HOME
Posted on Dec 13, 2006
By Darren Allen
Rutland Herald
Governor, AG Protest Planned Kansas Coal Plant
MONTPELIER - Vermont's governor and attorney general later this week will officially oppose the construction of new coal-fired electric plants in Kansas, arguing that without stringent pollution control devices, the plants will undermine environmental efforts undertaken here and across the Northeast.
According to a draft of comments that will be presented Friday to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, the Sunflower Electric Power Corp.'s plans to build three new coal-fired plants about 180 miles west of Wichita would undermine Vermont's efforts at combating global warming.
"Climate change is the single greatest environmental challenge facing the world today," the draft comments, prepared by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, said. "Scientists overwhelmingly agree that the global community must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, to well below 1990 levels within a few decades, if we are to stabilize the climate at acceptable levels."
Although Spitzer drafted the comments, Vermont agreed Tuesday to join with New York and several other states in opposition to the plants. A copy of the draft comments was provided to the Vermont Press Bureau by Gov. James Douglas' office.
The coal-fired plants, which would produce 700 megawatts of steam-generated electricity, would emit up to 18 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, the comments said.
Douglas is opposing the construction of those plants, even though they are more than 1,800 miles away from the Green Mountains, because the new levels of carbon dioxide will more than negate the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative that Vermont joined this year.
The initiative, in which seven other Northeastern states and Vermont are involved, is supposed to lower the states' carbon dioxide emissions by 10 percent by 2020 - a figure that represents about 12 million tons a year.
"The emissions from those plants impact all of the states to the east of them," said Jason Gibbs, Douglas' press secretary. "There's a very great potential that these new facilities can negate the very significant progress that Vermont, New York and other states have made. That is not acceptable to the governor."
Sunflower has rebuffed calls for adding more aggressive pollution control devices on its proposed plants, suggesting that until the federal government comes up with stricter carbon dioxide regulations, other states should not have a say in how the plants are operated.
"We aren't opposed to anyone making comments, but our view is that this is an issue that should be addressed by the Congress," Steve Miller, Sunflower's senior manager of external affairs, said Tuesday. "Our view is that we don't want Kansas unfairly burdened. If we are regulated on the federal level, we will be more than happy to comply with those standards."
The patchwork of state standards is one of the reasons that Vermont and other states have argued that the Environmental Protection Agency should be more vigilant in its regulation of carbon dioxide. The U.S. Supreme Court just heard arguments in a case where states - including Vermont - are opposing the Bush Administration's proposed relaxation of carbon dioxide emissions.
The new generating facilities are proposed to go online between 2011 and 2013, according to the company, and they are needed to meet increased power consumption demands in Kansas and other western states where Sunflower does business.
Miller suggested that however well-intentioned Vermont environmental officials may be, their strategy of demanding more stringent air pollution control would create undue burdens on energy companies.
"It seems to me that for states to hop on and bring solutions to this problem, all they're going to do is create different levels of competitiveness," he said. "We at Sunflower do not know what the answer to global warming is. We're a tiny company in the utility business, and the only way we know how to serve our customers is to do what the law says."
Douglas and other governors want the law changed, and they want the plant to have the most powerful pollution control devices available.
"With a lifetime of more than 60 years, the Holcomb units, if built as proposed, might well emit more than 1 billion tons of carbon dioxide, in total, thus significantly contributing to the public health and environmental damage associated with global warming," the draft comments said. "We recognize the need for additional sources of energy, but urge (the Kansas Department of Health and Environment) to consider whether efficiency improvements or nonpolluting sources of electricity can meet increased demand for the next few years."
Douglas' opposition comes at a time when he and the state's Legislature are highlighting the impact of global climate change. Incoming Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin, a Windham Democrat, said that global warming should be the General Assembly's top issue in the upcoming session.
"What keeps going on in my brain is if we don't take some drastic measures, Vermont as we know it isn't going to be livable," he said earlier this week. "There's no doubt in my mind that climate change is the biggest crisis."
back to our home page