Evergy drops 2028 coal exit plan for Lawrence Energy Center
Evergy has scrapped its 2028 coal-exit pledge for Lawrence Energy Center, leaving the plant’s shutdown date open as demand growth pushes the utility to keep coal online.
Evergy has dropped its promise to stop burning coal at Lawrence Energy Center by 2028, a sharp reversal that keeps one of Douglas County’s biggest industrial sources of emissions and power supply uncertainty in play for years to come. The utility now says units 4 and 5 will stay in service under an open-ended timeline, a move that affects what Lawrence residents may pay, how long plant jobs last and how quickly the city’s riverfront energy footprint changes.
The change surfaced in a December 23, 2025 letter Evergy sent to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, saying Lawrence Energy Center units 4 and 5 would be moved out of the “coal cessation compliance alternative” and into the “voluntary incentives program” under federal effluent rules. Evergy’s annual progress reports for 2024, 2025 and 2026 still say the company had determined to permanently cease coal combustion at the plant before December 31, 2028, but the reports also say the utility is still evaluating the retirement timing for LEC4 and a possible fuel conversion for LEC5. The schedule, Evergy says, has to line up with construction of other generation resources.
That uncertainty stands in contrast to Evergy’s earlier public messaging. In April 2021, the company said it planned to end operations at Lawrence Energy Center by the end of 2023. By June 2023, after updated resource planning, it had moved the coal-unit retirement target to 2028. Evergy’s 2021 plan described Lawrence Energy Center units 4 and 5 as 484 megawatts and said their planned retirement was the most significant near-term generation reduction. Later company materials describe the plant as a two-unit coal-fired facility on the Kansas River in Lawrence.
Evergy spokesperson Gina Penzig said the utility had once expected to retire coal operations and rely on natural gas instead, but the revised plan would have reduced the plant’s maximum output by about 35 megawatts. That matters because Evergy says it needs more generation to meet rising regional demand. In its 2024 plan, the company said its service area was seeing record-setting economic development and projected 1,900 megawatts of additional generation beyond what it expected in 2023. Its broader 2024 outlook called for 5,100 megawatts of renewable energy and 6,000 megawatts of firm, dispatchable generation over 20 years, including 2,500 megawatts of hydrogen-capable natural gas generation from 2029 to 2032.
The delay has drawn criticism from environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, which has pointed to the Lawrence coal plant as evidence that Evergy is backsliding on climate goals. For Lawrence and Douglas County, the choice now leaves the plant’s future, local air-quality expectations and the long-term cost of replacement power tied to a decision Evergy still has not dated.
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