Colorado power companies seek alternatives to coal

Coal is being cancelled across the nation. For a while now, utilities coast to coast have been taking another look at their energy portfolios and scrapping plans for new coal plants. We've been suggesting that Santee Cooper should do the same, and now, according to Greenwire (a publication of E&E Publishing), it looks like a Colorado power group has also seen the writing on the wall.

COAL: Colo. power group reconsiders portfolio (04/13/2009)

A Colorado-based power association is reconsidering its long-term plans for coal-based electricity as it pursues innovations in energy efficiency, renewables and energy storage.

The Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, a cooperative of electric companies from Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico and Wyoming, was once looking to secure long-term purchases from the Sunflower Electric Power Corp.'s proposed coal plants in Kansas.

But with legislation in support of those plants facing a likely executive veto, the association is being forced to look to near-term alternatives like natural gas and renewable energy, said general manager Ken Anderson.

"We will still continue to make investments in research and development that preserves coal as an affordable, reliable and responsible resource option," he said. "We're also pursuing innovations in energy efficiency, renewables and energy storage that bring value to rural electric customers."

New energy solutions are needed for the association, which saw increased congestion on its power lines lead to more outages last year. Electric sales reached a record 14 million megawatt-hours last year, surpassing 2007's record by 4.2 percent.

The company is pursuing a project with Tempe, Ariz.-based First Solar Inc. to develop a 30-megawatt solar power plant in northeastern New Mexico, and is still engaged in coal-based carbon capture and storage pilot projects (Catherine Tsai, AP/Forbes.com, April 10). -- PT

(Full story reposted from http://www.eenews.net/Greenwire/2009/04/13/11/. Subscription required.)

Waiting on the Clean Energy Future

Opinion from the Myrtle Beach Sun News:

Most powerful source of energy awaits use
By Angela Lee
Sun, Apr. 05, 2009

What is the solution to America's energy needs in the future? If you ask those who stand to profit from current practices, those in the industry and their buddies in Washington, the answer is drill, drill, drill and mine, mine, mine. It's time to take a smarter approach.

There is only a finite amount of oil and coal contained within our planet. Proposed offshore drilling would pose a serious threat to South Carolina's tourism industry, natural environments and the plant and animal life they contain, and would further contribute to greenhouse gases. The Appalachian area and its inhabitants are currently suffering from out of state companies that come in to mine coal via "mountaintop removal" methods. This action dramatically, and horrifically, scars the landscape, clogs mountain streams, disrupts tap water in homes, and weakens mountain side stability, which has led to landslides in some areas where homes have been affected.

Now is the time to make smart decisions concerning energy. One step in the right direction: The EPA is putting on hold hundreds of mountain top coal-mining permits until it can establish the projects' impacts on streams and wetland. This decision was announced by EPA administrator Lisa Jackson. Under the Clean Water Act, companies cannot release rock, dirt, or debris into streams unless they can prove it will not cause permanent damage to the waterway or any fish and other wildlife it may contain. The EPA also denied two permits to the Army Corps of Engineers that would have allowed companies to fill thousands of feet of streams with mining waste in West Virginia and Kentucky.

Eventually, oil and coal will run out. Meanwhile, we have the most powerful source of energy in our solar system, the sun, waiting for us to utilize it. This is a win-win solution folks. We already have the technology, we just need the foresight and the will to move forward on this initiative. What will solar energy give us? A clean, sustainable, earth friendly source of power and jobs, American jobs, right here at home! Now is the time to make the move to smarter, cleaner energy. Let's not drag our feet on this one. Let's not create a future where our children and grandchildren ask us, why didn't we do more?

From Hydrogen to A World of Home-Grown Alternatives

From this week's Columbia Free Times, a wide ranging look at alternatives to projects like Santee Cooper's proposed coal plant:

Through the prism of a hydrogen atom, the eyes of the nation and the world fall on Columbia and South Carolina for five days beginning Monday.
...

That is good news to South Carolinians getting swept up in economic convulsions of the time. After all, residents of the state average some of the highest power bills in the country. And all in all, South Carolina depends on coal for 61 percent of its electricity and nuclear power for 31 percent of it, a combined 92 percent, according to a state legislative report released in February.

Those numbers could rise.

With ratepayers set up to foot the bills, the train has left the station on plans by state-owned Santee Cooper to build a coal-fired power plant in Florence County and South Carolina Electric & Gas Co., in partnership with Santee Cooper, to construct two more reactors at the V.C. Summer Nuclear Plant that SCE&G owns and operates near Columbia, as well as designs by Duke Energy to bring two additional nuclear reactors online in the Upstate region of South Carolina.

It is true even despite well-documented toxic pollution associated with coal- and nuclear-based power.

In that sense, then, South Carolina finds itself at two roads diverged on a path to the energy future. One road bends toward a dark past — the black seam of coal and the thousands of lifetimes of radioactive waste that is nuclear. The other way leads to a sort of last-place-to-first-place story waiting to be told:

In the affluent Heathwood neighborhood of Columbia, where drafty old mansions hold fast but inefficient, and across rural swaths of the Palmetto State, where row after row of poorly insulated manufactured homes stretch out upon the land.

In hydrogen laboratories at the university and other research and development operations in the state, where the vision of Oppenheimer has evolved from splitting the atom for extinction-level purposes to tapping the most bountiful element in the universe for its clean-energy potential.

Along the sleepy back roads of the state in forested fields and other agricultural assets, where grow enormous, renewable sources of biofuels.

Off the coast, where Mother Nature whistles strong winds atop the mighty Atlantic Ocean.
And in the sunny climate of South Carolina, where a virtually limitless solar source shines silently, lingering to be harnessed.

It is fitting then, as the city, state, nation and world hone in on hydrogen, to consider other options along with it. “I don’t think there’s any single silver bullet,” says John Clark, director of the S.C. Energy Office. “I think the key is going to be having greater diversity in energy sources than we have.”

read more...

Just how much clean energy potential does South Carolina have? Part of the answer comes from this study by the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. It busts the myth that the Southeast -- and South Carolina -- doesn't have enough renewable energy. It shows that our state has enough clean energy to power 15% of the state over the near term -- long term the potential to power ourselves from home-grown energy resources is greater than all the energy we use today.