Amid energy crisis, a coal rush: Pressure is on for comeback of power source

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Ten years ago, natural gas became the cheaper, cleaner answer to new power generation. In the midst of the current energy crisis, coal could be making a comeback.

Since the price of natural gas started to climb last fall, power producers have announced more than 25 new coal-fired power plants under construction or under study around the country, including a 249-megawatt plant in Cherry Point, Whatcom County.

The reasons for the buzz about coal are simple:

The rising cost of natural gas could make coal economically competitive for power generation again, depending on how long the price of gas stays high. And President Bush earlier this month abandoned a campaign promise to limit carbon-dioxide emissions from power plants.

Carbon dioxide is the leading cause of global warming, and coal produces more greenhouse gas than any other major fuel source used in producing electricity. And power plants are the biggest industrial polluter in the country. Only cars put more carbon dioxide into the air.

No one knows how many of the proposed plants will actually be built.

"I see a lot of PR and a lot of jostling by mining companies to float some plants, but a lot of it is just trial balloons," said Armond Cohen, executive director of the Boston-based Clean Air Task Force, a national group.

But one thing's certain: None of the new plants would be built if serious controls - including a carbon tax - were put on carbon-dioxide emissions.

"Regulating carbon dioxide would have certainly negated any new coal-fired generating plants," said Janet Gellici of the Western Coal Council, an industry group. "The cost would have increased the price to make coal generation less economical. There is more hope at this point, more optimism in the industry."

Some industry watchers predict the federal refusal to regulate carbon dioxide can't last.

"I think sometime in the next decade you will see the beginnings of some kind of tax or incentive not to burn coal," said Andrew Roberts, a coal expert for RDI Consulting in Boulder, Colo., an energy consulting firm. "There will be a cost on it that generators will have to bear."

Dave Danner, energy-policy adviser to Gov. Gary Locke, said the governor is considering what the state might do to address carbon-dioxide emissions, now that it's clear the federal government isn't going to act on them anytime soon.

Global warming is a theory now widely accepted by scientists that emissions of certain gases, especially carbon dioxide, are trapping heat in the atmosphere and warming the planet. If the trend is not reversed, scientists predict catastrophic results - droughts, floods and melting polar ice caps.

"When people say coal is cheap, it's cheap only if you don't count the environmental damage from using coal," said Rachel Shimshack of Renewable Northwest Project in Portland.

More than 600 coal-fired plants around the country don't meet modern air-quality standards because they were grandfathered under the original Clean Air Act in 1970. But instead of shutting down, as lawmakers expected, many of the old plants built more than 30 years ago continue to operate.

Modern pollution controls can vastly reduce emissions of particulate matter, heavy metals, nitrogen oxide (which contributes to acid rain and smog) and sulfur dioxide (which can aggravate respiratory diseases and contributes to acid rain).

Since 1970, emissions of pollutants regulated under the Clean Air Act decreased more than 35 percent during the same period, because of smokestack scrubbers and other technology, according to the Western Coal Council.

But coal can only get so green: No controls exist yet for carbon-dioxide emissions on power plants, and even the cleanest coal produces about 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour, compared with 1,205 pounds produced by natural gas.

Some state and local governments and public utilities, including Seattle City Light, are taking steps to cut carbon-dioxide emissions.

The Seattle City Council adopted a resolution on Earth Day 2000 requiring all future electric energy used by City Light customers to be carbon-neutral. That means greenhouse gases produced by new power purchases will have to be offset by planting trees or buying power generated from renewable sources such as solar or wind.

The state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council also marked a new direction with its approval of the expansion of a gas-fired plant in Chehalis this month. The expansion was conditioned on a requirement that the operator try to offset carbon-dioxide emissions. Generators that want to build in Washington will be expected to consider carbon-dioxide emissions, said council manager Allen Fiksdal.

But the site-evaluation council can only make recommendations to the governor; it does not write statewide regulations.

Coal boosters cite its relative stability in price - its cost actually fell over the past decade, although prices are rising now.

Coal is also abundant.

Reserves of coal in the United States alone could last, at present consumption rates, for nearly 500 years. And the country remains heavily reliant on coal. Nationally, 53 percent of electric power is generated by burning coal.

Coal is not king in the West, as it is back East, where some regions - the southeastern and Mid-Atlantic states - get nearly all their electric energy by burning coal.

The Western grid relies on coal for only 23 percent of the total power capacity according to the Northwest Power Planning Council, which is based in Portland.

Hydropower supplies 38 percent of the capacity to the Western grid; 23 percent is created with natural gas, and 6 percent comes from nuclear power. All other sources, including solar and wind, make up the rest.

In the Northwest, coal provides 15 percent of the region's capacity; hydropower 73 percent and natural gas 7 percent.

There are no coal plants in California, only one in Oregon, one in Washington - in Centralia - and none in Idaho. Most of the coal plants supplying energy to the Northwest are in Montana and Wyoming.

In Montana, one of the West's bigger coal-producing states, interest is building in creating a state tax break to build a 350-megawatt coal-fired plant in the southeastern corner of the state. Industry boosters want to feed the plant with coal deposits on nearby federal land.

"If you showed up with a film crew in the capital right now, you could film `One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest II,' " said Jim Jensen, executive director of the Montana Environmental Information Center in Helena. "There is a buzz of insanity over coal."

Lynda Mapes can be reached at 206-464-2736 or lmapes@seattletimes.com.