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Assessment of Recent Claims made by Sunflower Electric and Supporters about the Holcomb Expansion, 11-19 - 06
by Craig Volland, Chair, Air Quality Committee, Kansas Chapter, Sierra Club
- The project will create jobs. 1
True, but at what cost? The three new boilers will emit 14 million tons/year of heat trapping carbon dioxide gas. Global warming will increase drought in western Kansas and further deplete the aquifers. What happens to existing agricultural production and jobs? It is likely to be more cost effective and beneficial to the Kansas economy to substitute new wind power generation facilities in combination with strong programs to improve energy efficiency. The Sebelius Administration should commission an outside and unbiased study of this issue.
- The new 2100 MW power plant at Holcomb and associated transmission lines to Oklahoma and Colorado will spur wind power development. 2
These lines are designed for the coal plant, and its production and distribution throughout much of the Great Plains will eliminate demand for wind energy for many years to come.
- "The three new plants were expected to produce no more mercury emissions than the existing plant in Holcomb ." 3
If KDHE's proposed state level emission limit for mercury stands up to challenge, this statement would be generally true. However, as currently written, this emission limit is not enforceable. If it is modified to be enforceable, the Holcomb expansion will still increase state-wide emissions from coal plants by about 17%.
We cannot afford any more mercury emissions. In 2004 EPA announced that 1 in 6 women of child-bearing age in the United States had a mercury level in their blood that could harm a fetus. After some 150 years of burning coal and wastes containing mercury, mercury pollution in the northern hemisphere has reached the threshold of harm. Much of our exposure comes from eating seafood that is imported to our dinner plates from throughout the world. Thus the emission of mercury to the atmosphere is trouble no matter where it ends up
- If carbon dioxide is ever regulated Sunflower will fully comply. 3
For the Holcomb expansion, Sunflower is using conventional pulverized coal burning technology. It will be impractical to go in later and retrofit a system to capture and sequester the carbon dioxide heat trapping gases. Given the recent federal election results some kind of carbon dioxide regulation is very likely to be imposed in the next few years. Even if Sunflower can buy credits (rights to pollute) instead of retrofitting this plant, it will result in an onerous increase in electricity rates for Sunflower's rural retail customers.
- Sunflower is planning to build a 50 MW wind farm in western Kansas. 4
This would amount to slightly more than 1% of the power to be generated at the Holcomb coal plant expansion.
- Sunflower is planning to install more efficient boilers that result in burning less coal. 5
This is good, but the supercritical (temperature & pressure) boiler design they will use yields a savings of only 2-3% according to Sunflower's own literature.
- Sunflower plans to build an "integrated bioenergy center" next to the Holcomb power plant. It will consist of a meat processing operation, dairy, ethanol plant, bio-diesel plant and an "algae reactor." The algae reactor is supposed to strip carbon dioxide from the coal plant flue gas to produce algae that will be fed to cattle or be used to produce bio-diesel fuel. It has never been done before. 6
The "algae reactor" that is supposed to capture some of the 14 million tons per year of heat trapping greenhouse gases is not even remotely practical. It would work less than one half the time. The reactor would be prohibitively expensive because the algae would need to be arrayed over a huge surface area to be optimally exposed to sunlight, and then it must be protected from cold. Even if it worked this process will only delay for a few years the release of the carbon dioxide because the bio-diesel is burned or the dairy products are consumed or the animal waste products decay.
Once coal is mined and burned, the only way to get the genie back into the bottle is to pump the gases into the ground, itself a marginally practical idea, or to grow trees that can store carbon for decades to centuries. It makes so much more sense to just quit building coal plants.
- The carbon dioxide emissions from the Holcomb expansion will displace emissions from other less efficient or more expensive generating plants that will be turned off. 4
This is contradicted by other Sunflower and Tri-State statements that the power from this huge plant is necessary due to soaring demand for electricity on the front range of the Rocky mountains, ie. Eastern Colorado . During a meeting in September of 2006, Sierra Club representatives asked Tri-State Generation and Transmission Assn. Executives what plants they could shut down to compensate for the Holcomb emissions. Tri-state will own 2 of the 3 boilers. They replied that all their plants were too new to take out of service.
- Kansas farmers will be given federal cash incentives to capture carbon dioxide and sequester it in their fields, such as with new tillage methods. 7
It's true that farmers could sequester some carbon in the soil, but the atmosphere is already completely overloaded with carbon dioxide. If existing methods of cultivation are changed it should be done to help take up this excess, not to handle new emissions. They are, in effect, proposing that taxpayers , not the polluter, pay some of the external cost of their burning coal so that rates can be lower for people in Colorado and New Mexico where most of the power is going.
It's not clear that planting more crops for this purpose will help because of the extreme dependence of current agricultural methods on fossil fuel inputs. There's just no getting around the fact that Sunflower's Holcomb expansion will add significantly to the existing reservoir of heat trapping gases that are causing global warming.
- The amount of water to be used at Holcomb is small compared to agricultural use in the region. 4
That is true, but the 8 billion gallons/year required by the complex will be withdrawn almost every day at full blast for 50 to 75 years, not just during the growing season. It is likely to accelerate depletion of the nearby part of the Ogallala aquifer. The Sebelius Administration should commission a hydrological study to assess the long term impact of this project on the water supply in the region.
1. Eric Depperschmidt, Finney Co. Economic Development Corp. Letter to Wichita Eagle, Nov. 12, 2006
2. Chad Lawhorn, "Commissioner opposes new coal plant," Lawrence Journal World , Nov. 1, 2006
3. Ibid, quoting Steve Miller, spokesperson for Sunflower Electric.
4. Sunflower testimony. Oct 26, 2006 KDHE public hearing
5. Sunflower Electric handout literature. "Technology Selection."
6. Mark Fagan, "Bioenergy effort under way," Lawrence Journal World, Aug. 24, 2006 .
7. Op. Cit, Depperschmidt
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