TOPEKA, Kan.—Kansas’ top environmental regulator rejected a permit Thursday for two coal-fired power plants in southwest Kansas, a victory for environmentalists concerned about global warming.
The decision from Rod Bremby, secretary of health and environment, prevents Sunflower Electric Power Corp. and its partner, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association Inc. of Westminster, Colo., from starting construction on a $3.6 billion project outside Holcomb. However, the ruling is expected to be challenged.
Bremby said he denied the permit over concerns about the plants’ potential carbon dioxide emissions. Most scientists view CO2 as a major contributor to climate change, but Kansas doesn’t regulate it.
“I believe it would be irresponsible to ignore emerging information about the contribution of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to climate change and the potential harm to our environment and health if we do nothing,” Bremby said in a statement.
Sunflower called the decision arbitrary and predicted it would raise western Kansas electric rates and delay construction of larger transmission lines. Spokesman Steve Miller said the utility is troubled because Bremby “just reached up and did this” without any legal standards on CO2.
“We’ve got lawyers all over the place, and they’re gathering to see how best to next proceed,” he said.
Hays-based Sunflower supplies six cooperatives providing electricity for about 400,000 people in 55 western Kansas counties.
Its plan called for building two, 700-megawatt coal-fired plants next to an existing, 360-megawatt plant outside Holcomb. The town of 2,000 residents, about 200 miles west of Wichita, hasn’t received as much attention since the 1959 murders of the Herbert Clutter family, which inspired Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood.”
Construction would have been finished in 2013. The project includes a bioenergy center that would use CO2 captured from the coal plants to grow algae, which would be converted to biofuels, such as ethanol.
That center is part of Sunflower’s plan to reduce the projected 10 million tons of annual carbon dioxide emissions a year to as little as 4.5 million tons. Environmentalists believe the technology is too experimental to be relied upon.
Most of the new power—about 1,400 megawatts, or enough to supply peak demand from all the households in Denver, Oklahoma City and Albuquerque, N.M.—would be sold outside Kansas, something Sunflower executives had said would help contain their retail electricity rates.
Some Kansas legislators were furious. Supporters, including House Speaker Melvin Neufeld and Senate President Steve Morris, saw the project as vital economic development for rural Kansas. Some Republicans accused Bremby, an appointee, of knuckling under political pressure from his boss, Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, and exceeding his authority.
“The Legislature will clearly have to look into how a cabinet officer can exceed his authority with impunity,” said Sen. Jay Emler, a Lindsborg Republican, chairman of the Senate Utilities Committee.
Finney County Democratic Party chairman Lon Wartman resigned in disgust, calling the state party’s leaders “despicable” in an e-mail to reporters.
But Eric Depperschmidt, president of the Finney County Economic Development Corp., saw the decision only as a delay and predicted Sunflower eventually will prevail in court.
“I’m very confident that this will move forward,” Depperschmidt said.
As expected, environmentalists were pleased. They had pushed Bremby to reject the permit over CO2 emissions.
Despite the state’s lack of regulations, Attorney General Paul Morrison advised Bremby last month that Kansas law gave him the power to declare CO2 a health and environmental hazard and deny a permit over potential emissions.
Bremby noted that in April, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that carbon dioxide was a pollutant regulated by the federal Clean Air Act.
He called his decision a step toward addressing carbon dioxide and promised that the Department of Health and Environment will work with officials in different industries to develop goals for reducing CO2 emissions.
Bremby also said his decision was in keeping with other states’ initiatives. The attorneys general of California, New York and six other states had said approving the plants would undercut their states’ efforts to control greenhouse gas emissions.
“This decision is just further evidence that the days of business as usual for coal are over,” said Mark Brownstein, managing director for Washington-based Environmental Defense. “It’s just another indication of how the center of gravity on this issue has shifted.”
Late last year, Sebelius had expressed concern in interviews that if Bremby rejected Sunflower’s permit, the plants would be built in another state, leaving Kansas with the pollution but not the economic development. This summer, she said she opposed Sunflower’s project.
She had insisted she was leaving the permitting decision to Bremby. She issued a statement Thursday saying she was “encouraged” by his action.
Kansas already relies more heavily on coal-fired plants than the nation as a whole, receiving 75 percent of its electricity from them, according to Department of Energy statistics. Utilities, including Sunflower, operate 15 coal-fired units in seven counties.
“These additional coal plants would have moved us in the wrong direction and far exceed the critical power needs for Kansas homes and businesses,” Sebelius said in a statement.
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Associated Press writers John Milburn and Carl Manning in Topeka, Kan., contributed to this story.
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