WHERE THE CARBON TAX NEEDS TO
IDENTIFY THE TRUE CULPRIT
By Don Horne
Sunflower Electric Power Corp.
should have this emblazoned across their
boardroom wall: If at first you don’t succeed; try, try again.
The Kansas power supplier finally
received the go-ahead for a 895-
megawatt coal-fired power plant in
Holcomb, Kansas after a two-year
pitched battle with the former governor
of that state,
Kathleen
Sebelius.
Vetoed
three times in
2008 and once
in 2009 by
then-Gov.
Sebelius, the
incoming governor at last
allowed a modified version of
Sunflower’s
expansion to
go ahead.
Instead of
two new 700-
megawatt coal-fired plants on
the existing
370-megawatt
site, it would
be a single
895MW plant.
This confrontation – the
unstoppable force and the immovable
object – made national headlines over
those two years, as it seemed the very
future of new coal generation hinged on
this one project moving forward.
And it finally has (albeit with the
Environmental Protection Agency
weighing in to delay the process once
again).
Yes, the new coal plant will have the
latest in scrubbing technology to limit
emissions, with much of the toxic ash byproducts from the burning of coal (more
than 1. 5 million tons a year) being stored
in nearby containment ponds. In total, the
new plant will produce around seven millions tons of CO2.
It will be a “greener” coal plant
(although many environmentalists would
cringe or laugh at such a description), but
unfortunately Kansans may end up paying a much higher price.
The majority of the power generated
by this expanded Holcomb plant (more
than three-quarters) will be going out-of-state to Colorado’s Tri-State Generation
and Transmission and Golden Spread
Electric Cooperative.
However, the responsibility for ALL
of the carbon dioxide being produced
will be 100 per cent Kansas. And when
the carbon tax is levied, it will be Kansas
taxpayers and ratepayers footing the bill.
It seems ironic that a coal plant that
was fought for so hard, for so long, will
penalize those who fought the hardest the
most. Those who are crafting and shaping the carbon tax legislation do understand that simply penalizing dirty gener-
ation at the source and not taking into
account who is using it, is unfair. But just
how you determine who is putting the
plug in to tap that “dirty” generation is
the nebulous part of crafting an effective
carbon tax law.
In the coming years, when coops
will be buying power on the fly, hoping
to secure the best price when the wind is
blowing strongest or the sun shining
brightest, it will be doubly difficult to
determine what percentage of the power
is “clean” and “dirty” – especially when
battery storage becomes commonplace
throughout the grid.
It could be likened to the internet,
where you try and place an equal tariff on
a Google alongside a mom and pop home
webpage – although they may live two
miles down the road from one another,
they in no way bear any resemblance to
one another.
The grid will become freeflowing
and unbelieveably interactive; no more
will it be a static collection of lines and
towers that you can point to and say, “this
is our power that these people use”.
For Kansans, although their state has
been likened to a potential “Saudi Arabia
of the Wind”, they will have to pay the
piper for the coal being burned in
Holcomb, when that plant finally passes
through all the EPA hoops and goes on-line.
Perhaps five or 10 years down the
road, when the smart grid becomes commonplace across the U.S. Midwest, it
will be easier to pinpoint just who is
using “dirty” generation and who is living “clean and green”.
Perhaps by then, some 10 or 20
years into the future, after all the
advanced calculations are made and
every computer and sensor has reported
in to the powers-that-be, it may turn out
that we all have an equal share to pay for
the pollution we produce, and not just
one small percentage of the population –
penalized by proximity of geography.
don@electricityforum.com
