Coal's bad year

Thirteen stories of coal getting stiffed

Posted by David Roberts at 11:31 AM on 18 Dec 2007

Read more about: energy | coal

The other day I was thinking I should gather together in one place all the stories from this year about coal getting rejected. And I was feeling lazy, and wishing someone else would do it for me.

And look, someone else did! Check it out below the fold:

Following are some of the coal plant proposals that have been scrapped since September 2006:

1. Sunflower Electric Power Corporation (Kansas) - proposed 1,400 megawatt (MW) coal plant denied air permit by Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) due to concerns about global warming. The Director of KDHE stated that it would be "irresponsible" to ignore global warming concerns when evaluating whether to build a new plant. October 2007.

2. Southwestern Power Group's Bowie Power Station (Arizona) - proposed 600 MW IGCC coal plant canceled by company in favor of pursuing a natural gas fired plant, in part because of market economics and regulatory uncertainty. September 2007.

3. Florida Power & Light's Glades Power Plant (Florida) - proposed 1,960 MW power plant rejected by Florida Public Service Commission due, in part, to the uncertainty over the cost of future carbon regulations. July 2007.

4. American Electric Power and Oklahoma Gas & Electric's Red Rock Generating Station (Oklahoma) - proposed 950 MW plant rejected by the Oklahoma Corporation Commission for failure to evaluate alternatives such as natural gas. September 2007.

5. Tenaska's Sallisaw Electric Generating Plant (Oklahoma) - company cancelled its plans to build a 660-880 MW plant on the grounds that it is not economically viable. July 2007.

6. Peabody Coal Company's Thoroughbred Generating Station (Kentucky) - air permit for 1500 MW plant reversed by Franklin Circuit Court due to inadequate air pollution control analysis. August 2007.

7. Seminole Electric Power Cooperative's Seminole 3 Generating Station (Florida) - proposed 750 MW plant rejected by Florida Department of Environmental Protection on the grounds that the plant would not minimize environmental and public health impacts, and would not serve the public interest. August 2007.

8. Great Northern Power Development's South Heart Power Project (North Dakota) - applicant withdrew air permit application for 500 MW plant. August 2007.

9. Florida Municipal Power Agency's Taylor Energy Center (Florida) - proposed 800 MW plant withdrawn by applicant shortly after Florida PSC denied application for Glades Power Plant. July 2007.

10. TXU Corporation (Texas) (March 2007) - as part of a buyout of TXU Corporation by private equity firms, TXU announced that it would abandon plans for eight out of eleven proposed plants in Texas. July 2007.

11. Indeck Energy Service's Elwood Energy Center (Illinois) - US EPA's Environmental Appeals Board reversed the air permit for a proposed 660 MW plant. Sept. 2006.

12. Duke Energy's Cliffside Steam Station Modernization (North Carolina) - proposal for one of two 800 MW coal-fired plants rejected by North Carolina Utilities Commission, due to increase in estimated construction costs. March 2007.

13. Westar Energy's Coal Plant Project (Kansas) - company deferred plan for new 600 MW plant because of significant increase in estimated construction costs. December 2006.14 Westar later launched a 300 MW wind power project, Kansas' largest. Wind project is expected to be producing energy by the end of 2008, with possibility of an additional 200 MW available by year end 2010. October 2007.

14. Idaho Power (Idaho) - company canceled plans produce 250 MW from coal-fired plants by 2013; adopted new plans to develop a natural gas turbine in Idaho by 2012, and to add 101 MW of wind power and 45.5 MW of geothermal power by 2011. November 2007.

15. Avista Utilities (Washington) - company plans to sell more electricity generated by natural gas plants and wind turbines, and not invest in new coal power plants. Avista's twenty-year plan, as submitted to the state government, includes the sale of some 275 MW available from a natural-gas power plant in Lancaster, WA. September 2007.

16. Xcel Energy (Colorado) - company agreed to obtain 775 MW of wind power to supplement power from 750 MW coal plant it is building near Pueblo, CO. July 2007.

17. Xcel Energy (Colorado) - company plans to roughly double its renewable generation capacity by 2015 and close two coal-burning plants in the state, the Araphoe Generating Station in Denver and the Cameo Generating Station east of Grand Junction.

