Coal, politics and the new-energy economy: Xcel energy's Comanche 3 coal-fired plant underscores the debate between "cheap," reliable energy and its costs to the environment.

• Author: Best, Allen
• Position: PLANET-PROFIT REPORT

Comanche 3 began generating electricity July 6 on the prairie just outside Pueblo. "The monster has risen," read a sign deep within the bowels of the power plant, Colorado's largest, when I visited in August.

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The project employed as many as 2,400 workers, including pipe fitters and boilermakers from across the country who came to learn and perfect innovative welding and other construction techniques as needed by one of the most advanced coal plants anywhere.

But many have said it will be Colorado's last coal plant. Does it also represent a colossal failure of foresight--not just by Xcel Energy, the developer and primary owner, but also by environmental groups and community groups who struck a landmark deal in 2004 with the utility?

"Absolutely not," says Frank Prager, Xcel's vice president of environmental policy. "This is a great project--great for Xcel, great for our customers and great for the people of Colorado. And because of the settlement agreement, it's great for the environment."

Prager further argues that the low cost of Comanche 3 power enabled Xcel to expand its investment into wind and solar generation, ultimately reducing its emissions of greenhouse gases. Too, Comanche 3 will allow Xcel to close older, less efficient and more polluting coal plants near Grand Junction and in Denver and Boulder.

Del Worley, chief executive of Holy Cross Energy, one of Comanche 3's owners, contends that the plant will always make financial sense "unless you get some really wild and crazy emissions costs or carbon tax, whatever you want to call it. And I just don't think the economy would take that sort of jolt."

Environmental groups--at least most of them - reject insinuations that they caved in prematurely. "You have to deal with political reality, not theory," says Howard Geller, executive director of the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, one of the signatories.

"We took a big step forward with Xcel at that time," he adds. "These aren't fights you win in one day. Shifting from total fossil-fuel dependency and very high coal dependence to much lower coal dependence and greater reliance on renewables is a multi-year and multi-step process."

But if changes can be incremental, they can also be seismic--as the bust-up of the telephone monopolies were in the 1980s. Seen in that light, our existing power production--of which Comanche 3 is a shining example--just might be a dinosaur even now, with 60 years of remaining life expectancy.

But such dinosaurs aren't finished stomping the Earth, not by a long shot. The Associated Press reported in August that more than 30 coal plants have been built since 2008 or are under construction across the country. The AP based its report on records from the U.S. Department of Energy and information from utilities and trade groups.

Environmentalists counter that 100 plants have been scrapped or delayed due to tighter regulations on emission limits for acid rain pollutants, the AP reported. Utilities like Xcel and Tri-state have also experienced a slump in demand for power from consumers during the recession.

TOWERING GIANT

Physically, the plant is a monster. A 500-foot-tall smokestack looms over cooling towers and a pit broad enough to hold 30 years of accumulated ashes. Railroad tracks bring mile-long coal trains from Wyoming's Powder River Basin. Each train's 125 hopper cars carry 120 tons. One or two trains arrive daily to feed the fires in the bellies of Comanche 3 and its two companion units, Comanche 1 and 2.

The two predecessor units were built in 1972 and 1975, when pollution controls were...