Tenaska project faces hurdles
BY STEVE JORDON, OMAHA WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

June 6, 2007 – Omaha-based power company Tenaska Inc. received an air quality permit in Illinois Tuesday to build what experts say would be the cleanest full-sized, coal-powered electricity plant on the planet.

But the project faces hurdles that could delay construction and would need additional work to take advantage of all of its anti-pollution possibilities, such as capturing its carbon dioxide.

The four-year construction job could start later this year, officials said during a press conference in Chicago, but only if Illinois law is changed to allow long-term electricity purchase contracts, instead of the current three-year limit.

Greg Kunkel, vice president of environmental affairs for Tenaska, said the proposed Taylorville Energy Center would need 30-year or 40-year purchase agreements before investors would put up $2 billion to build the plant.

Taylorville, in central Illinois, would have "the cleanest coal plant in the world," Kunkel said, adding that the plant "represents the future of energy development in this state and very much so in the world."

The plant would generate power with "world-leading environmental performance," he said, even though it would burn high-sulfur Illinois coal that would produce too much pollution at standard coal-fired plants.

Tenaska is managing partner of the proposed 630-megawatt project. Its planned generation process, known as integrated gasification combined cycle, turns coal into a gas that can be burned to generate electricity. The process captures nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide and other emissions.

The plant also could be outfitted to send its carbon dioxide through a pipeline to underground caverns, where it would be permanently stored. That feature isn't part of the current proposal.

Some smaller test plants use the coal gasification process, Kunkel said, but the Taylorville plant would be the first industrial-sized plant, demonstrating that coal gasification can be profitable.

Kunkel said the technology also could reduce the need to ship low-sulfur coal from Wyoming to other states.

Doug Scott, director of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, said the permit is the first step toward approval of the plant, which he called "the most environmentally friendly coal plant in the world."

The Taylorville plant would help Illinois utilities meet the state's requirement to generate an increasing share of their electricity from low-pollution sources, he said.

David Kolata, executive director of Illinois' Citizens Utility Board, said the plant's electricity would be cheaper than other sources and would bring prices down by adding to the supply of electricity.

John Thompson, director of the Coal Transition Project Clean Air Task Force, said the nation's air pollution problem won't be solved unless it can clean up the pollution from coal-powered generators.

"This is a breakthrough," he said, because the plant would turn coal into a clean source of energy. The same-sized standard coal plants emit more sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide in two weeks than the Taylorville plant would emit in a year.

"That is a radical reduction," Thompson said, and would make the plant the equivalent of a natural gas-powered plant in terms of pollution.

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