they take it seriously and they're able to make that transition,” said James Owen, an attorney and executive director of Renew Missouri, a renewable energy advocacy group.
As previously reported, Duke Energy and Xcel Energy have plans to end 48 coal plans in the next three years.
"A lot of fossil fuel companies have started venturing into renewables," Owen told the St. Louis Record. "They started venturing into hydrogen, venturing into non-gas, non-oil, non-coal endeavors. They understand that we are not going to have that resource forever, and it makes sense from an economic viewpoint to embrace power that literally cannot be depleted. We are always going to have the sun and the wind."
Peabody, Riverstone Credit Partners, and Summit Partners Credit Advisors created R3 Renewables, a renewable energy development company, through a joint venture.
"That just shows that it's going to become more and more common," Owen said. "It will become more and more the standard practice of fossil fuel companies. The fact that Peabody announced it shows they know where the future is. The future is not in coal. It's in renewable energy and even one of the largest coal companies in the world knows it. That's promising."
R3 Renewables will “be engaged in the development of six potential sites on large tracts of land on or near previous coal mining operations in Indiana and Illinois,” according to a press release.
"The market is evolving, customers are changing, and they need to get with the project, or they will be as extinct as the dinosaurs where they get that fuel from," Owen added.