Washington Post: Midwest Has 'Coal Rush,' Seeing No Alternative

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/09/AR2007030902302.html

Midwest Has 'Coal Rush,' Seeing No Alternative

Energy Demand Causes Boom in Plant Construction

By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 10, 2007; A01

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa -- From the top of a new coal-fired power plant with its 550-foot exhaust stack poking up from the flat western Iowa landscape, MidAmerican Energy Holdings chief executive David L. Sokol peered down at a train looping around a sizable mound of coal.

At this bend in the Missouri River, with Omaha visible in the distance, the new MidAmerican plant is the leading edge of what many people are calling the "coal rush." Due to start up this spring, it will probably be the next coal-fired generating station to come online in the United States. A dozen more are under construction, and about 40 others are likely to start up within five years -- the biggest wave of coal plant construction since the 1970s.

The coal rush in America's heartland is on a collision course with Congress. While lawmakers are drawing up ways to cap and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, the Energy Department says as many as 150 new coal-fired plants could be built by 2030, adding volumes to the nation's emissions of carbon dioxide, the most prevalent of half a dozen greenhouse gases scientists blame for global warming.

Even after a pledge last month by a consortium of private equity firms to shelve eight of 11 planned coal plants as part of their proposed $45 billion buyout of TXU, the largest utility in Texas, many daunting projects remain on drawing boards. Any one of the three biggest projects could churn out more carbon dioxide than the savings that a group of Northeast states hope to achieve by 2018.

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While newly constructed plants cough up a tiny fraction of the pollutants environmental regulators have focused on in the past -- sulfur dioxide, mercury and nitrogen oxides -- they emit only 15 percent less carbon dioxide. They do that simply by being more efficient. Scrubbers like those used to extract other pollutants from a plant's exhaust don't exist for carbon dioxide.

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If coal plants must be built, environmentalists prefer integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plants that they say will make it easier later to capture carbon dioxide and store it underground. Only a handful of those are being planned.

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But the IGCC plants can add as much as $200 million to construction costs; only two are operating today. Companies that make the plants, such as Siemens and General Electric, aren't willing to guarantee certain levels of performance, utility executives say. Referring to GE's chief executive Jeffrey R. Immelt and GE's "ecomagination" ad campaign, one utility executive who spoke on condition of anonymity because his company might still do business with GE said, "I think Immelt's ecomagination got away from him."

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[OKIsItJustMe]

1. NY Times: TXU Announces Plans for 2 Coal Plants Designed to Be Cleaner-Burning

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/10/business/10coal.html

March 10, 2007

TXU Announces Plans for 2 Coal Plants Designed to Be Cleaner-Burning

By CLIFFORD KRAUSS and MATTHEW L. WALD

HOUSTON, March 9 — The TXU Corporation announced on Friday that it was making plans to build two power plants in Texas that would use advanced technology intended to capture carbon dioxide before it escapes into the atmosphere.

The plan for the so-called integrated gasification combined cycle, or I.G.C.C., plants comes almost two weeks after TXU announced that several private equity groups led by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and the Texas Pacific Group proposed to acquire TXU for $45 billion.

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The planning for the two new clean-coal generators would potentially help fill the gap for a state where the population is expected to grow by 20 percent, to nearly 30 million people, over the next decade. But it also may signal a shift in the thinking of utilities that depend on coal to generate energy to try to develop a challenging technology that is accompanied by high construction costs.

These plants would convert coal to gas and separate the carbon dioxide, which would then be injected into existing oil fields.

Nationwide, there are applications to build about 25 such generators, but that represents a small fraction of the proposed coal-fired plants. So far none have been built anywhere in the world.

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[bananas]

2. They can do a remake of the Beverly Hillbillies

"Up from the ground came a lump of black gold;
Coal, that is..."