Dec 16, 2010 by Shanna Cleveland

Manchester residents say Salem power plant shutdown would be good news

By Kendra Noyes Staff Writer The Gloucester Daily Times Mon Dec 13, 2010, 10:46 PM EST

By Amanda McGregor
STAFF WRITER

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SALEM — The state energy secretary is calling on the New England electric grid operator to allow Salem Harbor Station to close.

Ian Bowles, state secretary of energy and environmental affairs, wrote a letter to Independent System Operator New England urging the agency to allow the plant to be delisted.

The alternative, Bowles said, would force Dominion Energy, the company that owns the power plant, to "spend hundreds of millions of dollars on environmental upgrades to extend the life of an outmoded plant," which would hike utility costs for ratepayers, too.

"In my view, Massachusetts consumer dollars should be invested in clean energy solutions," Bowles wrote, "... rather than in keeping open an older generation coal plant that cannot compete economically and struggles to meet standards necessary to protect our environmental and public health."

Bowles' letter to ISO New England, dated Dec. 8., was made public by the Conservation Law Foundation, an environmental group fighting to close the plant.

The 59-year-old, coal- and oil-fired plant has the capacity to provide power for 750,000 homes. It has been a key player for decades in the New England energy market.

Dominion announced last month that it expects to close Salem Harbor Station within five years.

However, ISO New England, the agency that oversees the New England energy market, has rejected the plant's past requests to delist two of its four generators. ISO has said the plant is needed to ensure energy reliability for the region.

Bowles wrote that ISO New England needs to move "from planning to implementation" on finding alternative solutions for reliability without Salem Harbor Station.

"I urge you to evaluate all cost-effective options to move ahead as quickly as possible," Bowles wrote.

Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll said Bowles' letter underscores the pressure to close older power plants, but that doesn't change the fact that the transmission upgrades haven't been made.

"I took his letter as encouraging them to do those transmission upgrades," Driscoll said. "I think reliability is a question."

In October, Dominion filed to permanently delist its four generating units. That move, if approved, would withdraw Salem Harbor Station from a June 2011 energy auction for the 2014-2015 power year, Bowles wrote.

"The Commonwealth is concerned that despite Dominion's expressed desire to retire the plant," Bowles wrote, "reliability concerns will require its continued operation, resulting in significant environmental and economic costs to Massachusetts ratepayers."

Last month, Dominion CFO Mark McGettrick told investors that the Virginia energy giant "will not invest any capital" for pollution controls at the Salem facility.

A Dominion spokesman recently told The Salem News that the plant's future is closely linked to federal energy regulations on ozone that are scheduled to go into effect between 2015 and 2017.

"There are a number of impending federal environmental regulations that will require older coal plants like Salem Harbor to become much cleaner," Bowles wrote.

Bowles called on ISO New England to place a "renewed and sustained effort" on finding a solution that will allow for the "near-term retirement of Salem Harbor." Bowles concluded his two-page letter by offering his help in the matter.

"Clearly the lifespan of this plant continues to be something of concern," Driscoll said, "and now the company and state officials are remarking on it, so it doesn't seem to be here for the long term, I think that's fair to say."

Salem Harbor Station employs 145 people and is the city's largest taxpayer — Dominion paid $4.5 million into city coffers this year.

"It certainly remains disconcerting from a financial perspective how we're going to overcome this hurdle," Driscoll said.

Salem received a $200,000 state grant this year to study future use of the power plant site.

"We certainly are grateful that we have the grant from the state to study the energy market, existing conditions and reuse options," Driscoll said.

The study is under way, she said, and will likely be completed by late spring or early summer.

"For us, having a smooth and orderly transition to whatever is next is really critical," Driscoll said. "The worst is if someone comes down and padlocks the plant."

SalemNews.com, Salem, MA 32 Dunham Road Beverly, MA 01915

Dec 9, 2010 by Shanna Cleveland

Long bewitched by lucrative coal plant, Salem, Mass., seeks foray into cleaner energy

"Not in my lifetime" is a retort the Salem Harbor Power Station's opponents got used to hearing over years of warnings that the end was near for the hulking plant.

For six decades, the plant has stood over the historic port's entrance like a smoking sentry, burning the coal and oil that made it a target for environmentalists while paying the millions in taxes that helped it win local loyalty.

