Another coal plant application denied. This one was stiffed because of a law Washington passed this year requiring that coal plant proposals include plans for carbon sequestration or, if that’s not possible, plans to purchase offsets in a commensurate amount. But you gotta start with the sequestration plan, and the application from Energy Northwest didn’t have one. Said the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (EFSEC):
"The principal flaw in the (Greenhouse Gas Reduction Plan) is its failure to present a plan to achieve geological sequestration. It does not detail specific actions (Energy Northwest) will take … (Energy Northwest’s) GGRP fails to meet the plain language of the statute — it is a plan to prepare a plan at some indefinite later date."
One can’t help but speculate that the reason Energy Northwest didn’t include a CCS plan is that it didn’t want something on paper demonstrating to its investors that its capital costs were going to be enormous and the power produced well above market rates. Remember, coal: cheap or clean, but never both.
