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In a letter released on Monday, four Democratic senators from energy-producing states have urged President Barack Obama’s administration to amend the EPA’s new source performance standard regulations.
Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana requested President Obama to urge the EPA to differentiate the standards based on fuel type and establish supercritical coal generation technology as the performance standard for new coal-based technology.
They wrote:
“Our nation can continue to use coal and continue to lower emissions at the sametime. Coal-based power generation projects are being developed across the country, using state-of-the-art technologies that are laying the foundation for revolutionary advancements in power plant efficiency and reduced CO2 levels.
These advancements in technology are allowing us to modernize the existing coal-fueled fleet improving efficiency and reducing emissions, while continuing to produce low-cost electricity for homes, offices and factories.”
Adopting the proposed regulations would have the effect of preventing existing plants from making upgrades that would allow for more electricity generation with less fuels and fewer emissions, the senators wrote.
Construction of a new 21st Century clean coal facility remains on schedule at the site of Mississippi Power’s Kemper Plant.
This month’s progress report from the Kemper County energy facility says that the facility has reached peak construction and remains on schedule to open in May 2014. The plant’s positive economic impact continues to be felt across the region.
The progress report goes on to say:
“The project is creating jobs: 12,000 direct and indirect during construction and more than 1,000 direct and indirect permanent positions once operational. Nearly 300 Mississippi companies are participating in the project and receiving more than $650 million for the services they are supplying.
The final lift of the facility’s 550-ton gasifier was completed earlier this month. This milestone marks the final work for the site’s massive 600-foot crane, which will be dismantled over the coming weeks.
The gasifier, which is the heart of the plant, will be used to convert the plant’s affordable fuel source, lignite, into a synthesis gas to generate electricity. The first lignite-to synthetic gas conversion is slated for early 2014.”
Facts about the clean coal technology that will be part of the Kemper Plant:
- The Kemper County energy facility is an electric power plant using an Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) design called Transport Integrated Gasification (TRIG™) technology.TRIG™ is a superior coal-gasification method with low impacts to our environment.
- The TRIG™ technology was developed by the Department of Energy, Southern Company and KBR at the Power Systems Development Facility in Wilsonville, Alabama.TRIG™ technology can utilize lignite, which accounts for more than half of the world’s vast coal reserves. It offers a simpler and more robust method than most existing coal-gasification technologies.
- TRIG™ technology, which will be used at the Kemper facility, also produces more power and offers lower capital cost as well as lower operation and maintenance cost than what is possible with other available gasification technologies.
- With TRIG™ technology, the Kemper facility will turn Mississippi lignite into a clean gas while reducing emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon dioxide and mercury.
- The TRIG™ technology will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 65 percent – making CO2 emissions equivalent to a similarly sized natural gas combined cycle power plant.
A recent story from E&E reported on the progress of Canadian utility SaskPower’s 43-year-old coal plant at its Boundary Dam Power Station. The facility is being retrofitted to capture roughly 90 percent of its carbon dioxide emissions and store the gas deep underground.
The Boundary Dam Integrated Carbon Capture and Storage Demonstration Project will see Unit #3 at a coal-fired power plant located at Estevan, Saskatchewan, Canada, rebuilt with a fully-integrated carbon capture and storage (CCS) system. It will be the first commercial-scale power plant equipped with a fully integrated CCS system. Operations are expected to begin in 2014.
According to the story, “The 110-megawatt project may be a game changer in two ways — it could become the world’s first commercial demonstration of carbon capture technology on a power plant at large scale. And it differs from other proposals in that it is a retrofit of an older coal plant and the retrofit might later be applied to similar plants.”
The Boundary Dam project will reduce CO2 emissions by approximately one million tons a year — the equivalent of taking more than 250,000 cars off Saskatchewan roads annually. The CO2 will be sold to resource companies to be used in enhanced oil recovery operations. Sulphur dioxide (SO2) will also be captured and sold.
“Boundary Dam will make the first benchmark. It will define the costs, which is so important,” Mike Monea, SaskPower president of carbon capture and storage initiatives, said at a briefing in Washington, D.C., last week. “Whoever builds the next one won’t have to spend as much money as us.”
Globally, more coal is expected to be used to produce electricity in 2017 than now, despite changing dynamics in the United States, according to the International Energy Agency.
In a recent Op-Ed in the New York Times, author Joe Nocera talks about “A Real Carbon Solution” in Odessa, Tex. as the Summit Power Group plans to break ground on a $2.5 billion coal gasification power plant. Summit has named it the Texas Clean Energy Project (TCEP).
TCEP is a “NowGen” Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) facility that will incorporate carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology in a first-of-its-kind commercial clean coal power plant.
TCEP will be a 400MW power/poly-gen plant that will also produce urea for the U.S. fertilizer market and capture 90 percent of its carbon dioxide (CO2) – approximately 3 million tons per year – which will be used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) in the West Texas Permian Basin.
According to Nocera, “Part of the promise of this power plant is its use of gasified coal; because the gasification process doesn’t burn the coal, it makes for far cleaner energy than a traditional coal-fired plant.”
“But another reason this plant — and a handful of similar plants — has such enormous potential is that it will capture some 90 percent of the facility’s already reduced carbon emissions. Some of those carbon emissions will be used to make fertilizer. The rest will be sold to the oil industry,which will push it into the ground, as part of a process called enhanced oil recovery.”
TCEP received a $450MM award in 2010 from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Clean Coal Power Initiative. TCEP received its final air quality permit from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality on December 28, 2010.
The Texas Clean Energy project will be the first United States based power plant that combines both Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle and carbon capture and storage technologies.
Over the last several decades, the coal-based electricity industry invested billions to clean the air. The result is that emissions of major pollutants from coal-fueled power plants have been reduced by nearly 90 percent per unit of electricity generated.