But as tough pollution rules approach, the plant looks poised for that predicted exit. Early this month, plant owner Dominion's chief financial officer, Mark McGettrick, told investors that within five years "we would expect Salem Harbor plant to shut down."

The comment rattled city leaders, but environmentalists say Salem — best known for the infamous witch trials of 1692 — now has a chance to demonstrate how a city can best move beyond coal.

"This is the beginning of what's going to be happening all over the country," said the Rev. Jeffrey Barz-Snell of the Salem Alliance for the Environment.

Some closures are already under way nationwide. The power company Exelon Corp. is planning to shutter two Pennsylvania coal plants, both more than 50 years old, by 2012. Edison International plans to shut two 55-year-old coal plants near Chicago by the end of this year.

The Salem plant is older than all those facilities, opening in 1951 before expanding in 1958 and 1972. The 745-megawatt plant can power 745,000 homes and is paying Salem $4.75 million in taxes and fees this year.

Delores Jordan, who lives about a half-mile from the power station, remembers the playground that spanned the plant's property before its smokestacks, rusting oil tanks and massive coal mound claimed the ocean view.

Salem residents, wowed by the promised millions in revenues, supported the plant from the start, said Jordan, 82. The support held strong, she said, even after residue streaming from its smokestacks began leaving a black film on windows and porches.

The plant's pollution eventually earned it a listing in 2000 as one of the state's "filthy five" dirtiest power plants. It also took a big hit in 2007 when an accident killed three workers. And a study a decade ago by Harvard University researchers said the plant caused 30 premature deaths annually.

Such studies prompt deep skepticism locally. And since Dominion Resources Inc. purchased the plant in 2005, it's reduced pollution with steps such as switching to a low-sulfur coal. But Dominion has also signaled with its wallet that the Salem plant was a dropping priority.

Since 2005, Dominion has spent more than $1 billion on its larger and more efficient 1,547-megawatt coal plant at Brayton Point in Somerset, compared with $12 million in Salem.

Dominion spokesman Dan Genest added that Salem is a so-called "merchant" plant, meaning it sells power into a market instead of directly to ratepayers, so Dominion can't shift the costs of any new pollution controls to ratepayers.

"We would not spend the money for those controls, and we would close the plant down if we could not recover our costs," he said.

But ratepayers might still end up paying for such upgrades in Salem.

In recent years, Dominion has asked the local grid manager, ISO New England, for permission to temporarily remove, or "delist," its generators from a key energy market. But the ISO has required Salem to operate, and can continue to do so, if it determines that Salem is needed to guarantee the area gets sufficient power when energy use spikes.

The ISO is now studying how to replace the Salem plant, such as by adding wires to upgrade the transmission system. Such upgrades can take five to eight years, given the complexity that comes with running wires through new areas, said Doug Hurley of the research firm Synapse Energy Economics Inc.

If new environmental rules go into effect while Dominion is required to keep Salem running, the millions in costs to comply are passed on to ratepayers, pending approval by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

"We could have this plant sticking around ... putting out pollution, funded by ratepayers," said Shanna Cleveland of the Conservation Law Foundation, a longtime plant opponent that unearthed McGettrick's remarks.

Salem Mayor Kimberly Driscoll noted the plant meets stringent pollution regulations. And she wouldn't mind an extended life for the plant. This year's taxes and fees are roughly equal to the public works department's budget, she said.

A study that will look at reusing the site is planned, and a luxury marina or a cleaner power generator are among the ideas that have been floated. But Driscoll notes that none of it will match the revenue the plant brings.

Sgt. Peter Gifford, Salem's harbormaster and a lifelong resident, spoke about the plant's roughly 145 jobs as he considered a Salem without a power station he calls "a good neighbor." The work represents a piece of Salem history that Gifford, 57, doesn't want to see disappear.

"I've watched Salem change in my life from a blue collar manufacturing town, to (now) that's the last plant left," Gifford said, as he sat in his work pickup, the plant behind him. "That's it."

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Associated Press Energy Writer Jonathan Fahey in New York contributed to this report.

Published: Monday, November 29, 2010, 5:00 AM

By PETER VICKERY
and DICK STEIN

The coal-fired power station at Mount Tom generates 146 megawatts of electricity, employs more than 50 people, and pays the city of Holyoke close to $2 million a year in taxes.

