If Kansas Department of Health and Environment Secretary Rod Bremby rejects the proposal to build two new coal-fired power plants near Holcomb, he will go against the advice of his staff. Bremby told a legislative panel — which was formed to pressure him to approve the project — that KDHE staff recommended granting the permit. Then again, if Bremby approves it, he will go against the personal stance of his boss, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, and the protests of attorneys general from eight states and environmental groups concerned about the amount of carbon dioxide the plants will produce. So far, Bremby isn’t giving good hints which way he is leaning — only that he expects to make the decision by the end of this month. Maybe after this job, Bremby should go to work for the CIA.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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21 Comments
it doesn’t make a crappola if it’s the right idea, or a good idea, or you get the idea.
it only matters if the idea is supported by lobbyists with a bag full of money.
that’s how our government runs.
it helps if there is a private sector job waiting for someone’s retirement from “public service” to us little honest people.
It will get approved. In any other state in America , this would be a big issue. How come it is not a big issue here. Why does Melvein Neufeld lie In the Dodge City Globe and nobody calls him out on it. What service is Jerry Moron doing for the people of Western Kansas? The corporations know that nobody in Kansas cares. And the majority of people in America do not care what happens in Kansas. Especially western Kansas. It’s a sad state of affairs in Kansas.
It’s going to pass.
Writing this down..
B-R-E-M-B-Y.
Got it.He passes this plant he is finished in Kansas politics. And so is thw woman behind the curtain Cheshire Kathy.
Why Kansas? They want to mine our declining Ogallala underground aquifer water to support this gargantuan electrical power producing project. Also prevailing winds will normally carry the polluted air eastward over relatively unpopulated Kansas … no matter that we Kansans live here.
It won’t be long until Kansans are drinking recycled sewage effluent from our polluted surface waterways.
It takes a while to get nuclear power plants built. Let’s get started!
“Why Kansas? They want to mine our declining Ogallala underground aquifer water to support this gargantuan electrical power producing project.”
You got it Wink. The air pollution makes a nice story, but it is really the water they are after. Water AFTER it crosses the Colorado boarder. And that slinks under the radar for most of Kansas.
The other reason? Kansans are too STUPID to understand what this plant will do.
And besides, the ethanol subsidies dont MAXIMIZE profits without the coal generated electricity.
Wouldnt it be nice if democrats and eastern, more urban Kansans, understood how bozos like neufeld and morris rise to power?
Because the kansas democratic party refuses to put any money or talent into the legislative races out here. So they send the same mossbacks every year, with more seniority.
How’s that strategy working for kansas? For kansas democrats?
Funny, for a dying area of kansas without much population, these rural republican cons sure control the state.
No matter WHAT you think east of Salina….
Heh. Maybe the reason this decision is being drug out is because Bremby’s private sector job isnt quite lined up yet?
The bidding war to give him a golden parachute and a soft landing isnt over yet?
This may turn out to be deja vu all over again.
In the 1980’s California’s largest utilities contracted with a Utah company, promising 40 years of electricity purchases if Utah would build coal-fired plants. In essence, building coal-fired plants in California wouldn’t pass environmental muster, so the plants were built “out of sight, out of mind”. Several hundred Utans got jobs, so they didn’t mind breathing smog.
This was before energy deregulation. Nobody does 40 year guaranteed-purchase contracts anymore.
Now, California is taking big steps to battle global warming, and new environmental regulations there prohibit California utilities from entering into any new coal-generated electricity contracts unless the power plants sequester their CO2.
Coal-fired plant operators are not happy campers. One of coal-fired electricity’s most attractive features is that the U.S. has vast coal reserves, making the fuel extremely cheap, and profit margins fat. Sequestering carbon can cost $2 billion per plant.
If wholesale electricity costs are hiked to pay for sequestration, this opens the door a little wider to the young little upstarts, solar and wind power. As they grow, the laws of mass-scale production take hold, and their generation prices drop. Which may leave the coal guys with a glut of electricity to sell, and dwindling numbers of customers to buy it. Ouch!
