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Clean Coal Conundrum Despite Recent Fanfare, Most New Power Plants in Illinois Will Not Be Using Clean Coal ... And the Air We Breathe Will Still Be Clogged.

Posted on: Friday, 15 July 2005, 21:00 CDT

Every summer about this time, air conditioners kick into overtime across the region, and an army of aging coal burners - the dirtiest of Illinois' power plants - kick into overdrive.

In coming years, they and every other household appliance powered by electricity will increasingly get their energy through a resource once derided for its devastating effect on air quality - coal.

New technology enables power plants to convert coal to electricity without spewing a fraction of the pollution of the past. That prospect and other factors are fueling a modern-day coal rush. Yet the vast majority of new electric power plants likely will burn coal in a process that hasn't fundamentally changed since World War II - despite a cleaner method being available.

Policy makers have put Illinois at the forefront of states supporting "clean coal" techniques, but critics still see a stage set for up to half a century of Illinois residents breathing air that's too dirty. They say future generations will suffer from more asthma, more contaminated fish, continued global warming and more environmental damage. They fear we'll miss a golden opportunity to really clean up a technology that, according to a 2001 Harvard School of Public Health study, is responsible for 320 premature deaths statewide each year.

This is all the more troublesome to environmentalists because cleaner coal technology is available; it's just not being used.

"Anything we build today is going to be with us in the next 50 years," says Brian Urbaszewski, director of environmental health programs for the Chicago chapter of the American Lung Association. "I'd sure rather go with something that's five times cleaner, wouldn't you?"

Of nine new coal power plants proposed for the state - a virtual crush compared to the previous two decades - all but two will burn coal in a cleaner but similar fashion to the aging generation of coal plants that span from Waukegan to Chicago's South Side. These plants date back to the Eisenhower administration and still are polluting the suburbs' air, state records show. In fact, soot levels in suburbs including Naperville, Des Plaines and Northbrook often are as bad as Chicago's, according to an investigation published in this month's Chicago Parent magazine.

Backers of the new proposals note the Chicago area's quest for more juice to heat and cool homes and to operate gadgets means more power is needed. They add that any new coal plant today will be much cleaner than its predecessors and operate well within anti- pollution laws.

The new proposals range from a 600-megawatt plant in Will County to a controversial 1,500-megawatt operation east of St. Louis that will emit some 28,000 tons of pollutants per year. At least two local suburbs - Geneva and Batavia - have invested in the St. Louis- area plant in hopes it will supply cheaper electricity than ComEd's nuclear generators, which have been the workhorses of the Chicago region's power for decades.

A massive coal plant proposed near Racine, Wis., has moved to center stage in the national debate over the future of coal power, with Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan fighting the plan in court, in part on grounds it will belch an unacceptable amount of pollutants into Illinois' air.

Why the coal rush?

The Bush administration continues to hail nuclear power - which creates hazardous waste but no air pollution - as the future. But in an increasingly deregulated industry, many companies can't afford to build a nuclear reactor.

Meanwhile, natural gas prices have soared, making that relatively clean fuel unattractive. Combine that with an abundance of coal, a coal-friendly White House and the Blagojevich administration supporting coal to buoy the state's declining industry, and coal plants are hip again.

But they don't have to be so dirty, according to a host of energy observers ranging from environmentalists to other energy companies.

Cleaner coal technology is already here, they say. It's just not being used because utilities are to hesitant to embrace it and policy makers have been slow to encourage it.

It's about 20 percent more expensive, so government subsidies or more stringent air regulations are needed. A new energy package moving through Congress contains $2 billion in incentives over 10 years for such projects, but it's unclear if they'll take hold soon enough.

"The question is: Are you locking in an older-generation technology for 50 years?" says Sasha Mackler, senior analyst for the bi-partisan National Commission on Energy Policy, which wants lawmakers to pass even greater incentives.

"It's sort of a chicken-and-egg problem because while the technology is proven in other areas, there aren't any major generators on the ground yet, and that creates a perceived risk for financiers."

