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TECO Will Not Build Polk Plant

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By RUSSELL RAY, The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 5, 2007

TAMPA - Tampa Electric Co.'s announcement on Thursday that it has pulled the plug on plans to build an innovative 'clean coal' power plant in Polk County follows the cancellation of at least three other coal plant proposals in Florida.

Chuck Black, president of Tampa Electric, said the utility's decision to cancel the $2 billion, 630-megawatt coal-gasification plant project was partially influenced by Gov. Charlie Crist's policy to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas many scientists have linked to global warming.

The governor's opposition to coal is worrying to utility executives, who must find new ways to meet Florida's increasing thirst for electricity. If coal is no longer an option, where will utilities get the energy they need to meet demand?

Wind and solar power are not as reliable; natural gas supplies are limited and expensive; and nuclear power plants take about a decade to build.

'There is significant uncertainty about what kind of power plant we can build to serve Florida's growing population,' said Barry Moline, executive director of the Florida Municipal Electric Association.

This year, Florida regulators have rejected two coal-fired power plants in the name of clean air, and three other coal projects have been shelved in response to Crist's opposition to coal-fired electricity.

That includes the state's rejection in August of a $1.8 billion, 750-megawatt coal plant proposed by Seminole Electric Cooperative of Tampa. Florida's Department of Environmental Protection cited the plant's potential impact on air and water quality, although there were no 'disputed issues of fact or law.'

Seminole Electric plans to appeal DEP's decision.

'We met every aspect of the approval process,' said Jim Frauen, director of projects for Seminole Electric.

As Florida continues to grow, the question of how to generate power must be solved in a state where a quarter of the electricity is produced from coal.

In addition to being significantly cheaper than natural gas, coal is abundant in the United States, containing the energy equivalent of about 800 billion barrels of oil, or more than three times the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia.

However, coal-fired plants produce about twice as much carbon dioxide per unit of electricity generated as plants running on natural gas.

Tampa Electric's decision to scuttle plans for a coal-gasification plant, however, centered largely on the potential cost of capturing and storing carbon dioxide. Black said the company could not make that investment without first knowing the rules for limiting emissions of the greenhouse gas and whether it can be stored safely underground.

'We just got very concerned that we were going to have a requirement to capture and potentially sequester carbon,' Black said.

Knowing the rules, which have not been finalized, would help the utility determine what type of plant would be cheaper to build.

For example, if the rules for capturing and storing carbon only applied to coal-gasification plants, the construction of a coal-gasification plant would be significantly more expensive than building a gas-fired unit. In this case, the best option would be gas, not coal, Black said.

'When you compare that higher cost on our unit to the unit that doesn't have to capture any carbon, then it may not be the most cost-effective anymore,' he said.

State and federal officials are still months, maybe years, away from finalizing rules for regulating emissions of carbon dioxide.

What's more, the concept of pumping tons of carbon dioxide into formations several hundred feet below the earth has not been tested. Tampa Electric said it is working with researchers at the University of South Florida to determine if the land around Polk Power Station is suited for storing huge amounts of carbon dioxide.

'To pump large quantities of CO2 in the ground without having the technical and public policy issues resolved, I believe would be irresponsible,' Black said.

This and other uncertainties led the utility to cancel the project.

'They were rushing to get the permit to build the plant before these questions resolved,' said Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, a nonprofit environmental group.

Smith said the utility made the right decision and that Florida regulators should not approve any new coal plants without requiring them to capture and store carbon dioxide.

Although Tampa Electric's proposed coal-gasification plant would have produced lower emissions of nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide, it still would have emitted about 4.1 million tons of carbon dioxide each year. The company's Big Bend Power Station, deemed by environmentalists as one of the dirtiest in the nation, emitted 11.7 million tons of carbon last year.

Moline said the state's energy policy is clear: 'The policy is you can build coal if you can capture and store the carbon.'

Reporter Russell Ray can be reached at (813) 259-7870 or rray@tampatrib.com.

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