Aug 14 - State Journal Register

The Sierra Club said Thursday that its new deal with City Water, Light and Power to reduce power plant emissions is "the first enforceable agreement in the nation by any city or utility to significantly reduce its global warming pollution."

Bruce Nilles, a Sierra Club lawyer and director of the group's Midwest clean energy campaign, said that statement is based on the group's monitoring of environmental permits for new pollution sources across the country.

"It will be the first time global warming pollution has been regulated," Nilles said of the contentious multimillion-dollar pact narrowly approved Wednesday night by the Springfield City Council. "There's nobody who's done that."

Under the agreement, carbon dioxide emissions for CWLP's "native load" - the energy generated to serve local customers, not wholesale electricity sold to other utilities - will fall from 2.4 million tons this year to just under 1.8 million tons by the end of 2012 and continue at that level through 2015.

Doing so is the equivalent of getting 103,000 automobiles off the road, the Sierra Club says.

But CWLP could not provide numbers Thursday for how much total carbon dioxide would be emitted from its coal-fired generators over the 10-year time span of the agreement. That would include CO2 emitted as a result of power generated for the city and for wholesale sales, which CWLP expects to increase with the new, larger power plant it is building.

Carbon dioxide accounted for about 85 percent of the greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere in 2003, the last year for which that data was available, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Greenhouses gases are blamed for global warming.

CWLP's reduction will be achieved by increasing the efficiency of the three current Dallman generators, replacing the Lakeside generators will the new, more efficient Dallman 4 units, and "using" wind-generated power to fulfill part of local electricity needs.

In one of the deal's most controversial aspects, the 120 megawatts of wind capacity for the city and state government will not actually be transmitted into the homes and businesses served by CWLP. It will be bought and then sold on the wholesale energy market, sometimes at a loss.

But the wind power's purchase will, in essence, reduce the overall need for coal-produced electricity.

The Sierra Club's news release Thursday proclaims that CWLP "has agreed to close its oldest and dirtiest Lakeside coal-fired power plant."

The city-owned utility had planned to do that anyway when construction on the cleaner-burning Dallman 4 is finished.

The Sierra Club calls Lakeside "one of the dirtiest coal plants in the nation."

Meanwhile, Democratic aldermen and Mayor Tim Davlin boycotted a special city council meeting Thursday.

The meeting - the second in two days - had been requested by Republican aldermen to introduce ordinances that would pay for an independent study of the cost of the Sierra Club agreement. CWLP has estimated that cost to be $37 million, or $100 million less than if there was no deal and the Sierra Club held up the regulatory process for the new power plant by as much as a year.

The lack of a quorum meant there was no meeting.

Ward 10 Ald. Bruce Strom, one of five Republican aldermen who voted "no" on the agreement Wednesday, said the Democrats' refusal to show up is an abdication of their responsibility to participate in the legislative process.

"There's still value in knowing whether or not City Water, Light and Power management used a good, prudent process" in coming up with the cost estimates, Strom said.

"If we discover they have not, ... it will remind the public, it will remind the aldermen, that we can't just take their word on a major project like this."

Strom, Ward 7 Ald. Judy Yeager and Ward 8 Ald. Irv Smith said Wednesday that had an independent review of the project verified CWLP's cost estimates, they would have voted "yes" on the agreement.

Strom asked for Thursday's meeting so he could introduce three ordinances that would have funded a $20,000 study. If the meeting had taken place, the ordinances could have been introduced and voted upon at Tuesday's regular city council meeting. Now, they will have to wait until at least the Sept. 5 meeting.

The mayor's office questioned the need for another special meeting.

"It would appear to be a moot point since it (the agreement) was passed last night," said mayoral spokesman Ernie Slottag. "Why should we expend city funds on something that would have no impact on the decision?"

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