For story: Coal's bad year
5 Comments | Post a Comment

And you could add

PG&E's (Portland, not Pacific) recent announcement that they will not factor coal into their 10 year planning horizon because of regulatory uncertainty.

by Sean Casten at 12:39 PM on 18 Dec 2007

Just asking

What are they replaced with? Magic? Something going to replace them? Will people ask for power and their won't be any?

Will we burn up all the natural gas this way?

by trock at 1:32 PM on 18 Dec 2007

a bad year for coal...a good year for gas?

Good question, Trock! We addressed this same question not to long ago in our post, No Coal? Okay, then what?

Unless everyone starts using less electricity, (Think: Less!) we're going to eventually have to replace those proposed-then-killed coal plants. The ideal solution, of course, would be to use renewables such as wind, solar, and thermal, but that won't happen overnight. In the meantime, it will probably be natural gas.

Part of our concern about natural gas is reflected in the following:

Our message here isn't that one power generating option is so much worse than another; they all have serious problems in the context of balancing supply, demand, price, and environmental impact. Rather, the message is that natural gas prices are exorbitant and expected to remain so as long as petroleum inches towards $100/barrel. The message is that electricity rates will continue to go up and the only practical means of containing the impact will be to reduce consumption. The message is that one methane molecule is equal to approximately 20 carbon dioxide molecules, and that industry experts estimate that approximately 2-10 percent of the methane used for electricity is released into the atmosphere between the well and the power plant. Finally, the terror premium inherent in the price of natural gas and petroleum affects electricity prices. When LNG is used for power generation, electricity is held hostage to the same geopolitical vagaries that destabilize petroleum markets.

Pearl Street::Jason and Kristina Makansi Read Lights Out reviews

by Kristina & Jason Makansi at 2:17 PM on 18 Dec 2007

Here's two more -

Wyoming utility snuffs coal projects.
Maine ruling & vote sink 700 MW plant.

by Jay Alt at 9:30 AM on 19 Dec 2007

59 Coal Plants Cancelled in 2007

CoalSwarm, the new wiki covering the coal boom and the coal moratorium movement, has released a comprehensive count of cancellations that shows 59 coal plants cancelled in 2007.

Details at http://cmnow.org/59plants.pdf.

Also at:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Coal_plants_ca ...

Conclusions:
Climate concerns have begun to play a major role in plant abandonments and cancellations: Concerns about global warming played a major role in 15 cases. These included five proposed Florida plants (Glades, Taylor, Seminole, Polk, and Stanton), seven proposals in Western states that have newly implemented strict carbon regulations on coal (Avista's unnamed unit, Sunflower's Holcomb unit 3; Idaho Power's unnamed unit; Energy Northwest's Pacific Mountain Energy Center; PacifiCorp's Intermountain Power, Bridger IGCC demonstration, and Bridger expansion); and Sunflower's Holcomb units 1 and 2.

Coal plants are being eliminated from long-range plans: Increasingly, coal plants are disappearing before they can even be named, due to increasing regulatory scrutiny of long-range integrated resource plans. In addition to the plants abandoned by PacifiCorp and Idaho Power Company, it is likely that other utilities around the United States have eliminated coal plants from their long-term planning rosters without public announcement.

Renewables are elbowing out coal: Regulators in several states have begun favoring utility-scale renewables over coal. In Delaware, regulators cancelled a coal power plant proposed by NRG Energy in favor of an alternative proposal that combined wind and natural gas. In California, the combination of a strict carbon emissions standard and a renewable portfolio standard has prompted utilities to enter into contracts for large thermal solar projects sponsored by Ausra, BrightSource, and Solel. Solar thermal companies have found success in recruiting top utility executives such as Robert Fishman, who left an executive VP position at CalPine to take the helm at Ausra.

More plants are being abandoned than rejected: Of the 59 projects listed below, only 15 were rejected outright by regulators, courts, or local authorities. In the remaining 44 cases, the decision was made by utilities themselves. Reasons for abandoning plants include (1) rising construction costs, (2) insufficient financing or failure to receive hoped-for government grants, (3) lowered estimates of demand, and (4) concerns about future carbon regulations.

Help build coalSwarm-- a shared informational resource on coal and alternatives to coal.

by Ted Nace at 9:54 PM on 04 Feb 2008

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