Big Stone II - Stopping the Unstoppable Coal Fired Power Plant

When an expansion of the Big Stone coal-fired power plant was announced, conventional wisdom said that it couldn’t be stopped. Utilities across the country forecast the need for large numbers of new plants to satisfy our insatiable demand for more and more electricity. Big Stone II, as the project became known, seemed like one of an inevitable wave of new coal-fire power plants sweeping the nation.

Mary Jo Stueve, Clean Water Action organizer in South Dakota, wasn’t buying it. Mary Jo turned on the full power of grassroots and began organizing South Dakotans around the impacts of the plant on public health in general and water in particular. The plant, which would have been near Milbank, South Dakota, was to have been built on the shores of Big Stone Lake, headwaters to the Minnesota River, near the Minnesota border.

The project was granted water permits that would have allowed allow them to draw up to draw 3.2 billion gallons annually from Big Stone Lake. This is equivalent to 2 feet from a lake that averages a depth of 8 feet. The impacts to the lake habitat, recreation and those living along the lake would have been devastating. The Minnesota River was named as the fifth most endangered river in the country in 2008, mostly due to mercury pollution and the additional water draw downs from Big Stone.

It was a bad idea. A bad idea with lots of money behind it and a permitting process that seemed to be greased for fast approval by the states and George Bush’s EPA. The plant was sited in South Dakota due to what was seen as a less rigorous regulatory standard compared to neighboring Minnesota. South Dakota came through for the proposed plant with an air permit.

But other forces were at work. Clean Water Action, joined a Sierra Club lawsuit to challenge the South Dakota air permit, keeping the fight alive. Then came a huge setback for the project. Three days after taking office, President Obama’s EPA returned the air permit to South Dakota to redo portions.

About half of the expected customers were located in Minnesota which meant the Big Stone II partners needed to build a new transmission line across western Minnesota. This gave the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission authority to review the project. According to Minnesota law, this includes an evaluation of the need for a fossil fuel power plant and an evaluation of how construction of Big Stone II would affect Minnesota consumers. A Clean Water Action and coalition of groups in Minnesota banded together to challenge the project based on air, water and public health impacts as well as the impacts on the pocket book of Minnesota customers.

The Minnesota PUC ultimately approved the transmission lines but they placed a critical stipulation on Otter Tail Power, the project lead. They ruled that cost overruns from construction costs and expected future costs of global warming pollution emissions had to be absorbed by Otter Tail Power investors rather than passed on to their customers. The Minnesota PUC saw a risky project and would not allow consumers to be stuck with the costs of a failed gamble.

Two months ago Otter Tail Power pulled out of the project. This was preceded by the withdrawal of Great River Energy last year. The remaining partners in the $1.6 billion project were left scrambling to find investors.

Montana-Dakota Utilities, Company Central Minnesota Municipal Power Agency, Heartland Consumers Power District and Missouri River Energy Services, what remained of the original group of investing utilities, announced the closure of the project on November 2, 2009.

When ordinary people and organizations across Minnesota and South Dakota vowed to fight this plant, there was a great deal of skepticism that such a fight could be successful. Many had written Big Stone II off as a done deal and not worth spending the resources to defeat. There are some important lesson in this. Every coal fired power plant must be challenged and can be stopped.  Change is inevitable, and the time for new coal fired power plants has passed. An informed public is going to defeat coal plants.  It takes grass roots power and a commitment for the long haul. We have plenty of both.

 

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Comments

[Dahun]

So how will the needed power be produced?

How many jobs will be lost?

Are brown outs and blackouts acceptable?

The alternative is--------?

[alvdh1]

This is a great success story at the grassroots level coupled to the Minnesota PUC's decision to stick future GHG costs onto the investors. There are a few lessons to be learned from all of this as a means to redress the externalized costs of burning coal. First, grassroots organizations are and have been effective against highly centralized polluting power stations. Perhaps, an alternative grassroots movement could emerge to replace the the Guaranteed Rate Of Return (GROR) investor owned utility model utilized in 48 states. The structure is antiquated because it encourages wasteful power production and an ever growing expansion of new plants based on the wasteful formula of discounting rates to large commercial users of power at the expense of residential consumers.

