AES Andes to add another Chilean coal-fired plant to trash heap

Latin American power company AES Andes said on Thursday it had filed a request for the early retirement of its 276-MW Norgener coal-fired power plant in northern Chile, seeking to unplug the facility from the grid as of December 31, 2025.

In light of the board-approved petition, the company will record an impairment loss on property, plant and equipment, which will impact the net income for 2023 by around USD 200 million (EUR 186.4m), it said.

The Norgener thermoelectric plant in made up of two 138-MW units operating in the town of Tocopilla. AES Andes said that it will look into options to convert the plant to emission-free technologies.

Norgener will join coal-fired generation units at the Ventanas and Angamos power plants, which AES Andes also hopes to disconnect in 2025.

With these power plants offline, the company will have purged itself of 1,693 MW of coal-based capacity by 2025, according to its figures.

“Once the Norgener units cease operations, annual emissions of approximately one million tons of CO2 will be reduced, which is equivalent to the removal of more than 400,000 private vehicles from the streets of Chile,” AES Andes said in a press release.

The move is in line with the company's strategy to become a renewable energy supplier. It also follows commitments that AES Andes and other major power producers in Chile made with the government to retire all coal-fired plants by 2040.

(USD 1.0 = EUR 0.932)

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