A Coal-Fired Plant That Is Eager for U.S.
By MATTHEW L. WALD
The company, Constellation Energy, says it is an issue of fairness. A little more than two years ago, it completed an $885 million installation that has vastly reduced emissions from two giant coal-burning units at its
The goal was to comply with a
But last Friday, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued a stay of the regulations, ceding to challenges filed by several major coal-burning utilities, the State of Texas, the National Mining Association and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. They argued that the deadline was draconian, among other objections.
The court said it hoped to hold a hearing on the case in April.
Having invested the $885 million — nearly as much as it cost to build the two generating units in 1984 and 1991 — Constellation argues that laggard plants should also have to comply with the emission limits or shut down. Otherwise, it argues, the utility will be operating at a big disadvantage: simply running the retrofitted plant requires 40 megawatts of electricity, enough to keep a small town humming.
“When we started making plans for this project, we did it with the expectation that there would be a federal regime, and we still have that expectation,” said Paul Allen, the company’s vice president for environmental compliance.
On a press tour of the plant on Thursday, engineers showed off the extensive new construction, including the replacement of twin 700-foot smokestacks with a new one that belches steam produced in the process of scrubbing out acid gases. The old stacks, still standing but capped, are now “hood ornaments,” said Heather Lentz, the general supervisor of operations.
“It’s a premier clean coal plant,” she said.
Depending on the demand for electricity, barges bring anywhere from two million to three million tons of coal up the
The rule that was to come into effect on Jan. 1, known as the Cross State Air Pollution Rule, is intended to address the longstanding inability of some states to meet federal air pollution standards because of contaminants that blow in from other states, mostly from power plants.
Before they were cleaned up,
Pointing out that it took only three years to install the scrubbing technology, completing construction in 2009, Constellation argues that other utilities could have been getting ready, too.
Its criticism of other utilities is part of “a very clear, longstanding split” between companies that made the leap and those that deferred the investment or even challenged the rules in court, said John Walke, a coal expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council. But the laggards, he said, should have seen it coming.
Constellation’s competitors see it differently, saying that they cannot build for rules that do not yet exist. American Electric Power, one of the utilities that sued to block the new rule, knows how long it probably takes to build a scrubber, said Pat Hemlepp, a spokesman, because it has already built 25 of them at plants it operates.
But for companies in traditionally regulated states like most of those where A.E.P. operates, the utility needs authorization from a public service commission to collect the cost from ratepayers, which takes about a year, in addition to time for engineering work and obtaining numerous permits, he said.
“If you go to state regulators and say, ‘We think fed environmental regulations are going to require us to do this,’ then they’ll say, ‘Come back when you know what the federal regulations actually say.’ ”
“They’re not going to give you cost recovery on spec,” he said.
Constellation could proceed at a faster clip, he said, because under
Others argue, though, that companies like A.E.P. want a delay just so they can get an extra two or three years out of older generating stations that they will never scrub and that they know they will have to retire sometime in the near future.
Later-vintage, larger plants like
Mr. Hemlepp said the Cross State Air Pollution Rule on its own would not lead to any retirements of A.E.P. plants. But with a variety of rules in the works, like an E.P.A. rule on mercury emissions announced last month, three units built in the 1950s at the company’s Tanners Creek plant, in Lawrenceburg, Ind., will close within two years, he noted.
If not for the new rules, they would have run until the end of the decade, he said.
Unit 4, which went online in 1964 and produces 500 megawatts, the size of the three older units combined, will be upgraded to meet whatever the E.P.A. deadline turns out to be, he said.
Some experts say that Constellation’s motivations should not be confused with altruism. Jeffrey R. Holmstead, who headed the E.P.A.’s air office from 2001 to 2005 and now does legal work for utility companies, said that Constellation’s argument that “we stepped up and did the right thing, and now everybody else should” is misleading.
“They didn’t do it out of the goodness of their heart — they did it because they were required to,” under the Maryland Healthy Air Act, Mr. Holmstead said.
And power plants that survive under the new rules will benefit from the closure of competitors, he and others have pointed out. They will run for more hours of the year and fetch higher prices in daily electricity auctions.
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"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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