Dive Brief:

• Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities, subsidiaries of PPL Corp., are asking regulators to approve construction of a 700-megawatt natural gas plant and a 10-megawatt solar facility.
• Paul Thompson, chief operation officer for the sister utilities, said the plan will meet the Environmental Protection Agency's recent proposed rules to limit greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants.
• The solar facility will be just the second one in the state and five times larger than the one run by the Tennessee Valley Authority in Bowling Green. It will cost an estimated $25 million.

Dive Insight: 

Coal will still be king in Kentucky for some time to come. The state is the nation's third-largest coal producer and gets roughly 95% of its electricity from coal. But the move by the utilities will bring their reliance on coal for power from 73% to 59% by 2018.