State Agencies Blast Port of Kalama Power Project Plan

By Chris Mulick, Tri-City Herald, Kennewick, Wash.

Sep. 20–OLYMPIA — Two state agencies and six environmental groups will ask the state’s Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council todayto grant them intervenor status in the public power consortium’s efforts to build a $1.5 billion coal gasification plant at the Port of Kalama.

The council will likely answer their requests at a pre-hearing conference this afternoon in Kalama that kicks off the legal proceedings to permit the 680-megagwatt project.

The panel is made up of gubernatorial appointees and representatives from several agencies, including the two that are intervening, and makes recommendations to the governor, who makes the final call.

The council, commonly known as EFSEC, has decided to first review Energy Northwest’s carbon reduction plan for the proposed Pacific Mountain Energy Center before it considers all other factors involved in permitting a power plant.

Those seeking to intervene in the process have sharply criticized that plan for not committing to specific methods for carbon reduction.

In its motion to intervene the Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development wrote it is “concerned about the poor quality and quantity of data and information” provided in Energy Northwest’s plans.

“Energy Northwest has filed an incomplete and inadequate application for this project,” the Department of Ecology wrote in its motion.

As envisioned, the project would generate electricity by burning a synthesis gas derived from a slurry of coal or petroleum coke.

Carbon dioxide would be removed and, if it proves to be technically viable, some of it could be thrust underground for permanent storage beneath rock formations in a process called sequestration.

But it’s never been done before on such a large scale and Energy Northwest won’t commit to the method without more study.

So Energy Northwest included a list of alternative options to get the project under the state’s new greenhouse gas emission cap, approved by the Legislature this year. Those alternatives include changing the fuel mix, paying to clean up other western power plants and planting trees in urban areas.

They’re leaving it to the council to decide if any of that complies with the new law.

“Energy Northwest is going to comply with the law or we won’t build and operate the plant, period,” Energy Northwest spokesman Brad Peck said.

“There is considerable room for interpretation for what the law actually requires for a sequestration plan.”

But environmentalists say Energy Northwest doesn’t pass muster.

“The law says you’ve got to lay out a credible strategy and they haven’t done that,” said Becky Kelley, climate change director for the Washington Environmental Council.

Marc Krasnowsky, a spokesman for the Northwest Energy Coalition, said the region can meet its new power needs with conservation and environmentally friendly power plants anyway, an assertion Peck called “unrealistic.”

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