Power Switch

By now, every child in kindergarten knows that coal-fired power
plants spew destructive carbon dioxide into the air. Kansas Gov.
Mark Parkinson is way older than a kindergartner, but is he smarter
than one?

When Parkinson capitulated to Sunflower Electric Power Corporation
and approved construction of a coal-fired power plant in western
Kansas, he sucker-punched his predecessor, Kathleen Sebelius,
who had mustered the political courage to oppose Sunflower’s expansion
for a solid two years.

The new governor also gave the finger to thousands of Kansans who
had put exceptional pressure on their elected officials to hold the
line against a dirty idea.

Parkinson insists that his behind-closed-doors agreement is a win
for the environment. Sure, we get some more coal but, the governor
reasons, we also get some neat perks, such as more wind-power
development and a funky algae experiment.

That’s just so much green wash.

Pitch staff writer Carolyn Szczepanski took a few minutes
last week to actually look at Parkinson’s deal with Sunflower. Someone
had to because no one else in the media seemed to be paying much
attention.

In a press release, the governor said the deal included an
“unprecedented level of carbon mitigation” to reduce the new plant’s
environmental damage. In effect, Parkinson hopes to make up for the new
coal pollution by balancing it out with renewable energy. In a news
conference announcing the agreement, he said, “It is entirely possible
that the carbon impact of this plant is zero or perhaps even less than
zero.”

By unprecedented, he meant imaginary.

Recall that Sunflower wanted to build two plants in Holcomb.
Parkinson’s deal allows just one. His claim of zero-carbon impact means
that the governor is counting the nonconstruction of that second plant
as a reduction in carbon emissions.

The deal also calls for decommissioning two oil-fired power stations
owned by Sunflower in Garden City. The governor’s office has suggested
that scrapping those old clunkers would save 60,000 tons of carbon a
year. Maybe — if they were still in use. But even Sunflower
officials admit that the facilities have been inoperable for years.

As for green-energy offsets, all the wind turbines in the world
won’t suck a single pound of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

The agreement asks Sunflower to burn fuel that includes 10 percent
biomass — grass, wood, ag waste. Burning a little biomass instead
of some of the coal, the governor says, will spare us from 950,000 tons
of carbon dioxide a year.

Except for one little detail. The agreement says Sunflower doesn’t
have to burn any biomass if doing so turns out to be
“technically or economically unviable.” Meaning: If biomass costs more
than coal, Sunflower doesn’t have to do it.

Craig Volland, with the Kansas Sierra Club, ran the numbers
and found that, yep, biomass will probably be more expensive than the
black stuff. So Sunflower will likely get to take a pass on that.

What else? When the Gov sends us an Excel spreadsheet calculating
and outlining the carbon savings of the great deal he’s brokering,
we’re likely — being curious and inquisitive types — to
click on the “properties” section to see who prepared the thing.

We’re not sure how to break this to you, but the document wasn’t
produced by Parkinson’s office. It wasn’t even drafted by the Kansas
Department of Health and Environment.

The author is Wayne Penrod: an engineer for Sunflower
Electric Power Corporation.

Beth Martino, Parkinson’s spokeswoman, won’t confirm that
Penrod is the spreadsheet’s author. “The offsets were calculated as
part of the confidential legal settlement negotiations,” she writes us
in an e-mail.

OK. Parkinson greased the deal with Sunflower, but it required more
than the new governor’s signature. Before Sunflower got the go-ahead
for its new monster in Holcomb, the Legislature had to sign off on the
Comprehensive Energy Bill.

The bill passed overwhelmingly — with only two senators and 18
representatives voting against it.

We can understand their excitement about not having to spend any
more time fighting about coal. But how did they miss the big black hole
in one of the bill’s main provisions?

Let’s say you want to produce your own power. So you shell out for a
wind turbine or a solar panel and hook it up to your house.Now let’s
say the equipment produces more electricity than you need. Woo hoo! You
can sell that excess back to your local utility. The way to do that in
Kansas used to be through a lopsided process called “parallel
generation.” Customers got stuck with the cost of the meter and shorted
on the price of what they sold into the grid. The Comprehensive Energy
Bill leveled the playing field with a new system called “net metering.”
Now utilities have to provide customers with the meter to read the
homegrown power; then they have to compensate the customers at a
reasonable rate for the power they produce.

But there are a couple of big problems with what the Legislature
approved.

First, there’s a cap. After buying a measly 1 percent of peak-demand
power from citizen producers, a utility — Sunflower, say —
can refuse any more homegrown electricity. So even though Kansas has
11,000 megawatts of generating capacity, Kansans will only be able to
harness and sell a meager 67 megawatts.

Even worse, the net-metering provision only applies to
investor-owned utilities. It doesn’t include municipal utilities or
rural electric co-ops. That means 551,000 customers of rural and
municipal utilities can’t get in on the deal.

A cynic might think that the loophole is there at Sunflower’s
urging. Steve Miller, the company’s spokesman, says
otherwise.

“We didn’t testify on net metering one way or the other,” he says.
“We never expressed a view, period.”

How courteous. Thanks, Sunflower.

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