This model is largely risk free to the utility when they are afforded a GROR from the rate setting bodies of Public Utility Commissions (PUC's). A utilitiy applies for a permit to build a new coal fired power plant from the regulatory agencies ranging from the EPA, State and the PUC. Once they recieve approval, construction commences and upon completion the plant goes into operation. The PUC becomes the primary regulatory body setting and adjusting rates based on construction and fuel costs and power demand with one aim in mind - which is to ensure a GROR for the utility.

The utility, in turn, sets rates per kilowatt hour in order to create demand for the new power supply which include wholesale, commercial and residential rates.

Continued

[alvdh1]

Utilties discount rates to commercial users on the back of residential consumers. In essence, the utilities encourage commercial users to squander power by offering significant discounts. Busineses relocate or start up operations to take advantage of lower rates with no incentive to pursue energy efficiency. Once the capacity of the new plant has been absorbed, the process starts over with an application to build a new plant.

The alternative is the Independent Service Operator (ISO) model used in California. The grid in California is owned by the ISO and they purchase power from all of the producers small and large and resell it to the consumers. Prices fluctuate based on demand at any given point of time. For example, rates are lower during the night and higher during the day. If you run your electric dryer during peak demand period, you are going to pay more for the electricity.

California passed feed-in tarrifs at the end of September which will allow residential and business producers to install solar, wind and biomass and receive a check at the end of the month for excess power sold into the grid. New coal and nuclear plants would have a very difficult time competing or getting financing in this market. The stage has been set in California for this model to replace the GROR structure in the rest of the country. This is where the next grassroots movement needs to organize to stop dirty coal from spreading.

[JShep]

Every option to our energy problems has its side effects. Just look at what increased ethanol production has done to world food prices. And when the environmentalists stopped the expansion of nuclear power, we just got more carbon based power and its associated pollution. We need a comprehensive energy plan...and it rightfully will include renewables, but it cannot be based primarily on renewables. The cap & trade bills just place restrictions on carbon based energy, trying to phase it out completely, and "hopes" there will be sufficient technological advances in time to accommodate the replacement power required. We must have a plan and anyone with knowledge of our energy production will agree that it must include a large nuclear component.

[alvdh1]

Excuse me!!!!!! The environmentalists did not stop nuclear power. The principal reasons are specifically related to multiple economic events. Three Mile Island not only spooked Wall Street, but it also spooked regulators, investors and citizens. It cost nearly 2 billion dollars to construct and produced power for a short period of time and then stopped producing power after the fire and explosion. It was not a good return on investment.

While this unfortunate scenario was unfolding, the Washington State Nuclear Whoops Bond failure was well underway. The utility defaulted on their bonds due to cost overruns coupled to the fact that they were building 4 new plants without enough demand to support all of the proposed power supply. Every nuclear power plant constructed in the U.S. was victim of massive cost overruns and came in behind schedule.

Wall Street hasn't invested a thin dime in nukes since 1980. While environemntalists may have slowed the permit process on some of the later plants, they never prevented a nuke from being constructed. Once the permitting process had been cleared, the construction delays and cost overruns were primarily the result of design, material supply problems, unrealistic estimating of construction costs and the change orders to correct the design deficiencies.

[2warvet]

Yea for South Dakota! Now all we have to do is build the clean energy alternativ­e.....Oh wait, there isn't one.

Can't do solar in the desert, some fluffy mouse lives there. Can't do wind farms in Oregon or Mass, it would spoil the view. Can't do nuclear, speaks for its self.

What else is there?

[Overtone]

Coal and other fossil as well as nuclear fuels can be replaced by turning cars, trucks and buses into power plants when parked.

Radically new technology that promises to do that is moving slowly toward the market. It is inherently cost competitive.

Energy from Collapsing Hydrogen Orbits - ECHO, is one such breakthrough. Releasing energy from fractional Hydrogen has been accomplished by a firm that has announced it will produce 250 kW prototype power plants next year.

Rowan University has validated the work, publishing details of experiments that produced heat that has no other reasonable explanation except a new source of energy.

Those experiments can be reproduced at other laboratories - that will confirm that this new energy source, using ordinary water as fuel, promises that a barrel of H2O can equal 200 barrels of oil.

Self-Powered Internal Combustion Engines - SPICE, fueled by fractional Hydrogen, can provide hybrid vehicle engines that need only to sip a small amount of water as fuel.

Parked cars can become power plants, selling electricity to local utilities.

See: 5 Steps to Revive the Auto Industry and the Economy at: http://aesopinstitute.org

Let's make coal and oil obsolete as rapidly as is humanly possible!