Cold shoulder for coal: concerns about the environment have stopped the building of new coal-tired power plants. But what will take their place?

• Author: Boulard, Garry

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If history served as a guide, the application on behalf of the Sunflower Electric Power Corporation to build two new coal-fired power plants in western Kansas should have been a pretty routine thing.

After all, Kansas receives 75 percent of its electricity from such plants with 15 similar ones operating in seven different counties.

But last October, Kansas Secretary of Health and Environment Rod Bremby dropped a bombshell felt across the country when he rejected Sunflower's application. Backed by Governor Kathleen Sebelius, Bremby said his decision was based on concerns about health risks associated with carbon dioxide emissions.

"I believe," Bremby said in a statement, "it would be irresponsible to ignore emerging information about the contribution of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to climate change and the potential harm to our environment and health if we do nothing."

Bremby's decision naturally angered Sunflower officials. Earl Watkins, the president and CEO, called Bremby's decision "arbitrary and capricious." He said the action destroyed the opportunity for "$200 million of direct benefit for central and western Kansas cooperative and municipal customers and diminishes the ability to build transmission necessary for additional wind power growth."

NATIONAL IMPLICATIONS

Michael Morris, the CEO of American Electric Power, based in Columbus, Ohio, and the largest electricity generator in the country, says the Kansas decision illustrates the challenges utility companies face in states nationwide. "It is becoming more difficult for anyone who is at the state level to approve an application for a new coal-fired power plant."

"But if I am the CEO of my state," says Morris, "I do not want to run out of electricity. This is not a doomsday scenario. You can pick a time line in different states of three, four, five or eight years. Whatever the situation, the threat of an energy crisis is a very real thing."

Martin Kushler, the utilities program director at the American Council for an EnergyEfficient Economy, says the Bremby decision represents what he calls "an awakening among various officials and people at the state level who feel that there really is a serious problem with climate change." Kushler says the most important question we face is "whether or not we are going to finally do anything to reduce carbon emissions."

"Building a new coal plant locks you into big carbon emissions for the next 40 or 50 years," says Kushler. "From an environmental view point, more and more people are beginning to realize that these kinds of plants are not really desirable power sources for the future."

For Kansas lawmakers, many of whom favored the construction of the Sunflower facilities, the rejection has placed the issues of increased energy needs and concerns about the environmental impact of coal-fired plants front and center.

"We are more aware than ever of the importance of addressing the energy needs of our entire state, but particularly in western Kansas where the new plants were supposed to go," says Representative Tom Sloan, who is a proponent of wind generation.

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"We are not unmindful of the arguments about health," Sloan says. "Anything that emits carbon dioxide, and it is not just the power plants that do that, has to be a matter of concern."

Carl Holmes, chair of the Kansas House Utilities Commission, agrees. "We have...