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Thursday, January 14, 2010

Green BREAKING: PGE to Close Dirty Boardman Coal Plant

Posted by Sarah Mirk on Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 4:49 PM

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Mayor Adams' office has just sent out a press release that will trigger victory parties in the offices of Oregon's environmental groups:

"I am pleased and encouraged by PGE’s announcement today that it is seeking to submit an alternative operating plan for the Boardman Plant and phase out Boardman, or switch to non-coal fuel, by 2020."

Adams pushed PGE to shut down Eastern Oregon's Boardman coal plant back in October, writing a strongly-worded letter to the Oregon Public Utilities Commission saying Oregon needed to ditch coal power to meet Portland's coal of cutting greenhouse gas reductions by 80 percent over the next 40 years.

Numerous green groups, including the Sierra Club, have campaigned hard over the past year for PGE or the state to shut down Boardman.

Until now, coal power has been green Portland's dirty secret. Forty percent of Portland's energy comes from coal and Boardman, which burns 300 pounds tons of coal an hour, is responsible for 65 percent of the sulfur dioxide emissions in the state according to the Oregon Dept of Energy.

Both leading Democratic gubernatorial candidates went on the record with the Mercury in favor of Oregon ditching coal and phasing out Boardman, though Bill Bradbury was willing to set a 2060 2014 deadline for coal-free Oregon while John Kizhaber did not want to set a specific deadline.

Contacted for comment minutes ago, PGE's media relations worker responded, "I'm not sure if we're issuing a news release."

Um, too late.

Update 5:17 pm: Lead coal fighter at the Oregon Sierra Club Cesia Kerns is conflicted about the announcement. "It shows that PGE is taking a step in the right direction, but shutting it down in 2014 would be even better for Oregon's health," says Kerns. Thanks to a rule handed down by the Department of Environmental Quality, says Kerns, the Boardman plant will have to install expensive pollution controls in 2014. The Sierra Club says they should seize the 2014 date to shut down altogether. "They have been polluting unchecked for the past three decades, they should not keep polluting for another decade," says Kerns.

PGE returned my request for comment just a minute ago, confirming that they will be shutting down Boardman or phasing out coal by 2020 and that they will, at some point, send out a press release.

 

Comments (12) RSS

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1
Great news. Though Boardman is Oregon's coal plant, Oregon gets most of it's coal electricity from Montana.
Posted by R on January 14, 2010 at 9:40 PM · Report
2
Only 300 pounds of coal an hour? Questionable.
Posted by ujfoyt on January 14, 2010 at 9:49 PM · Report
3
Again, Sarah, Boardman burns 300 TONS of coal per hour. And Sierra Club sure seems to be having a difficult time accepting victory, don't they? The announcment from PGE says the plant will be closed BY 2020, not in 2020. There's lots more negotiating to do, so for once, can't they just be happy that progress has been made?
Posted by ElGordo on January 15, 2010 at 9:05 AM · Report
4
What will it be replaced with? How will they generate the missing 40% of our power? From previous articles, I had the impression that almost everyone agreed Boardman should go, but we didn't have a good plan to replace it. Did someone think of one? If not, this might be a hollow announcement...
Posted by Reymont on January 15, 2010 at 9:06 AM · Report
5
PGE will build a natural gas-fired plant at Boardman, and probably another natural gas plant at Clatskanie. And the 40% refers to total power consumed in Oregon generated by coal - Pacific Power is mostly a coal utility, with plants in Washington and Wyoming that send power to Oregon. Boardman only provides about 10% of Oregon's total electricity.
Posted by ElGordo on January 15, 2010 at 9:39 AM · Report
6
@ElGordo - Thanks! How does natural gas compare to coal? I'm guessing it falls about halfway between coal and solar, wind, etc.
Posted by Reymont on January 15, 2010 at 10:44 AM · Report
7
Natural gas emissions are much cleaner than coal from an air quality standpoint. The carbon emissions are between 30-50% of coal on a per-unit basis for energy generated. So yeah, about half of coal, but much greater than the zero marginal emissions from renewable sources.
Posted by ElGordo on January 15, 2010 at 11:38 AM · Report
8
El Gordo,

I checked with the Sierra Club and state, then changed the 300 pounds to 300 tons. Thanks for the polite correction.
Posted by s.mirk on January 15, 2010 at 12:51 PM · Report
9
did they let anyone in to jump around inside that coal plant?
Posted by Jay B on January 15, 2010 at 5:02 PM · Report
10
@Jay B: I highly doubt it. With as controversial as it is, I bet security is pretty tight. And unlike BPA where they have an education component to their mission statement, PGE is under no obligation to give tours. Certainly, giving an environmental group a tour every few years is a good way to avoid suspicion, (I mean, everyone knows that it is a coal plant, but they can show them that they have this and that control system in place,) but beyond that, I'd bet that the number of tours they give it quite small.

The "factories" that give tours to anyone, (like the Tillamook cheese factory,) tend to do it for marketing reasons. Even for a non-controversial thing, (for instance, the big pipe,) nobody really wants to have to deal with a bunch of random people wondering through, it is a lot of work to keep them and the plant safe.
Posted by Matthew D on January 16, 2010 at 9:32 PM · Report
11
R - Boardman supplies more electricity than resources in Montana. The facility in Montana is much larger than Boardman, but PGE only has a 20% ownership. (PGE owns 65% of Boardman.)
Source:
http://www.portlandgeneral.com/our_company…

I agree with Reymont and El Gordo that natural gas is cleaner. However, I am worried about putting too many eggs in one basket. What happens when gas prices become volatile again, or LNG facilities do not come to fruition? As dependance on gas for electrification grows, so will prices.

Why the rush to close Boardman (but not Colstrip in Montana, or whomever the #1 mercury polluter in the state may be), without a suitable permanent alternative?

Why not a push to get Salem to repeal the laws that keep clean, reliable nuclear energy from being developed?
Posted by Ranger on April 1, 2010 at 1:28 PM · Report
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