Colorado will undoubtedly follow California’s lead. Colorado is a green state. It’s a national leader in energy conservation and solar energy, and is moving fast to expand wind-generation. Coloradans don’t feel an energy shortage. Water shortage is their #1 concern. (I was there in August. More Kansans need to find out what is going on next door. They can read the Denver Post and Rocky Mtn News online if they don’t want to leave home.)
So unless Sunflower has a plan for carbon sequestration, it’s going to have problems. If cap and trade comes about, and Sunflower gets a large cap, it may make more money selling its carbon allotment shares to others than it would make burning coal. As in, “We’re gonna shut down the plant and make money trading our carbon credits.” Oops, there could go the jobs for Holcomb locals.
Some of the power is ostensibly headed for Texas. Texas is not a frontline green state like Colorado. But, in 2001 Governor Bush signed into law a Democrat-spearheaded piece of legislation to subsidize renewable energy. The result 5 years later: Texas passed California as the nation’s leading wind-power producer. And today, Texans are widening their lead.
West Texas has a whole lot of inexhaustible wind. It also has a whole lot of inexhaustible low-latitude clear-skies solar energy.
Texas may want to buy Sunflower electricity short-term, but long-term, methinks they’d rather generate their own electricity, and make a lot of money in the process, rather than send their dollars to Kansas.
We’ve heard that our governor pushed for a $5 million wind-power inititative. How about getting serious and passing a $500 million initiative? Use our aerospace intellectual capital and make Wichita into a world-class wind-generator manufacturing center.
Which makes more sense? Creating 10,000 jobs paying $50,000 a year average for Wichita, plus at least a few hundred wind-farm servicing jobs paying $25,000 a year to Western, Southern and Central Kansans , OR 800 jobs paying $25,000 a year to Holcomb residents–and having a half-million downwind Kansans suck Holcomb’s toxic fumes? The math here is pretty straight forward.
Colorado doesnt want the plant built in its state because of the WATER issue. They get a second chance to suck up the water after it leaves their state.
And they dont give a rat’s ass about a handful of permanent jobs. They actually have an economy that works.
And Kansas? Especially western Kansas? Eh, not so much…
I just have a question. Well, two questions. !) What is sequestering and how is it done 2) Isn;t part of the proposal to recapture and use the emissions as part of an algae producing system—to be used for biomass ethanol?
I guess that was three.
Hey Pot Heads, quit increasing the demand for electricity:
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=071010135718.abucc7eu&show_article=1
“2) Isn;t part of the proposal to recapture and use the emissions as part of an algae producing system—to be used for biomass ethanol?”
PJ swallowed steve miller’s press release hook, line and sinker.
This is experimental technology that is not ready for prime time or commercial production. I’m glad they are trying it, but it is NOT a solution at the moment.
No matter HOW many press releases they send out…
The sequestering pilot experiments I have heard of pump the CO2, also sulfur, nitrogen and mercury oxides into coal, natural gas and oil field seams. In the latter cases, the undeground water isn’t potable. For a plant on the Ogallala aquifer, you’d have to pipe the effluent to an oil/natural gas field, otherwise you’d poison the well.
On algae production, the University of California and Lawrence-Berkeley National Laboratory are reportedly getting a $500 million grant from BP to
figure out how to make cellusic ethanol cheaply. It’s a matter of breaking cellulose, the largest component of plants, a chain of glucose molecules, into fermentable glucose, making ethanol. So if you grew corn, for example, you’d use the whole plant, not just the cobs. They’ll figure out how to do it, but it’s going to take some time. As to cooling ponds growing enough algal biomass to be significant, that’s pretty iffy, verging on unrealistic.
