Regulators stop permit application for coal plant

OLYMPIA – State energy regulators have stopped the permit application for a coal-fueled power plant in southwest Washington until the builder meets requirements of a new climate change law.

In an order issued Tuesday, the state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council has suspended the application from Energy Northwest until the public power consortium addresses how it will sequester carbon emissions.

Energy Northwest’s pollution-control plans for the proposed Kalama plant say that carbon sequestration – a process for trapping greenhouse gases in the earth – remains unworkable in real-world practice.

So until it is workable, the utility wants to pay to offset emissions.

The council says that plan “fails to meet the minimum requirements of the law.”

Gary Miller, Energy Northwest spokesman, said the consortium had not had a chance to review the ruling and was not prepared to comment on it Tuesday.

“We need a day or so to sit down and look at it and see what our next steps will be,” Miller said.

Energy Northwest, based in Richland, has proposed a 793-megawatt coal gasification plant to be built in Kalama, about 45 miles north of Portland. The so-called Pacific Mountain Energy Center would use coal or petcoke, the waste product from oil refineries, that would be turned into a gas to be burned to generate power. The $1.5 billion plant could also burn natural gas.

The ruling means that Energy Northwest must submit a new plan for trapping gases and dealing with emissions before the application can go forward.

In a 12-page order, the council said that the permitting application submitted by the company was a “plan to make a plan” and that the Energy Northwest “does not identify specific steps it will take to implement sequestration.”

The new law passed this year bars Washington utilities from signing long-term contracts with coal-fired power plants that produce excessive greenhouse gases.

It allows projects like the proposed plant in Cowlitz County five years to sequester carbon dioxide emissions underground. Otherwise, emissions would have to be offset through drastic measures, such as buying a dirty power plant and shutting it down.

The council said that the new law is very clear.

“”The law is clear and specific in its application to this project. We will not interpret the statute to disregard the plain meaning of the Legislature,” the opinion said.

The state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council was in the midst of a year-plus review of the plant application when Energy Northwest requested a delay. The utility said it wanted to wait and see how regulators plan to limit heat-trapping gases under the new law.

Earlier this year, Energy Northwest asked the council to resume the review with hearings in October.

The utility had been hoping for a recommendation on the project by the end of the year, and a decision by the governor in early 2008.

The governor has the final say on whether large power plants are approved.

Energy Northwest, a consortium of 20 public utilities and municipalities, operates a nuclear power plant near Richland and a hydropower project, as well as wind, solar and biomass power projects.

The proposed plant would be the utility’s most ambitious project since a plan to build five nuclear plants in the 1980s collapsed in a $2.25 billion bond default, when the utility was known as the Washington Public Power Supply System.