| Two interesting paragraphs in this morning's Midland Daily News editorial: The analysis of Consumers' future power needs showed that it believes that two-thirds of the growth in energy demand can be met through development of renewable energy projects and through conservation. Still, it says, in order to provide reliable and more efficient power for the state, it needs the 930-megawatt coal unit, it argues. "Even using historically low customer demand growth assumptions, it's clear that we'll need to move forward aggressively on energy efficiency, renewable energy expansion and a clean new coal plant to serve customers with reliable, competitively priced electricity in the future," said John Russell, the utility's president and CEO.
The problem is that the proposed expansion of Kern-Weadcock isn't clean coal. "Clean coal," as a thing of the market, doesn't actually exist. It would burn more cleanly than older coal-fired plants, but before you could actually make the case that this would be a good idea -- beyond demonstrating that you actually need to saddle ratepayers with the construction costs -- is that you have technology to scrub the carbon from emissions and then to safely deposit it someplace. Neither of those are at a point where you could even charitably describe them as ready for any new construction. |
