Permit blocked for coal-fueled 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 rejected that approach, stating in a 12-page order that it "fails to meet the plain language of the statute -- it is a plan to prepare a plan at some indefinite later date."

Gary Miller, Energy Northwest spokesman, said the consortium had not yet reviewed the ruling and was unprepared to comment on it Tuesday.

Richland-based Energy Northwest 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 also could burn natural gas.

The ruling means Energy Northwest must submit a new plan for dealing with emissions.

Environmentalists had been fighting the proposed plant.

"Study after study shows we can meet all of our energy needs through conservation and clean renewable energy, and that is absolutely the direction that Energy Northwest should be following," said Jan Hasselman, a Seattle-based attorney with Earthjustice. "Let's move on."

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

It gives projects such as the proposed plant 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 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.

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.