But it also pumps more than 1 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and spills toxins into the water, making our climate less stable, our communities less healthy and our kids’ futures less secure. Is there some way we can keep the benefits of Mount Tom (the electricity, the jobs, and the tax revenue) while getting rid of the problems (the climate-changing pollution)?

Looking at cases in two other states and one example right here in the Pioneer Valley, we think the answer is yes, we can.

We believe that our elected officials should start talking with GDF Suez, the company that owns the Mount Tom power station, about a step-by-step process for transitioning the facility away from coal to a cleaner source of energy. And we are convinced that the only way to kick-start that conversation is through a broad-based coalition of community organizations, labor unions, farmers and small businesses. We look forward to watching that coalition take shape over the weeks ahead.

But before getting into strategy and tactics, we have to ask a threshold question: Is it even possible to transform a coal-fired power station? It certainly is. Earlier this year, Xcel Energy unveiled its repowered Riverside plant in Minneapolis, Minn. Riverside used to burn coal, but in response to a law that the Minnesota legislature passed in 2001 Xcel converted the facility to natural gas.

Just last year, after a blue-ribbon commission that included business leaders and mayors presented them with a list of policy proposals, legislators in Colorado passed a law similar to Minnesota’s. As a result, utilities in Colorado have to replace their old coal-fired power stations with natural gas and renewable energy sources. Conversions at four of Denver’s coal-burning facilities are already under way.

And right here in the Pioneer Valley, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, has ditched coal in favor of natural gas. Whereas most of the energy released in the coal-burning boilers at Mount Tom gets wasted, with only a fraction going to making electricity, the UMass machinery is much more efficient. Through a system called cogeneration, the new generator at UMass captures the left-over energy and uses it to heat dorms, classrooms and offices across the campus.

Taking a leaf out of the UMass book and using natural gas instead of coal at Mount Tom would let GDF Suez make about three times as much electricity as it makes right now. In other words, more power with less pollution.

Natural gas is not a perfect solution. Like coal, it emits carbon dioxide (although 70 percent less than coal), and in the long run it would not make sense to replace our dependence on one fossil fuel with another. As we think ahead to a post-coal future, the important thing is to diversify our energy mix. Wind, solar, geothermal energy and - for the time being at least - natural gas all have the potential to help us through the transition and to create hundreds of construction and green-collar jobs in an area suffering from double-digit unemployment.

GDF Suez is a private enterprise in which the government of France has a controlling stake. It became the biggest energy utility in the world by keeping both eyes on the bottom line. So in addition to creating jobs, protecting our climate, and keeping the electricity (and those tax dollars) flowing, any alternative to coal has to make financial sense for GDF Suez.

Working within the power station’s current footprint, no single source of renewable energy could produce as much electricity as coal does right now. Generating 146 megawatts would require approximately 50 wind turbines or enough solar panels to cover 300 football fields.

Working out the combination of energy sources that makes sense for GDF Suez and for the Pioneer Valley will involve citizens and their representatives sitting down with the company, studying the problem together, and negotiating. Sure, that will take some hardnosed bargaining and compromises all round, but that is better than simply crossing our fingers and hoping for the best. And the time to start talking is now.

Even the big energy companies agree that coal is not a viable medium-term source of energy. Regulators are demanding higher standards - as they should - so the cost of keeping coal-fired power stations operational will only go up.

As the Wall Street Journal reported in September, prices and regulations are increasingly nudging power companies away from coal. According to the Journal, the trend is so pronounced that “hardly a week goes by without a company announcing changes that push coal to the sidelines.”

GDF Suez has already paid for expensive modifications to bring Mount Tom into line with current clean-air rules. When the new regulations come into force, will the company continue to shell out for costly upgrades or cut its losses and close the plant?

If the power station goes, the jobs and tax revenue will vanish as well. So the question is not “should GDF Suez stop burning coal at Mount Tom” but rather “when GDF Suez stops burning coal at Mount Tom, what happens next?”

We do not pretend to have all the answers. We just believe that the time to start the conversation with GDF Suez is sooner - while the plant is open - rather than later, when the company has already made the decision to close it down. By opening the dialogue now, citizens can exercise some control over the outcome. The alternative is to wait and hope for GDF Suez to forget its shareholders and focus on what’s best for Western Massachusetts. That is not much of an option.

Peter Vickery is a master’s degree candidate, Center for Public Policy & Administration, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Richard S. “Dick” Stein is Goessmann Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.