After years of lobbying, Portland environmentalists won a remarkable victory in 2010 when Portland General Electric consented to halt coal-burning by 2020 at its Boardman power plant — the single-largest Oregon source of greenhouse gas emissions.
Washington environmentalists replicated the feat months later, securing a similar pledge for the Northwest’s other coal plant in Centralia.
But soon after the deals were announced, and years before utilities will pull the plugs on those coal-fired plants, coal companies quickly submitted six different proposals to export U.S.-mined coal to Asia from six different Oregon and Washington ports.
