Develop clean coal here; Huntley plant is best project choice but Somerset also a good option
New York State's billion-dollar incentive program to energize the development of clean coal technology has come down to five competing bids, and the best two are in Western New York. The New York Power Authority can do the most good for the environment and the economy by picking either the Somerset power plant in Niagara County or the Huntley plant in the Town of Tonawanda -- and it can do the most for the future by choosing Huntley.
The competition is intense. The project is worth an estimated $1 billion to $1.5 billion, and will bring 1,000 construction jobs to the host community over the next four years, along with 100 to 140 high-paying permanent jobs at the winning plant once a state-of-the-art plant expansion is completed.
Both the Somerset and Huntley plants have lined up research and political coalitions to support their bids. Unlike other proposals, they both involve working power plants. There is community support in both places, although risky tax breaks given the Somerset plan by the Niagara County IDA have triggered a separate controversy.
Either power plant could boost development of technologies that remove both pollutants and greenhouse gases from the smokestacks of coal-burning power plants, capturing carbon in the form of carbon dioxide for commercial reuse in other processes or underground storage in injection wells. But their bids are based on very different systems.
The Somerset plant, run by the AES Corp. of Virginia, already is a "clean" facility but it's based on the most common process, burning pulverized coal. Developing a state-of-the-art $1 billion system would help it add 600 megawatts of power with even greater anti-pollution efficiency, and its 1,800-acre site would minimize local impacts.
The Huntley plant, run by NRG Energy of New Jersey, is an aging and dirty coal-burner, with parts of the plant dating back to 1914 and even its best turbines now about 50 years old. State environmental enforcement is forcing the shutdown of its older turbines, and the new project is in part a bid to keep the Huntley station -- the largest single-parcel taxpayer in Erie County -- open and on the property tax rolls. A new $1.5 billion, 680-megawatt unit there also would mean cleaner air in a densely settled urban area.
The key advantage for Huntley is its planned technology -- a process known as "Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle" or IGCC, which turns smokestack gases into easier-to-clean synthetic gas that then powers both gas and steam turbines to produce electricity. Critics say the technique won't be refined for years, but many sources -- including the journal Scientific American and others -- see it as ready now and the best hope for clean energy production from the world's most common fossil fuel.
The main hope of Gov. George E. Pataki's clean-coal incentive -- which involves not cash but tax incentives and long-term power purchase agreements that will allow the winner to fund the new plant -- is to encourage such technology. That gives the Huntley plant an edge. It would be the better of two good choices.