Power Plans Have Critics Boiling: They Don't Believe Coal Emissions Can Be Cleaned Enough

Power Plans Have Critics Boiling: They Don't Believe Coal Emissions Can Be Cleaned Enough

ATLANTA - May 30 - Florida Times Union

Although Georgia Power is preparing to invest billions of dollars in new technology to reduce emissions from coal-fired power plants, critics complain the risk of air pollution is greater than the need for cheaper electricity.

To some opponents, the term clean coal is an oxymoron.

In order to comply with federal clean-air rules and emission standards, the utility, which provides most of the state with electricity, already has spent $1 billion since 1990 to reduce its airborne pollutants by 40 percent.

In the next five years, it will spend another $2 billion for installing environmental controls on its existing coal plants.

Before Georgia Power put on its first round of emission "scrubbers," the utility was contributing to 15 percent of the ozone in Atlanta, company spokeswoman Lynn Wallace said.

Since the late 1990s, that amount dropped to 6 percent in metro Atlanta because of the controls.

"That means the rest of the problem is cars and other sources," she said.

Scrubbers are used to remove sulfur and the so-called greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide, from burning coal. Scrubbers can reduce sulfur emissions by 90 percent or more. They are essentially large towers in which aqueous mixtures of lime or limestone "sorbents" are sprayed through the flue gases exiting a coal boiler. The lime/ limestone absorbs the sulfur from the flue gas.

However, environmental groups, which routinely push state utility regulators to support more energy efficient programs and renewable fuel sources, are not as sure coal emissions are going to be cleaned enough.

"Air emissions from Georgia power plants, although scheduled to be significantly reduced over the next eight years, continue to make the air in Georgia unhealthy to breathe," Sanders Moore, a member of the Georgia Conservancy, recently said in front of the Georgia Public Service Commission.

The commission in is in the middle of evaluating Georgia Power's long-term energy use plan, which includes blueprints for how it will generate electricity from switching two coal units to natural gas units to pursuing new nuclear reactors.

Because the cost for expensive new environmental controls gets passed on to consumers, the benefits have to be weighed with the cost of generating electricity.

"That's the balancing act that we always have to find," said Public Service Commissioner Stan Wise, who along with the rest of the board has overseen a period of rising utility bills in recent years. "With the price of energy products, I wouldn't want to rule out one of our great natural resources, and that's coal. Of course, that makes me a pariah in some circles, but we've got to continue to explore all of our options."

Even as Georgia Power pours money into meeting the federal air quality standards on its older plants, an out-of-state company is planning to build a new coal-fired electric plant which is expected to generate twice the power of a typical plant.

Earlier this month, the state Environmental Protection Division approved the permit for a 1,200-megawatt coal plant in Early County, a rural area in Southwest Georgia near the Alabama line.

As a wholesale provider of electricity, Dynegy Inc. will be looking to sell its power through commercial contracts and will not start building the facility until those are in place, company officials said.

Despite criticism that the owners would be building a massive coal plant to sell electricity out of state, project representatives said they want to avoid the extra fees for crossing state lines.

"Our primary focus is to sell all of the electricity within the state of Georgia," said Mike Vogt, project manager for LS Power Associates, which started the project before merging with Dynegy.

Vogt pointed out that the proposed plant would include emission controls, such as the scrubbers, to keep pollutants down.

Justine Thompson, executive director of the Georgia Center for Law in the Public Interest, said her group plans to file an appeal against the plant's permit.

"This plant is going to be the same environmental impact as 1.3 million cars on the road," she said. "There's no such thing as clean coal."

Many in Early County, including most of its elected officials have been supportive of the plant proposal, saying it would bring in sorely needed jobs in the county, where 32 percent of the population lives below the poverty line.

Former tax assessor board member Bobby McLendon said he was the only public official not to endorse it.

He and his wife, Jane, say their concerns about the plant's impact on their air and water outweigh any benefits.

"It's been an unpopular stand," Jane said. "To permit something that's going to pop out all that smoke every day - ugh."vicky.eckenrode@morris.com, (678) 977-4601