And not only that, the coal-based electricity industry is investing $125 billion more through 2015 to reduce them even further.
To read more quick facts about coal-based electricity, make sure to “Like” America’s Power on Facebook and learn more about the role clean coal plays in our everyday lives. Don’t forget to take a stand for coal by joining here.
Last week at the Platts Coal Properties & Investment conference in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Stephen Braverman, vice president for coal services, at DTE Coal Services predicted that “No matter what, the U.S. is still going to have a viable domestic coal industry.”
According to Platts, Braverman said “the end result of the slew of new regulations facing the industry will be bigger units that burn more coal.”
Braverman said, he predicts a 4% drop in coal-fired generation by 2020, and that older, high-heat rate plants are more at risk of being shuttered.
But larger, more efficient coal-fired plants will continue to operate and provide baseload generation, Braverman said.
That’s why affordable, stable electricity from coal is essential to this country. We need this natural resource—there is more than two centuries of coal in the U.S.—to keep the doors open at small businesses, power our hospitals and keep assembly lines running at manufacturing plants across the country.
America has depended on the reliable and abundant coal that comes from our land and powers our lives for more than a century. With the energy in America’s coal reserves being roughly equal to the world’s known oil reserves, it’s clear that coal should continue to be a reliable source of electricity for all of us.
Further evidence that the EPA continues to ignore the damage that its new regulations are causing to the U.S. economy, and to states that depend on coal for jobs and affordable electricity, comes from a recent blog post by Hannah Fjeldsted at the Heritage Foundation.
In her post, The EPA: an Impediment to Economic Recovery, she states, “The rapid pace and severity of EPA regulations on the energy sector during the past four years illustrates an ongoing problem—the government’s impediment to an economic recovery.”
She goes on to say:
“The EPA’s mandates have unfairly discriminated against certain sectors of the energy industry, most notably coal, pointlessly killing desperately needed jobs. On top of the regulations that have questionable benefits at best, the EPA has withheld permits for coal mining that were already approved by other agencies, gratuitously delayed permits, and even rescinded previously issued permits. There are real consequences to actions like this.”
In fact, earlier this week U.S. Representative Ed Whitfield of Kentucky said, “The EPA, without question, has established an unfortunate trend line, methodically establishing a regulatory framework to eliminate coal, and taking away diversity choices from utilities throughout the country.”
As we’ve stated, we hope for a more constructive working relationship with the next EPA administrator. We will continue to emphasize that the best approach is a more balanced path that recognizes America’s continued need for coal, and the importance of clean coal technology.
The EPA needs to analyze and understand the full, cumulative economic impacts of its regulations, and not seemingly choose sides when it comes to energy production. American jobs are at stake, as well as access to affordable, reliable electricity that is essential to our economic recovery.
The Subcommittee on Energy and Power held a hearing yesterday in the Rayburn House Office Building. The hearing was entitled, “American Energy Security and Innovation: The Role of a Diverse Electricity Generation Portfolio” and below are a few of the statements regarding the role of coal-based electricity presented during yesterday’s testimony:
Mark McCullough, Executive Vice President of Generation, AEP
“For over a century, AEP has been a pioneer in the development of advanced coal-fueled generation technologies, which include many first-in-the-world accomplishments that have set the standard for combustion efficiencies, emissions control, and system performance.”
John McClure, Vice President for Government Affairs and General Counsel, Nebraska Public Power District
“What many do not realize is coal remains a more competitively priced fuel for certain regions of the country due to the proximity of supply, especially in the central and western U.S. Natural gas may be a great option if your power plant is located near a robust network of gas pipelines, but unfortunately many of the existing coal plants do not have access to pipeline capacity to convert from coal to natural gas.
Coal has been a mainstay of our Nation’s generating mix, and the Energy Information Administration continues to show coal as an important part of a diverse fuel mix for the coming decades.”
Rep. Ed Whitfield (KY-1)
“The EPA, without question, has established an unfortunate trend line, methodically establishing a regulatory framework to eliminate coal, and taking away diversity choicesfrom utilities throughout the country.”
Rep. Steve Scalise (LA-1)
“The government is picking winners and losers and those that lose are the families that will pay higher electricity costs.”
The following Letter to the Editor was written by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity President and CEO Robert M. “Mike” Duncan, and published in the Washington Post in response to a recent Op-Ed the paper had written regarding the coal-based electricity industry.
An America without coal plants?
Columnist Eugene Robinson would have President Obama use executive power to shutter our nation’s coal plants, with little regard to the impact on the economy — or on the environment [“Let the coal fire die out,” op-ed, Feb. 26].
More than $100 billion has been invested to make electricity from coal almost 90 percent cleaner than it was 40 years ago. We have more than a dozen clean-coal technologies to thank for this progress. Turning our backs on coal and clean-coal technologies would give countries such as India and China a huge advantage over the United States, which has the largest coal reserves in the world.
Global energy demand is going to increase by 50 percent over the next 25 years, and that demand cannot be met without coal. Those who value a clean environment and a strong economy should be looking for ways to use coal even more cleanly instead of abandoning clean coal to other countries.
Robert M. Duncan
In response to the Obama Administration’s nomination of Gina McCarthy to succeed Lisa Jackson as Environmental Protection Agency administrator, American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity President and CEO Robert M. “Mike” Duncan released the following statement:
“We congratulate Assistant Administrator Gina McCarthy on her nomination to be the next EPA Administrator, and we hope for a more constructive working relationship with the EPA under her leadership,” said Mike Duncan. “We hope that if she is confirmed she can put EPA on a more balanced path that recognizes America’s continued need for coal, and the importance of clean coal technology.”
