Updates on Wind and Coal Power
Those who would like to see offshore wind power in Delaware will be interested in the progress of a similar proposal in Massachusetts. The Boston Globe reports that an offshore wind project has gained state approval in Massachusetts.
The developer of a Nantucket Sound wind energy project hopes to begin producing clean energy by 2010, after winning final state environmental approval yesterday, but the project still faces a major remaining hurdle: an expansive federal government review.Meanwhile, Jeff Montgomery from the News Journal has had a look at newly released documents detailing projected carbon emissions from the proposed coal powered electric plant in Sussex County:
The Interior Department plans to release a draft report next month, but will not finish its review until early next year. And well-funded opponents, who have dogged the project for six years, waging legal and political warfare in efforts to derail it, are likely to challenge the permits required to build the wind turbines off the Cape and Islands.
A power plant proposed for the Millsboro area could increase Delaware's statewide greenhouse-gas output by 50 to 60 percent or more at a time of rising global pressure for cutbacks, according to newly released details about the project.NRG has proposed to capture a portion of carbon emissions from the new plant, provided that rate payers pay for the capital equipment. With this newly released batch of documents, we may be able to better estimate how big that cost could be.
The NRG Energy disclosures about its next-generation coal plant are expected to focus more attention on coal plant emissions and company plans to inject a majority of the waste carbon dioxide deep beneath Millsboro -- an option based on untested assumptions about Delaware geology and undetermined rules for "sequestering" the waste gas in deep, local wells.
"There's no hiding the fact that, unsequestered, the NRG proposal will significantly increase CO2 emissions," said Philip Cherry, a Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control policy manager and member of a team now considering power plant bids by NRG, Conectiv and Bluewater Wind LLC.
posted by Tom Noyes at 5:14 PM
3 Comments:
I have just been made aware of the difficulty the wind power proposal faces behind closed doors.
Only enough citizens demanding the wind option, loud enough to scare the decision makers away from their long term sponsors, will cause this to happen.
As of this minute, Markell is the only statewide candidate on record who favors Wind. He needs good PR from all of us for this brave stance. It is a much braver action than I ever realized before I knew the inside truth to the story......
The problem with these energy studies is that they do not take
the whole situation into account.
For instance, nobody has observed
that Salem Nuclear is criticized for drawing too much water into the cooling tower for cooling
exhaust steam from the turbines. Yet this heat could be used to heat and pressurize LNG , lightered from Cove Pt., to operate gas turbines. This is called co-generation, and utilizes heat otherwise released into the atmosphere, and by-passing the usual system of gassifying the LNG.
The use of large volumes of water for cooling towers creates several environmental problems, including increases in the water temperature in streams and rivers. Finding an engineering use for this excess heat could reduce these problems, though I don't know if the process you describe is feasible.
As for taking the whole situation into account, the RFP is for energy to be produced in Delaware. We're just trying to get it right here in our small state.
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