Utah Power Plant Agrees to Install Pollution-Control Equipment or Close

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Written by John Egan for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--The owner of Utah's fourth-largest power plant, the Bonanza Power Station, agreed to install equipment to lower the plant's nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions by 2030 or face closure by that time. In an unusual settlement negotiated with two environmental groups, Bonanza's owner, Deseret Power Electric Cooperative (DPEC) (South Jordan, Utah), agreed to a 10-year limit to the plant's coal consumption retroactive to 2020 if the environmental controls are not installed by 2030. The environmental groups predicted DPEC would choose to close Bonanza in 2030 rather than install the pollution-control equipment for a 500-megawatt (MW) coal-fired power plant that began operating in 1985.

Under the terms of the settlement, DPEC agreed to install low-NOx burners with over-fire air (OFA) controls on Bonanza, located in northeastern Utah. In return, the environmental groups dropped their insistence that DPEC install more expensive selective catalytic control (SCR) technology. If DPEC fails to install the NOx-reduction equipment, the plant will only be allowed to burn a total of 20 million tons of coal retroactive to 2020. The plant typically burns about two million tons of coal per year, so a 20-million-ton cap works out to a 10-year lifespan, until 2030, unless DPEC agrees to reduce the volume of coal it burns at Bonanza after 2020. Bonanza burns coal mined at the Deserado Mine in northwestern Colorado.

The settlement was reached last October, and the public comment period ended with only one comment being filed about the agreement. Thus, it is likely the agreement will be accepted as final by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (Washington, D.C.). The parties notified the EPA in early January that they had reached provisional settlement of their disputes, though they needed more time to hammer out the final details.

In a statement made at the time of the settlement, DPEC Chief Executive Kimball Rasmussen emphasized the positive aspects of the settlement for the power plant and the mine that supplies it: "Our miners, the plant employees, their families and the entire community rallied to public meetings, participated enthusiastically in the process and left no doubt that their very livelihoods were at stake. [This] agreement will ensure that their voices have been heard. Bonanza will continue to operate, and the Deserado Mine will stay open for business."

David Crabtree, DPEC's general counsel, added: "Coal fired electricity remains the mainstay of our backbone energy supply. Nevertheless, there is undeniably a greater desire to include diversified alternative energy resources as part of the overall energy mix. This agreement addresses and allows for that natural progression to occur in a sensible manner over time."

"For a utility in Utah to agree to something like this is a very big deal, and it shows that the economics of coal are really starting to be felt, even by staunch coal boosters," said Jeremy Nichols, energy policy director for WildEarth Guardians (Santa Fe, New Mexico), one of the environmental groups suing DPEC. "This is an offer to limit coal moving forward. Once they reach the limit, [Bonanza] will go away."

"We sued ...because EPA turned its back on the climate impacts of Bonanza," Nichols continued, adding that the coal consumption cap was "pretty unique." "Now that we have certainty over the future of the plant, we feel our work is done. We are going to leave them alone for a while, but they have some tough choices to make, and hopefully the choices they make help transition Utah to a clean energy future. We don't need to burn that coal, and they acknowledge that with this agreement."

Bonanza supplies electricity to electric cooperatives in Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada and Utah. The pollution-control equipment DPEC agreed to install at the plant is expected to lower NOx emissions significantly.

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