by jboullion | Dec 8, 2010 | Uncategorized
From an article by Mark Jaffe in the Denver Post:
The Colorado Public Utilities Commission voted Monday to shut six aging Front Range coal-fired power units and allow Xcel Energy to replace them with a new $530 million gas-fired plant.
Pollution controls, with a $340 million price tag, also were approved for the coal-burning Pawnee plant near Brush and the Hayden plant.
The commission still must decide what to do with the largest coal-burning plant in the Denver area — the Cherokee 4 unit.
“Cherokee 4 is the largest source of air pollution in the Denver area, and it needs to be shut,” said John Nielson, energy-program director for the environmental-policy group Western Resource Advocates.
The closures, which will occur between 2011 and 2017, are part of Xcel’s proposal to meet the state Clean Air- Clean Jobs Act, which seeks to cut nitrogen-oxide pollution by 70 to 80 percent.
Xcel would receive accelerated cost recovery for the investments in a comprehensive plan to cut pollution under the law.
The state is out of compliance with federal clean-air health standards and has to submit a plan next year to the Environmental Protection Agency showing steps to cut pollution.
by jboullion | Dec 1, 2010 | Uncategorized
For immediate release
December 1, 2010
More information
RENEW Wisconsin
Michael Vickerman
608.255.4044
mvickerman@renewwisconsin.org
Wisconsin Cannot Afford to Ignore Rising Coal Prices
Long-considered an inexpensive and reliable fuel source, coal has become subject to market and regulatory pressures that threaten to make it an expensive and risky way to generate electricity, according to national news reports and pertinent utility filings with the Wisconsin Public Service Commission (PSC).
“The expectation of continued increases in coal prices reinforces the value of relying on Wisconsin’s own energy resources. If there’s an effort to find savings for utility customers, the logical move would be to shutter antiquated coal plants before they become more of a liability,” said Michael Vickerman, Executive Director of RENEW Wisconsin, a statewide, nonprofit renewable energy advocacy organization.
A key driver behind coal’s rising cost is China, which has moved from an exporter to an importer of coal. The New York Times (NYT) reported last week that Chinese coal imports will hit all-time highs for November and December of this year. Some of this coal is coming from Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, the coal field that also supplies many Wisconsin power plants.1
In the New York Times story, an executive from Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private coal company, predicted that his company will send larger and larger quantities of coal to China in the coming years.
Further adding to the upward price pressure on coal is the rising cost of diesel fuel. The PSC has estimated that half of the delivered cost of coal in Wisconsin is attributable to rail shipment, that is highly sensitive to the price of diesel fuel, which sells for 38 cents more per gallon than it did a year ago, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.2 Tom Whipple, editor of the Peak Oil Review, expects diesel fuel supplies to tighten in 2011 as a consequence of flat production volumes and increasing demand from Asia.3 This phenomenon could affect Wisconsin electric utility rates as early as January 2011, according to Vickerman.
We Energies’ coal costs have escalated by $57 million, of which transportation costs account for almost $33 million, according to the utility’s most recent rate filing with the PSC. On top of that, We Energies expects to pay an additional $8 million in oil surcharge costs.4
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by jboullion | Sep 10, 2010 | Uncategorized
From a report titled “The Facts about Wind Energy’s Emissions Savings” prepared by the American Wind Energy Association:
. . . four of the seven major independent grid operators in the
U.S. have studied the emissions impact of adding wind energy to their power grids, and all four have found that adding wind energy drastically reduces emissions of carbon dioxide and other harmful pollutants. While the emissions savings depend somewhat on the existing share of coal-fired versus gas-fired generation in the region, as one would expect, it is impossible to dispute the findings of these four independent grid operators that adding wind energy to their grids has significantly reduced emissions. . . .
DOE data show that wind and other renewables’ share of Texas’s electric mix increased from 1.3% in 2005 to 4.4% in 2008, an increase in share of 3.1 percentage points. During that period, electric sector carbon dioxide emissions declined by 3.3%, even though electricity use actually increased by 2% during that time. Because of wind energy, the state of Texas was able to turn what would have been a carbon emissions increase into a decrease of 8,690,000 metric tons per year, equal to the emissions savings of taking around 1.5 million cars off the road.
by jboullion | Aug 26, 2010 | Uncategorized
From an article posted on Ormat:
Ormat Technologies Inc. (NYSE: ORA) has begun commercial operation of a power station in Minnesota, and will sell the electricity produced to Great River Energy.
Ormat said that the GRE recovered energy generation (REG) power plant is a 5.5 MW net power plant that converts the waste heat from the exhaust of a gas turbine in a compressor station along a natural gas pipeline in Martin County, Minnesota. The plant converts recovered heat to electricity without the need for any additional fuel or water.
The electricity produced by the project is sold to Great River Energy under a 20 year power purchase agreement. Great River Energy provides wholesale electric service to 28 distribution cooperatives in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Ormat CEO Dita Bronicki said, “This is the 10th REG unit we own and operate in the US, that brings the total installed capacity to approximately 53 MW and contributes to the important goal of emission free power generation.”
Ormat called the technology environmentally benign, with no emissions of carbon dioxide or nitrogen oxide.
by jboullion | Jul 27, 2010 | Uncategorized
From an editorial in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
We Energies’ Valley power plant is a vital link serving the region’s energy needs. That doesn’t mean it can’t run cleaner.
We Energies’ coal-fired Valley power plant isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Nor should it. The plant – about a mile south of downtown Milwaukee in the Menomonee River Valley – meets a vital need in the utility’s energy network and plays a unique role among power plants by producing steam to heat many downtown buildings, helping to keep heating costs stable.
But it is time to clean up the plant and bring it into the 21st century. We Energies is working on that, but anything the utility can do to expedite the process would be helpful. What that will mean is either switching to a new kind of fuel – natural gas – or adding equipment to the plant to clean up its emissions. Both would cost money, and ratepayers will have to pick up the cost.
The utility needs to figure out which is the better option and look for ways to mitigate the cost, but improving air quality is essential to public health and economic development. It’s worth some cost.
As a recent article by Thomas Content and Lee Bergquist made clear, Valley is a plant with a problem. It is We Energies’ oldest power plant that lacks modern emission controls. It thus adds to air pollution in the Milwaukee area, a region with air quality challenges.
