Taylorville plant raises another inconvenient truth
BY JEFFREY TOMICH, ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

July 17, 2007 – John Thompson doesn't fit the mold of Sierra Club adversary. He isn't chief executive of a mining company or electric utility.

He's the Sierra Club's expert witness in two cases in Utah where it's fighting development of coal-burning power plants.

So it's unusual that Thompson, director of the coal transition program for the nonprofit Boston-based Clean Air Task Force, is at odds with the group over the Taylorville Energy Center, a power plant being developed about 20 miles southeast of Springfield, Ill.

Developers of the $2 billion Taylorville project aim to make it among the world's cleanest coal-fueled power plants, and backers include the Illinois Chapter of the American Lung Association. But the Sierra Club is challenging the air permit issued by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency because the state doesn't require limits on emissions of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas that's the biggest contributor to climate change.

The pitched battle over global warming frequently pits business versus environmentalists. But the debate over the Taylorville power plant raises another inconvenient truth: Not even those on the same side of the issue agree on a solution.

Developers of the Taylorville plant, led by Tenaska Inc., indicated that they would agree to a 20 percent cut in carbon dioxide emissions.

But the Sierra Club is fighting the project, along with a similar one in Indiana, because there's no guarantee of carbon dioxide cuts, and because the plants still would produce greenhouse gases.

"We cannot just keep adding large new sources (of carbon dioxide) without at least addressing how it's going to be taken care of," said Becki Clayborn of the Sierra Club's Chicago office. "We need assurance that something is going to be done."

The Sierra Club and other environmental groups are urging steep cuts in carbon emissions from power plants and other sources to achieve a global 80 percent reduction by 2050 — a drastic cut that some scientists say is necessary to avoid dire consequences such as melting ice sheets and rising sea levels.

Thompson agrees with the goal of cutting global carbon dioxide emissions 80 percent by 2050. But, he says, "we just can't do it with today's technology."

The Taylorville project can help demonstrate technology needed to reduce carbon emissions, he said. In the meantime, it represents a quantum leap in cutting emissions that contribute to respiratory disease and asthma.

Nonetheless, the Sierra Club is appealing the Taylorville air permit to the Environmental Appeals Board of the U.S. EPA.


'Radically lower' emissions

The Taylorville appeal is based on a Supreme Court ruling in April that carbon dioxide is a pollutant that can be regulated under the federal Clean Air Act.

The plant would emit up to 300 tons of sulfur dioxide a year and 629 tons of nitrogen oxides. Those are seemingly big numbers, but tiny compared with 19,000 tons of sulfur dioxide and 10,000 tons of nitrogen oxides, respectively, for a coal-fired plant of the same size using older technology.

"This is radically lower," Thompson said. "This technology has the potential to literally take those air pollution issues off the table for the power sector. And that's something I don't think the framers of the Clean Air Act could have envisioned in 1970."

Just as importantly, stopping Taylorville would have a chilling effect on other projects where developers face a decision on whether to spend extra money and assume more technological risk to construct a next-generation plant able to reduce carbon dioxide, he said.

"They're looking around and wondering, 'Hell, why would I do that? If I propose a dirty old coal plant they'll sue me, and if I propose one that actually helps solve global warming they'll sue me. I think they (Sierra Club) haven't thought through that unintended consequence."

The Taylorville project was conceived by a startup company founded by three former Louisville Gas & Electric executives. Tenaska, based in Omaha, Neb., bought a 50 percent stake in the project last summer, has an option to buy the rest and now serves as managing partner.

Construction of the plant could begin next spring, and it could start producing electricity by 2012.


Betting on technology

The plant would be capable of generating 630 megawatts of electricity — enough to light about 630,000 homes. It would use about 1.5 million tons of coal a year. But instead of burning the sooty, black fuel, the coal would be converted to a synthetic gas before combustion, enabling many of the pollutants to be stripped out, not vented through a smokestack.

Tenaska is making a strategic bet that the technology will play an important role in the future in electric generation, said W.W. "Bill" Braudt Jr., Tenaska's general manager of business development.

The company expects to profit from selling electricity from Taylorville and being among the first to build and run a commercial-scale plant using the technology. Tenaska sees carbon regulation coming soon, and if that happens the technology would offer a significant advantage over other coal-fired plants.

For now, though, eliminating most carbon dioxide emissions isn't feasible when other power plant owners aren't required to do the same. "To take a single project and say you will (limit carbon dioxide) but nobody else has to is the death-knell of economics," Braudt said.

Tenaska and others believe the first generation of Taylorville-type plants will have a significant role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions by demonstrating the feasibility of permanently storing carbon dioxide underground.

"A carbon-neutral power sector is the ultimate goal, but steps are required to get there," said Sasha Mackler, associate technical director for the National Commission on Energy Policy, a bipartisan group of energy experts.

Taylorville, specifically, can play a role in proving how carbon can be permanently stored, the plant's backers say. One option is pumping it into Illinois oil fields to boost petroleum production. Another involves injecting it thousands of feet beneath the surface into saline aquifers, where it's trapped in pinhole-size pores in rock formations.

Rejecting coal altogether isn't an answer, Thompson said.

"Global warming is the most complex, difficult challenge that the environmental movement will ever face, and it isn't going to be solved with slogans on a bumper sticker," he said.

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