Jun. 21--By Thomas Content, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
With the backing of opponents of Wisconsin Energy Corp.'s planned coal-fired power plants in Oak Creek, two legislators are pushing to revise state energy laws to encourage the use of a new, cleaner-burning form of coal generation.
"This technology is the wave of the future. It's time for Wisconsin to
be forward looking and embrace this," said Wasserman during a meeting with
Journal Sentinel reporters and editors.
"Current law doesn't recognize this cleaner way to burn coal," said
Suder, referring to the list of power generation technologies included in the
state's energy priorities law. The law encourages the Public Service Commission
to evaluate forms of generating electricity from the cleanest to the most
polluting.
Wisconsin Energy had proposed five years ago that one of three new coal
plants at Oak Creek be built using the new technology. But in November 2003
state regulators rejected the technology as unproven and too costly.
The commission instead approved two pulverized coal plants, using technology
that's cleaner than aging coal plants but dirtier than gasification plants.
Renewed talk of coal gasification comes as the fate of the Oak Creek project
remains up in the air, after a Dane County Circuit Court judge yanked a
construction permit for the plant last fall. Wisconsin Energy and state agencies
immediately sued to overturn the verdict.
The state Supreme Court is expected to decide the case by June 30.
But environmental groups and Racine-based S.C. Johnson & Son Inc. see
coal gasification as a technology that's being proposed more often in other
states compared with five years ago, when Wisconsin Energy first proposed its
gasification plant.
Gasification projects are on the drawing board in Minnesota, Illinois,
Indiana and Ohio, and companies are gearing up to build the projects, said John
Thompson of the Clean Air Task Force.
Opponents of the pulverized coal plants see this as a compromise between
Wisconsin Energy Corp.'s proposal and a natural gas-fired power plant
alternative that would likely be deemed to expensive by the regulators.
Wisconsin Energy Corp. spokesman Thad Nation termed the endorsement of coal
gasification by Oak Creek opponents another attempt to delay construction of a
plant for which the utility had hoped to already have started construction.
Switching technologies at this point would add several years' delay to a project
that regulators had wanted to finished by the summer of 2009, he said.
"We continue to believe that this is the coal technology of the future,
we continue to have people who are working on this issue," Nation said.
"We're certainly watching what other utilities are proposing and doing but
we were one of if not the first utility to propose an unsubsidized full-scale
(coal gasification) unit. It was rejected by the Public Service Commission. But
we remain committed to looking at this technology for the future."
Opponents have objected to the new coal plant, in part because of air-quality
restrictions already in place in southeastern Wisconsin.
"All we're looking for here is a better alternative to what's being
proposed, which according to our state law, is the worst choice under the energy
priorities law," said Chip Brewer of S.C. Johnson. "And we have to ask
ourselves, can't we do better?"
Wisconsin Energy says that emissions at its Oak Creek power plant and across
its entire fleet of power plants will decrease once all of its proposed
plants--fueled by coal, natural gas wind power -- are built.
Utilities have said the using coal gasification would be more costly for
customers at a time when concern about rising energy costs is high.
Opponents say the higher cost associated with gasification would be offset by
the higher costs of conventional technology, given changing energy and
environment laws.
Amendments being considered in the U.S. Senate this week could place limits
on carbon dioxide emissions, a contributor to global climate change, as part of
a comprehensive energy bill.
"With a conventional coal plant, the risk is obsolescence, having a
pulverized coal plant that can't deal with carbon restrictions," Thompson
said.
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