Seattle Environment News


Plan scrapped to capture CO2 from coal plant


The seemingly nearly non-existent plans to catch and bury carbon dioxide emissions from a proposed gasified-coal power plant in Kalama aren’t going to become any more real. Instead, officials with Energy Northwest, the energy consortium behind the southwest Washington project, are looking into using cleaner fuel.

Artistic vision for the Pacific Mountain Energy Center

The Tri-City Herald had a good story on the changed plans. The idea is to shift from burning a gas derived from a slurry of coal or petroleum coke to using more natural gas, which costs more but has lower emissions.

A new law requires that new power plants produce no more greenhouse gases than modern gas plants. Energy Northwest’s proposal for the Pacific Mountain Energy Center was given an exception to that rule provided they catch and sequester the excess CO2. They were slammed by the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (EFSEC) last month for submitting plans that failed to describe in meaningful detail how the CO2 disposal strategy would work.

Just before Christmas EFSEC provided more information on their rejection of the plant as proposed, a clarification that was requested by Energy Northwest.

Here’s what EFSEC had to say:

The Council clarifies the order by noting that the (plan) proposes no specific steps to produce functioning sequestration in compliance with the statute. It does not identify where it will drill, or when, but merely that it will at some future time determine where and when to drill. The Council order emphasized our conclusion that the statute requires a specific plan, and a proposed schedule for specific action to implement a plan, to accomplish sequestration during the first five years of operation, as opposed to an outline of generalized future action, aimed at producing sequestration far later than required in the law.

Enviros had been highly critical of the proposed plant and supported legislation putting limits on CO2 emissions from new plants.

Here’s a link to the EFSEC page that tracks the whole process, including pdfs of key documents.

Lisa Stiffler

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