by Henry Robertson, Chapter ExCom
The United States gets 52 percent of its electricity from coal— here in Missouri it’s 83 percent. There’s been a lull in building new coal-fired power plants for the last couple of decades, but suddenly a whole new generation of the old smokers is in the works—over 130 proposed in the United States—just when we’re trying to break in clean, renewable technologies.
And that isn’t the half of it. China already burns twice as much coal as the United States and is planning to add 550 coal-fired generating stations by 2030. If there’s any truth at all to the predictions of global warming theory, we can’t survive this onslaught.
In Missouri there are three coal plants on the way and a fourth possibly to be announced later. The Ozark Chapter has taken on the role of opposing them. The utilities have shown mixed reactions to us— courteous but sometimes hostile, with increasing recognition that we are a player in this game.
Utility lingo speaks of supply side and demand side. Supply is generation, whether with coal, nuclear or renewables. The utilities know coal. They consider wind, the leading renewable technology in the Midwest, costly and unreliable.
Demand side management (DSM) refers to voluntary incentive programs with which utilities can induce their customers to use less electricity or use it at different times so that peak demand is lower. Utilities don’t like subsidizing high-efficiency lighting and appliances, energy audits and building retrofits, programmable thermostats and the like. They can make money at DSM, but like any business they want to sell more of their product—electricity—not less. Legislation will probably be necessary to change their incentives before utilities will do enough DSM to stem the growth in demand and avoid the need to build expensive new power plants.
This year the utilities are seeking a wave of rate increases even before they start building new generating plants that can cost a billion dollars apiece. Ratepayers may soon start howling.
Here’s a look at how we’re dealing with the new Coal Rush in Missouri:
Springfield
In a June 6 election City Utilities’ second attempt to get local voters to approve a $650,000,000 bond issue to finance a 275 megawatt (MW) unit wins with 59 percent to 41 percent. Sierra Club activists have led the opposition all the way.
KCPL
Kansas City Power & Light’s Iatan 2 plant north of Kansas City is the biggest of the new wave at 850 MW. Construction could start before the end of the year.
But first they had to get an air pollution permit from the Department of Natural Resources assuring that they will comply with the Federal Clean Air Act. The Chapter, represented by the Washington University Interdisciplinary Environmental Law Clinic, is now challenging this before an administrative hearing officer, and alleging that KCPL illegally modified the old Iatan 1 unit. It is likely to be a long, drawn-out proceeding extending at least into autumn.
The Chapter is also appealing the Public Service Commission (PSC) order that authorized KCPL to build Iatan 2. KCPL negotiated what it called an “experimental regulatory plan” with state regulators, large industrial customers and other utilities that will share in the output of Iatan 2. This is as close to self-regulation as KCPL could get, and a little too close for us. I filed the appeal in state court as a lawyer for Great Rivers Environmental Law Center.
KCPL is also waiting for a dredging permit from the Corps of Engineers and a landfill permit from DNR for its ash.
AmerenUE
Formerly Union Electric, AmerenUE is Missouri’s largest utility. In December, it filed a report called an Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) required by PSC regulations. But it filed the whole thing as “highly confidential” and “proprietary.” We have been only partly successful in asking the PSC to make Ameren reveal it.
Ameren dislikes the results it’s getting from its DSM programs and has tried to punt the issue to the state, proposing that the governor and PSC convene a “collaborative stakeholder process” to decide what to do about energy efficiency. Ameren has bought some natural gas peaking plants that give it enough generating capacity to last until 2015. Well before that date, however, they plan to settle on a new base load power plant. It could be coal, at Rush Island on the Mississippi in Jefferson County, or it could be a Callaway 2 nuclear plant if Congress passes carbon taxes making coal more expensive.
And what will they do now that the Taum Sauk reservoir has burst? Will they try to rebuild it and/or add a new “pumped storage” facility at nearby Church Mountain? Sorry, I’m not at liberty to tell you.
AECI
American Electric Cooperative, Inc., of Springfield is a multi-state electric generating coop that has applied to DNR to build a 660 MW coal plant in a sparsely populated part of Carroll County between Kansas City and Columbia. AECI management has shown an encouraging interest in alternatives to coal. They will buy the whole output of Missouri’s first wind farm, a 50 MW facility being built this year at King City in Gentry County, northwestern Missouri, by Wind Capital Group of St. Louis and John Deere Wind Energy. They have been less dismissive of DSM than Ameren and KCPL.
We hope to convince AECI that they don’t need coal.