Allen Best
July 23, 2008

The nation’s heartland last year also became its cutting edge in the issue of global warming when the administration of Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius denied an air-quality permit for two coal-fired power plants near Holcomb, in the state’s southwest corner.

The basis for the rejection of the two 700-megawatt plants was emissions of a greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide. It was the first time that global warming had been cited as the reason for a power plant rejection.

What happened afterward, said Sebelius in a speech in Denver recently, was “nothing short of a political firestorm.” Kansas legislators introduced three separate bills that would have overturned the decision. All failed, but not for lack of a majority. Coal plant supporters came within one vote of the two-thirds majority necessary to override Sebelius’ veto.

But the veto, while contested in court, has stuck so far. And the message from the heartland is that there is hope, said Sebelius in a speech hosted by Earthjustice, the legal representative of the Sierra Club and other groups, is that there is hope. Kansas residents, she insisted, are “ready to embrace a new and different energy future.”

IF THE STORY is set in Kansas, Colorado mountain towns figure large into the narrative. Most mountain valleys are served by rural electrical co-ops that were created in the 1930s and 1940s. Holy Cross Electric, which delivers electricity in the Aspen-Vail-Rifle triangle, is one such co-op.

Some 44 other rural co-ops in Colorado and three other adjacent states — but not Holy Cross Energy — together aggregate into the Denver-based Tri-State Generation and Transmission. Tri-State would be the major beneficiary of the two coal plants in Kansas, owning one outright and buying 100 megawatts from the second. Only 15 percent of the electricity would have been delivered to people in Kansas.

The rejection was a shock to the utilities. Environmentalists had strongly opposed the plants but Sebelius had talked only about a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants. Instead, her secretary for the department of health and environment, Rod Bremby, denied the air quality permit.

The denial was based, Bremby said, on new and recent authority as established by the U.S. Supreme Court. In that federal case, Massachusetts v. EPA, the high court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency was required to treat carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. The law is federal, but administered by the states.

The Aspen Skiing Co. in 2006 supported the suit filed against the EPA by Massachusetts, 11 other states and three conservation groups.

Tri-State disagrees with the court’s decision. Jim Van Someren, the utility’s communications manager, said Tri-State believes the proposed power plant application “met every regulation on the books in the state of Kansas.”

The rejection is now being contested in the state appeals court.

Van Someren said Tri-State is assembling backup plans for a coal-fired generating plant just across the border in Colorado, near the town of Lamar. The company has purchased land and water, and is now collecting environmental information.

Nuclear also remains an option. “Our board has recently indicated an interest in at least seeing if there is the potential with another utility or utilities in the region to study the feasibility of nuclear power,” he said.

The amount of electricity that Tri-State wanted in Kansas, he said, was 800 megawatts. By comparison, a coal-fired power plant that Xcel Energy is building near Pueblo will produce 750 megawatts. Xcel is also closing two older, less efficient coal-fired plants, one in Denver and the other east of Grand Junction, at Cameo.

Tri-State, required by Colorado law to generate 10 percent of its electricity from renewable energy, now solicits offers from development partners for solar, wind and other forms of renewable energy.

LIKE COLORADO, most of the electricity produced in Kansas — about 75 percent —comes from burning coal, much of which is imported. Electrical rates to consumers are among the lowest in the nation.

But the financial cost of coal is now being balanced against the impact to human health and the environment from burning that coal.

With growing talk of carbon taxes, Kansas electricity might not always be so inexpensive, Sebelius suggested. With Kansas 10th among all states in greenhouse gas emissions, she said, Kansans now “understand this is a very precarious place to be.”

Although there is often talk about “clean coal,” Sebelius said there is no such thing. “It’s a total myth, it doesn’t exist,” she said. “We are, at a minimum, 10 to 15 years away from a technology that may or may not exist. Right now, all coal is dirty coal.”
The veto at Holcomb launched a dialogue in Kansas about what constitutes responsibility. Her take is this: “We have a moral responsibility to our children and grandchildren to have a discussion — one that had never been held before in our state.”

What matters in Kansas is largely what matters elsewhere. Sebelius sees great gains in conservation and efficiency, what all experts say is the first order of business.

Kansas can also develop more wind, it’s primary renewable energy. Ten percent of its electricity already comes from wind.

“Even when the Legislature is out of session, Kansas is the second windiest state in the country,” said Sebelius.

Challenges exist. It is difficult to make new forms of electricity produced in the rural regions available in urban areas. Electricity produced by wind, she noted, must be shipped and sold quickly. “You can’t store it.”

But perhaps the overriding limitation to renewables, she suggested, is the absence of a coherent federal policy. Wind has not enjoyed long-term federal tax credits similar to those enjoyed by nuclear and fossil fuel plants. Also needed is a national renewable energy portfolio standard.

“Wall Street is ready to put down some serious money, but they need the rules,” she said.

Research and development is also lagging because of the federal uncertainty. In the last four years, the federal government has invested $1.5 billion to $2 billion in renewable energy. “To put that into perspective, Americans spent $5 billion on Halloween last year,” she said.

Another upside of renewable energy and improved energy efficiency, she said, is that they create jobs — jobs that can’t be outsourced. The coal-fired power plant, in contrast, would have produced only 100 permanent jobs in Kansas.

But even with wind and other new power sources, electricity rates across the United States are sure to rise, she continued.

“People are beginning to weigh the costs of the future,” she said. “Will they be enthusiastic about electric costs going up 20 percent? No. But they are willing to have a dialogue.”

SPEAKING AFTER Sebelius was on a panel of energy experts in Colorado, where Ron Lehr, representing the American Wind Energy Association, made the case for wind. “Wind doesn’t need a breakthrough. It works today,” he said. “If it won’t solve the problem by itself, it is part of the answer.”

Tom Plant, who directs the Governor’s Energy Office in Colorado, emphasized the quick gains of energy efficiency. Improved energy efficiency is designed to provide half the reductions called for by Colorado’s goal of 50 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

State incentives for solar installations, he said, are attached to requirements for energy audits, to help improve energy efficiency.

Randy Udall, former director of Aspen’s Community Office of Resource Efficiency, made the same point about efficiency in a different way. Efficiency, he said, “is what preserves prosperity.”

Udall also painted a bigger picture. He described the world’s 6.7 billion people huddled around a campfire, with those closest in to the fire enjoying the heat and easy living of fossil fuels. But in the outer ring, away from the campfire, are two billion people.

There is, he says, a moral and ethical obligation to look out for them, too.

The Kansas decision he described as “just an astounding turn of events.”

“Many people are coming to the realization that the energy foundation that is the basis of this civilization in the last 50 years needs some corrections,” he said.
The question for the United States, he added, is this: “Do we as a nation still have the right stuff?”