It would be more productive to use cogeneration to supply heat and CO2 to greenhouses and grow high value fresh winter produce. You’d have to scrub out the mercury first, otherwise your tomatoes would be unmarketable. This may be feasible.
PS. If you leave the mercury in, you could grow flowers, and ornamental plants for the nursery industry.
Thank you for your answers. Sequestering seems like a bad idea, at least in Western kansas. The algae thing, I just saw a National Geographic channel special on a plant set up in the desert somewhere. Seems to be working, but yeah, pretty experiemental at this point. Seems like they ran the coal fired emissions through the algae mass, growing the mass, then naturally dried the algae, and used it for fuel on an electrical generation system. ANyway,
Thanks for your answers. Have a great day!
KSFG – There are Dims on that committee as well and they are also calling on Bremby to approve the permit. So it is not all R’s asking for this.
Yes CIA does sound good… haha! thanks for the laugh, Phil!
Time for change, are you really that stupid, or just play that way here.
Do you know who the “dims” are?
Eber Phelps and Janis Lee.
Real slow for ya now…
They both represent Hays. And WHICH company is headquartered in Hays?
Sunflower Electric.
Duh. You bet your sweet ASS eber and janis are pressuring for approval.
And what ELSE do eber and janis support?
Ethanol. And the accompanying irrigated corn crowing.
And who needs the electricity?
ethanol plants, according to miller’s latest spin.
Duh.
Like I said, are you really that stupid, or just playing so here?
Forgive me Martin Hawver for bootlegging this, but the above comment was just too dumb to let pass.
From the Hawver Flash:”Power plant fireworks
In one of the most brutally politically charged east-west Kansas political/economic development/ environmental showdowns in recent memory, five legislators from west of US-81 this morning pounded Secretary of Health and Environment Rod Bremby over delays and the possibility of his rejecting a license for two coal-fired power plants near Holcomb.”
Snip
Speaker Melvin Neufeld, R-Ingalls, said he is “greatly troubled” by the possibility that Bremby might use carbon dioxide in his decision, and said that nixing the plants would severely economically damage western Kansas, cause businesses to leave or fold, and that the plant is necessary for construction of ethanol plants.
Senate President Steve Morris, R-Hugoton, said he fears without the electricity the plants would produce, declining natural gas supplies would stymie irrigation of crops, and a change to electric irrigation pumps will be needed.
Committee Chairman Rep. Carl Holmes, R-Liberal, said that without the plants there would be no action to build electric transmission lines that would more economically link eastern and western Kansas. With the plants, Kansas wind power production could be supplied to San Francisco and New York.
snip
The hearing continues this afternoon. Besides Holmes, Neufeld, Morris and Emler, the other panel members are Rep. Eber Phelps, D-Hays, and Sen. Janis Lee, D-Kensington.”
Notice that Emler, Lindsborg, is the eastern most member of this “committee” posing as a lynch mob.
And eber and janis are the ONLY dems on the mob.
Duh. Could there BE a more rigged side show?
From link in header,
“Rep. Carl Dean Holmes, a Republican from Liberal who said regulating CO2 would devastate the state’s economy, pressed Bremby: “If it’s not been determined, then it could be.”…House Speaker Melvin Neufeld, a panel member, said it’s troubling that Bremby could deny the permit because of carbon dioxide, without a program for regulating others’ CO2 emissions.”
Are Holmes and Neufeld unable to understand that it’s practically guaranteed that there WILL be CO2 regulations, and carbon taxes, in a few years?
If the $3.6 BILLION plant is built, carbon taxes will probably gradually rise high enough to shut it down.
The money should instead be invested in higher energy efficiency and renewables.
‘Carbon Risk, Coal, and Higher Electricity Prices
Why coal-generated electricity will cost more than utilities claim ‘http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/fossil_fuels/carbon_risk.html
See also the U.S. PIRG report linked at bottom of above page.’Making Sense of the “Coal Rush”: The Consequences of Expanding America’s Dependence on Coal’