Cinergy to Install 'Scrubbers'

Sep 06 - Cincinnati Post

Cinergy Corp. plans to invest $1.8 billion to reduce air pollution from its coal-burning plants in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana, as it anticipates new clean air standards from the federal government.

The company said Thursday the program will include installing "scrubbers" to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions at Cinergy's Miami Fort power plant in North Bend and an upgrade of existing scrubbers at its Zimmer station in Moscow and its East Bend station in Boone County, Ky.

The investment will be Cinergy's largest environmental construction program to date and create more than 1,000 construction jobs, officials said. How many of those jobs will be in Greater Cincinnati was not immediately known, Cinergy spokesman Steve Brash said.

The overall program is expected to reduce Cinergy's sulfur dioxide emissions by about 70 percent and nitrogen oxide and mercury emissions by 60 percent each, Brash said.

The air in Southwest Ohio and Northern Kentucky will be helped by lower emissions from area plants and will also benefit from controls at Cinergy plants in Indiana that are upwind from Cincinnati, he said.

Ultimately, the cost of the pollution controls will be borne by Cinergy customers, Brash said.

Cinergy made an application with Indiana utility regulators on Thursday to begin recovering its costs in that state. Electric rates in Kentucky are frozen through 2006, but the additional costs will be included in its rate base beginning in 2007, Brash said.

In Ohio, Cinergy's pending rate plan has a provision allowing it to recover environmental costs from 2005 through 2008. If the state switches to deregulated, market-based rates instead, those rates will reflect the fact that all electric generating companies will have to meet the new EPA rules, Brash said.

Cinergy is taking a significant step in the right direction, said Michael Shore, senior air quality analyst for the antipollution group Environmental Defense in Raleigh, N.C. However, he said what's really needed are tighter federal standards and faster implementation than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is currently proposing. The EPA proposal is expected to be made final later this year or in 2005.

"Environmental Defense welcomes Cinergy's commitment to control pollution from some of its power plants, but in order to fully clean up the air in Ohio and the Eastern United States, we need the EPA to finalize standards to reduce pollution from all power plants," Shore said.

Cinergy's program is progress, but not enough to get rid of unhealthy air, said Kurt Waltzer, clean air strategy coordinator for the Ohio Environmental Council. For that to happen, the EPA rule needs to be strengthened so that all large, pre-1977 power plants are equipped with modern emissions controls, he said.

Cinergy said its estimated $1.8 billion investment will likely grow to more than $2 billion once the EPA's proposed Clean Air Interstate Rule is made final and Cinergy begins a second phase of its program. The rule is intended to reduce power plant emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide throughout 28 eastern states. A separate proposal dealing with mercury emissions is also pending.

Details of the second phase of Cinergy's program will depend on what's required by the final rule and the results of a test project the company's installing at its smaller Gallagher power plant in New Albany, Ind., outside Louisville. The technology in the Gallagher project appears promising for the removal of mercury and particulates from power plant exhaust gases, Cinergy officials said, but it hasn't been proven in a full-scale application.

Controls to be installed at Cinergy's Beckjord power plant in New Richmond also will depend on the final rule.

Brash said construction at Miami Fort will begin as soon as permits are issued, probably by the end of the year.

Scrubbers such as those being installed there generally cost about $200 million each and take two to three years to complete, he said.