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Environmental groups hail proposed move
By Bob Downing
Beacon Journal staff writer
Published on Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
Additional costs for a new coal-fired power plant in southern Ohio might lead to a change: The $3.3 billion plant probably will be fueled by natural gas instead.
American Municipal Power Inc., the Columbus-based wholesaler behind the 1,000-megawatt plant under development in Meigs County, made that announcement Wednesday.
The Ohio Environmental Council, Ohio Citizen Action and two national eco-groups, the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, hailed the news.
The expected change is not final, but it will require AMP and 81 participating communities in Ohio, Michigan, Virginia and West Virginia to re-examine the project and determine if they want to continue — and to what level, said Chris Easton, Wadsworth's service director.
Wadsworth, Cuyahoga Falls, Hudson, Lodi, Orrville, Seville, Brewster and Beach City are among the Akron-area communities involved in the proposed plant that has been in the works for six years. They were to buy power from the plant when it opened in 2014.
What's being proposed is ''a different project . . . and communities must reconsider and decide what their level of commitment will be and what their future energy needs and demands might be,'' Easton said.
AMP decided that keeping pulverized coal as the No. 1 fuel was not the best way to proceed because of increasing costs, he said.
The utility was looking at an unanticipated 37 percent increase in engineering and construction costs for the plant, including air emissions controls, AMP said in a four-page statement.
That increase ''over the indicated capital cost estimated in May 2009 made pursuing alternatives . . . the best economic decision,'' AMP said.
AMP intends to use the existing site and the preliminary work already undertaken and that should
''be the best option for participants.''
In addition to natural gas, the plant could burn some biomass, and electricity could be purchased from other sources for member communities, said AMP, formerly known as AMP-Ohio.
It is not known how much the change might cost or how long it might take, AMP spokesman Kent Carson said.
AMP's board of trustees and the participating communities have given termination notices to contractors involved in the pulverized coal construction and equipment.
The project is being changed by the economics, not from opposition from environmental groups, sais Marc Gerken, AMP president and CEO.
Trent Dougherty of the Ohio Environmental Council said, ''We are pleased that AMP has concluded that dirty power is bad business. Now AMP can get back to the business of doing what it does best: being a leader in renewable energy and energy efficiency in this state.''
The project would have raised electric rates in Ohio and hurt Ohio's air quality, said Nachy Kanfer of the Sierra Club in Ohio. He called for clean-energy technology at the plant.
Bob Downing can be reached at 330-996-3745 or bdowning@thebeaconjournal.com.
Additional costs for a new coal-fired power plant in southern Ohio might lead to a change: The $3.3 billion plant probably will be fueled by natural gas instead.
Get the full article here.
Comments
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Akron, OH
Posted 09:58 AM, 11/26/2009
Save the natural gas for heating our homes unless equal, new supplies of the gas are found.
No need to raise demand, and therefore the price, of natural gas when there is plenty of coal available to fire that electrical generation plant.
Posted 01:12 PM, 11/26/2009
Burning coal even with added NOx and SO2 control is far cheaper than burning gas. That said. This is a far better solution than pie in the sky ideas such as Biomass, wind or Solar.
Zanesfield, OH
Posted 11:18 PM, 11/29/2009
Natural gas known reserves are on the grow, but that is no reason to abandon the use of coal. EPA regulations have made coal much cleaner, and burning natural gas in simple cycle turbines which can react to the knee-jerk volatility of wind energy is only marginally less carbon intensive than burning coal. Since the cost of electricity leverages the cost and competitiveness of everything we produce, I say yes to coal, yes to combined cycle gas, yes to nuclear power, but no to embarrassingly highly subsidized, land sprawl intensive, unreliable wind energy.