The technology, known generally as coal gasification, bakes coal instead of burning it. It's touted as more efficient and about five times cleaner than traditional coal-burning plants. That means less mercury in the water, less fine soot in our lungs and almost no so- called "greenhouse gas" emissions blamed for the planet's rising temperatures.

It's been used for more than a decade at a power plant in Florida, and another plant in Indiana generates electricity for the Midwest power grid using the same method.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich recently signed two laws that provide government subsidies to encourage coal gasification.

Clean-coal supporters laud the new laws as the most progressive in the country.

Those subsidies are targeted for projects that primarily will produce fertilizer, natural gas for homes and clean diesel fuel, as well as set Illinois at the forefront of a national race to have an experimental zero-emission plant up-and-running - but not for about 10 years.

Too little, too late

The subsidies appear unlikely to change the coal-burning electricity plants already on the drawing boards, some of which are expected to be built in the next few years.

State and national policies still describe the technology as "developing." Regulators from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency tout the benefits of it, predict it "holds great promise" and were among the first regulators in America to require plant designers to consider the method.

But they've also defended plant developers who quickly dismiss it, public records show.

"It is simply unproven in a commercial sense," says Jim Thompson, senior vice president of business development for Indeck, whose proposed coal-burning plant in Southwest suburban Elwood would use what's generally described as "clean coal" technology to reduce emissions. But backers of the cleaner method say it's still not as clean as gasification - a conclusion contested by Thompson. "I think the environmental benefits (of gasification) are very much overplayed."

Some in the energy industry say the cleaner technique is far from unproven - and they're spending the money to prove it.

One of them is Michael McInnis, who's part of a group of investors proposing a 536-megawatt plant in Southern Illinois. It's one of two plants using gasification proposed out of the nine coal plants in various stages of approval in Illinois.

"We certainly don't think it's a developing technology," says McInnis, a partner of the ERORA Group LLC. "We wouldn't be risking our own money if we didn't think (the cleaner method) made the most economical sense.

"We started out developing this as a pulverized coal plant, but we became more intrigued with the (cleaner) technology, and then we got the grant," he says.

That state-backed grant for $750,000 to help design the $1.1 billion facility helped ERORA make its decision.

But a little prodding and limited subsidies simply weren't enough for power companies like Buffalo Grove-based Indeck, which is proposing the Will County plant, or Peabody Energy, which is developing the plant east of St. Louis, acknowledges Bill Hoback, bureau chief of coal development for the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.

"My philosophy is, let's help the ones who want to do (gasification), and with these other ones, well, it's their millions," he says. The only way to get the older, dirtier plants to finally stop polluting is to have newer plants replace them, even if the newer plants aren't using the cleanest methods, he says.

That won't be good enough to really clean up the air in Chicago and the collar counties, says the Lung Association's Urbaszewski. "When you look at air quality (in the region), things are getting better slowly, but we have a lot to do," he says, noting that Chicago currently is in violation of federal soot and smog standards.

One of the prime benefits of the clean gasification method is its ability to remove much of carbon dioxide-based "greenhouse gases" - the suspected culprit of global climate change - associated with coal plants.

But those gases remain unregulated at the state and federal levels.

Many in the industry - including Illinois' Hoback - predict those regulations will come at some point, and there's no question gasification plants will be able to remove greenhouse emissions more cheaply than traditional coal plants.

GRAPHIC: How gasification works

The technology touted by environmentalists and some in the energy industry as the way to a clean-coal future is known technically as integrated gasification combined cycle, or IGCC.

Instead of crushing and burning coal, an IGCC plant bakes coal - or any number of coal products, including waste - and converts it into a soup of gases, which then can be burned in a process similar to the one in a natural gas generator.

Because the baking process is contained, pollutants such as soot, sulfur and nitrogen oxides never get spewed into the air. Because natural gas is burned, mercury emissions can be greatly reduced. And, perhaps most tantalizingly, greenhouse gases can be almost completely isolated and, plant designers predict, safely stored underground.

Source: Daily Herald; Arlington Heights, Ill.

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