The Colorado Public Utilities Commission today, over the objections of business interests, agreed to review Xcel Energy’s last-minute plan to cut pollution at aging coal-fired power plants.
Xcel was forced to come up with the new plan after the commission ruled the company’s preferred plan — filed in August — did not meet the 2017 deadline set in the Clean Air-Clean Jobs Act.
Hearings on the Xcel plan began last week and there are 34 parties from large mining companies to consumer advocates challenging Xcel.
The new submission by Xcel’s Public Service Co. of Colorado has a preferred plan and several other options.
“It is wholly unacceptable for Public Service to take a ‘maybe this, maybe that’ position, especially at this late date,” Peabody Energy Corp. said in a filing urging the commission not to accept the new plan.
The new plan was also opposed by natural gas drilling companies, Climax Molybdenum Co., Rocky Mountain Steel Mills, and independent power generators.
In allowing in a set of new options, PUC Chairman Ron Binz said the commission as trying to balance between the most effective plan to cut pollution and due process. The vote was 3-0.
Under the Clean Air-Clean Jobs Act, Xcel will be able to get accelerated cost recovery for a program that cuts air emissions by replacing Front Range coal plants with natural gas units or adding pollution controls to coal-fired units.
Late Monday, Xcel filed several options for meeting the act’s requirement to cut nitrogen oxide pollution 70 to 80 percent.
The company’s new preferred plan is similar to the original in that it would close four aging coal-fired plants, replacing them with a natural gas unit and switch one plant from burning coal to natural gas.
The difference is that instead of replacing the Cherokee 4 coal-fired plant with a natural gas unit, expensive pollution controls would be added to it.
Nitrogen oxides contribute to ozone pollution, the prime component in smog, and to regional haze problems.
Mark Jaffe: 303-954-1912 or mjaffe@denverpost.com
