Proposals for coal-fired power plants on the rise in West

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Proposals for electric plants that feed on coal are dotting the West’s deserts and plains, raising new questions about how the region should power its drive into the next half-century.

From Idaho to Nevada to Arizona, communities are being swept into a national resurgence of interest in coal-fired electricity.

It is the biggest upswing since the 1970s for a fuel that is abundant, home grown, inexpensive and linked by critics to a Pandora’s box of environmental ills: acid rain, tainted streams, global warming and haze-smeared national parks.

While no new coal plants are envisioned for California, the state is the biggest center of energy consumption in the West, so the political debate resounds loudly here.

California’s air conditioners and office parks are the potential future consumers of coal power from as far away as Wyoming. Clean air advocates say the state, which was willing to sue out-of-state power plants to curb global warming, should be equally aggressive in resisting the new drive toward coal.

Environmentalists argue that building coal plants would tie America down to a 50-year investment in a polluting technology that easily could be avoided by turning to energy efficiency and renewable power.

Much of the nation may feel otherwise.

In separate surveys, the U.S. Department of Energy and consultants with Energy Ventures Analysis in Virginia estimate that between 90 and 100 coal-fired power plants are proposed around the United States.

“Coal has witnessed what I would consider a real boom over the last year or so,” said Joe Lucas, a vice president of the Florida-based Center for Energy and Economic Development, a coal and railroad industry group. “There’s been a recognition that you can’t power America’s energy future without coal.”

The primary reason for coal’s revival is economic: Natural gas prices have risen more and stayed higher longer than anyone anticipated, making coal look appealingly inexpensive and stable.

Some also see the hand of the Bush administration, with its perceived friendliness to the energy industry.

John Barth, director of the Western Clean Energy Campaign, said he believes the administration’s “cavalier” attitude toward tightening mercury emission rules, its refusal to regulate carbon dioxide and its control of the EPA have emboldened coal developers.

“It’s an economic and political and regulatory climate that is very hospitable,” said Vickie Patton, a senior attorney in the Rocky Mountain office of Environmental Defense. “We’re seeing coal plant proposals just mushroom across the interior West.”