Hopes rise for coal plant in Jamestown
The economic stimulus program could put an extra spark in the plan to build an advanced coal plant in Jamestown.
The stimulus package includes $800 million for the Department of Energy’s latest round of funding advanced coal projects. Supporters of the Jamestown project think the extra money increases the chance that the Western New York project will be able to tap into the funding it needs to get off the ground.
“More money means they can afford more projects,” says Stewart Mehlman, the director of licensing, alliances and emerging technologies for Praxair Inc., which developed the OxyCoal process that the Jamestown plant will use.
The new coal plant proposed by the Jamestown Board of Public Utilities would use a new technology to reduce harmful emissions and potentially allow up to 95 percent of the carbon dioxide produced at the plant to be captured and safely stored underground.
But skeptics doubt it makes economic and environmental sense to build a coal plant that developers hope will ease global warming by capturing its carbon dioxide emissions and storing it safely and securely more than a mile below the earth’s surface.
Local environmentalist Walter Simpson thinks the Jamestown plant’s power will be expensive, ranging in the 15 cents to 20 cents per kilowatt range, far higher than current market prices. Mehlman won’t say how much developers think the plant’s power will cost, but he says it will make economic sense.
Simpson also doubts the plant will capture and store anything close to 95 percent of the carbon dioxide it produces. He thinks it will be lucky to contain a little more than half of its carbon dioxide emissions.
“It’s not fair to ratepayers,” Simpson says. “The environmental performance will not be adequate.”
Yet supporters think the plant is in a good position to win federal backing. It’s been in the works for as a conventional coal plant for six years, with the advanced coal and carbon sequestration features added two years ago.
“We feel we’re poised to move quickly,” says Jamestown Mayor Samuel Teresi. “Get the money out into the economy and get it moving quite quickly.”
That’s important, considering the whole idea behind the stimulus package is to give the economy a shot in the arm. Projects that will take the better part of a decade to design and get off the ground won’t help turn the economy around.
Supporters think the Jamestown plant’s size is an advantage, too. Unlike the $2.3 billion advanced coal project at the Huntley Station in Tonawanda, which failed last year because its power would cost too much, the $400 million Jamestown plant is much smaller and is billed as a demonstration project.
“At 50 megawatts, it’s very scalable, and that’s key,” says John Zabrodsky, the chairman of the Jamestown utility board. “The size is big enough to demonstrate the capability.”
Backers also hope the Jamestown plant can turn the region into a center for advanced coal research in conjunction with the University at Buffalo. The state is providing $7 million in research funding and the project also is backed by many of the region’s key politicians.
Plus, President Obama is pushing cleaner energy initiatives, such as advanced coal projects, funded with $15 billion a year in revenue that would be raised through the sale of emissions permits under a proposed cap-and-trade system. That system would establish a market for carbon dioxide by selling credits to companies that emit greenhouse gases. The companies then can invest in technologies to reduce emissions to reach a certain target or buy credits from other companies that already have met their emission reduction goals.
All this has the Jamestown backers feeling upbeat. “I felt great before,” Zabrodsky says. “I feel even better now.”
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