"Energy Options: Coal" - Coal and Communities (Part 2)
Tuesday, October 23, 2007SUZANNE PRATT: The outlook for coal has brightened, with plans to develop as many as 150 new coal-fired power plants in the U.S. over the next 25 years. But concerns about global warming and restrictions on carbon emissions have already put the brakes on dozens of those plants. In tonight's "Energy Options: Coal," Stephanie Dhue heads to a tiny Nevada town where plans to build a plant promise to transform the region.
STEPHANIE DHUE, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: What happens in places like this will help determine coal's future. Eastern Nevada is the proposed site of three new coal-fired power plants. Sierra Pacific Resources, a Nevada utility, has proposed building a 2,500-megawatt facility. The company spent the past year and a half working to permit the plant. David Sims is the project's manager. He says the Ely energy center will be a key to providing energy throughout Nevada.
DAVID SIMS, COAL-FIRED POWER PLANT PROJECT MANAGER: This project is really more than just a coal project. It's an anchor for a transmission system to link our north and south for the first time in Nevada, to be energy independent.
DHUE: Sierra Pacific Resources wants to build the Ely energy center here, about 250 miles from the neon lights of Las Vegas. The power plant would burn about 8 million tons of coal each year and generate enough electricity to supply 1.5 million people. The nearby town of Ely largely supports the proposal. Ely fell on hard times when a copper mine closed in 1978. The mine has since reopened, but on a smaller scale. Mayor Jon Hickman says the power projects will boost the local economy.
MAYOR JON HICKMAN, ELY, NEVADA: Ely is a town of around 5,000 people. We've had upwards of 10,000 in the past, so we're just trying to get back even.
DHUE: On the drawing board: 2,000 temporary construction jobs, 300 permanent workers to staff the finished plant and millions of utility dollars to be spent to refurbish the town-owned railroad. But even before the plant is OKed, things in Ely are powering ahead.
HICKMAN: You can already see the growth in work permits. There's housing development that has started. We have a new Holiday Inn express that's just going in out here. They've all come up here because they're seeing the future for our area.
DHUE: Still, not everyone likes the idea.
OSKAR ATKINSON, PRESIDENT, BRISTLECONE ALLIANCE: If nobody speaks up, then nothing can change and the impression here would be everybody is in favor, which clearly is not true.
DHUE: Oskar Atkinson is the president of the Bristlecone Alliance. It's a small group of local residents who say they treasure the area for its open spaces, clean air and pristine views.
CURT LEET, BRISTLECONE ALLIANCE: I don't want to see us be the tailpipe for Las Vegas.
SUSAN POTTS, BRISTLECONE ALLIANCE: This area does need some economic development, but there are so many other options that aren't going to pollute.
DHUE: And that's a big concern. Sierra Pacific's parent company, Nevada Power, recently agreed to pay $90 million to settle air quality violations from its 40-year-old Reid Gardner coal-fired power plant outside Las Vegas. Ely resident Jennifer Brickey worries the company won't live up to its promises.
JENNIFER BRICKEY, BRISTLECONE ALLIANCE: If they were willing to try and sidestep those standards where their customers are located, what are they going to do to a community like ours where they have no obligation. We are not customers. We are not shareholders.
DHUE: Nevada Power says the Ely energy center will let it shut down Reid Gartner's older stacks. The company promises to put in carbon capture technology in the Ely plant as soon as economically feasible. Sierra Pacific CEO Michael Yackira says coal is critical to its energy mix.
MICHAEL YACKIRA, PRESIDENT & CEO, SIERRA PACIFIC RESOURCES: When the sun's not shining and the wind's not blowing, our customers need to have power and that's why having only renewable energy is insufficient for our legal responsibility to provide reliable power to our customers 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
DHUE: The plant's opponents have a powerful ally in Nevada senator and Majority Leader Harry Reid. Reid has pledged to do everything he can to keep the coal plants from being built. He wants the state to focus on conservation and renewable forms of energy and he scoffs at the industry's argument that coal is a necessary part of the mix.
SEN. HARRY REID, (D) NEVADA/SENATE MAJORITY LEADER: You don't need a balanced portfolio. We produce lots of electricity with natural gas. The reason they are going to coal it's cheaper. There is no balance in polluting the air and the water with coal, no balance, until we come up with clean coal technology, which we don't have yet. We don't need energy created by more . We have global warming; it's here.
DHUE: Sierra Pacific Resources wants to begin construction next year. But with growing concerns about global warming, those plans could be derailed. Stephanie Dhue, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, Ely, Nevada.
