Legalectric

And here I thought the Joyce Foundation was bad…

DORIS DUKE FOUNDATION NEEDS TO DO THEIR HOMEWORK!!!! THEY’RE WAY BEHIND THE CURVE!

So will someone please explain why the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation dove into promoting coal? So will someone please explain why the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation dove into promoting coal GASIFICATION? So will someone please explain why the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation dove into promoting coal gasification with capture and sequestration when it does not exist and as if it will in the near future? Why jump in, in such a BIG way, when it’s apparaent to the world, even the DOE and Wall Street, that there is no such thing as “clean coal” and that it’s “too risky for private investment.” It’s enough to make me puke! Whatever are they thinking? Having read some about the life and interests of Doris Duke, noting the focus of the Foundation’s grants, reasonable and sound areas like wildlife preservation, Islamic art, medical research… she would be spinning in her grave if she knew what they were doing. Somebody quick channel Doris Duke, get her on a conference call!

HOW DENSE CAN THEY BE? WHY, WHEN THEY COULD PUT MONEY INTO RENEWABLE ENERGY, ENERGY CONSERVATION, PAIRING OF INTERMITTENT RENEWABLE ENERGY FOR DISPATCHABLE POWER…

THIS ISN’T ROCKET SCIENCE!

WHY COAL? WHY WOULD THEY PUT SO MUCH INTO PROMOTING THIS FOSSIL? It seems they haven’t done the most basic research and noted the… ahem… DOWNWARD TRAJECTORY OF COAL GASIFICATION!!! Maybe they like to throw money away. Maybe they have so much they don’t know what to do with it. Maybe they don’t have the creativity or braincells to conceive of a future without coal. Maybe they are beholden to the coal industry (though I don’t see the kind of coal and IGCC investments that Joyce has but we’ll see when the 2007 IRS 990 is posted). Maybe they haven’t noticed that CO2 capture is not happening and that it isn’t likely to anytime soon, per the DOE, and maybe they didn’t read the New York Times today:

Mounting costs slow the push for clean coal (see below)

What are they doing? Check out this admission on their program page:

Low-emission uses of coal, such as gasification combined with carbon capture and storage technology

Will someone please tell them that “gasification combined with carbon capture and storage technology” DOES NOT EXIST! Wherever do they get the notion that it does? Who are they listening to? Who are their experts? Who is providing them with the $$$ to throw away like this on such a flawed, such a cosmically bad idea?

And look at their grants page, look at the piles of money they threw at coal, OH MY DOG, it’s turning my stomach:

2007 Grants – Deploy & Develop Clean-Energy Technologies

Bipartisan Policy Center
$490,000 over 1.5 years
Washington, DC – To support work by the National Commission on Energy Policy to determine a feasible mix of low-carbon technologies for the U.S. and recommend policy changes to facilitate their development and deployment.
www.bipartisanpolicy.org

Carnegie Mellon University
$1,850,000 over 2.5 years
Pittsburgh, PA – To enable a team of investigators at Carnegie Mellon, University of Minnesota, Vermont Law School and other institutions to work with a wide range of stakeholders and experts to design a regulatory structure for the capture, transport and deep geological sequestration of carbon dioxide in the United States.
www.cmu.edu

Clean Air Task Force
$845,000 over 1.5 years
Boston, MA – To create a strategy for investing in public and private research, development and demonstration of technologies that use coal for power generation without adding appreciably to the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, with a focus on innovative gasification and post-combustion capture pathways. A sub-grant to the Climate Policy Center of Clean Air-Cool Planet will enable that organization to develop specific recommendations for implementing ARPA-E, a recently authorized federal agency aimed at accelerating transformational advances in energy technology.
www.catf.us

Energy Foundation
$21 million over 3 years
San Francisco, CA – To support the Energy Foundation’s work in four areas: developing efficient building codes and building technologies in the U.S.; transforming U.S. utility regulation to make efficiency profitable and create vibrant markets for renewable energy; greening China’s building boom; and supporting the Energy Foundation’s core U.S. programs to build strategic flexibility.
www.ef.org

Harvard University
$1,460,000 over 3 years
Cambridge, MA – To support work by the Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government to develop policy recommendations for an expanded U.S. federal energy-technology innovation endeavor; evaluate the U.S. federal energy research, development, and demonstration budget on an annual basis; and assess energy technology innovation activities in the private sector of the United States, as well as in the public and private sectors of China, India, Japan and Europe.
belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
$1,987,000 over 2 years
Cambridge, MA – To support a comprehensive assessment by the MIT Industrial Performance Center of the energy technology innovation system in the United States, including recommendations for improvements to federal and state research, development and demonstration policies, as well as mechanisms for early adoption and large-scale deployment of supply and demand-side innovations.
www.mit.edu

AAAAAAAAAARGH! Can’t they do the most basic research to see that IGCC is going nowhere? All they have to do is read the record for Excelsior Energy’s Mesaba Project. Here are the costs, sans the elusive and non-existent carbon capture and sequestration from Dr. Amit’s Rebuttal testimony:

Or look at the emissions analysis by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency:

MPCA – Excelsior Final Emission Comparison

Or read the ALJ Recommendation of Denial:

ALJ RECOMMENDATION – DENIAL OF PPA

And if they looked around or even read what Harvard Business School is doing on IGCC, they’d know that Harvard Business School is the author of the scheme to shift risk and cost to state and federal taxpayers and ratepayers rather than the utilities or developers promoting this nonsense — all you have to do is read pages 1-21, it’s really not that complicated and it’s really that disgusting a scheme:

Harvard I – 3 Party Covenant

Here’s the Delaware PSC staff analysis rejecting coal gasification:

Delaware PSC staff – wind/gas combo!

So do some homework, guys, please!

Mounting costs slow the push for clean coal

By MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON — For years, scientists have had a straightforward idea for taming global warming. They want to take the carbon dioxide that spews from coal-burning power plants and pump it back into the ground.

President Bush is for it, and indeed has spent years talking up the virtues of “clean coal.” All three candidates to succeed him favor the approach. So do many other members of Congress. Coal companies are for it. Many environmentalists favor it. Utility executives are practically begging for the technology.

But it has become clear in recent months that the nation’s effort to develop the technique is lagging badly.

In January, the government canceled its support for what was supposed to be a showcase project, a plant at a carefully chosen site in Illinois where there was coal, access to the power grid, and soil underfoot that backers said could hold the carbon dioxide for eons.

Perhaps worse, in the last few months, utility projects in Florida, West Virginia, Ohio, Minnesota and Washington State that would have made it easier to capture carbon dioxide have all been canceled or thrown into regulatory limbo.

Coal is abundant and cheap, assuring that it will continue to be used. But the failure to start building, testing, tweaking and perfecting carbon capture and storage means that developing the technology may come too late to make coal compatible with limiting global warming.

“It’s a total mess,” said Daniel M. Kammen, director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley.

“Coal’s had a tough year,” said John Lavelle, head of a business at General Electric that makes equipment for processing coal into a form from which carbon can be captured. Many of these projects were derailed by the short-term pressure of rising construction costs. But scientists say the result, unless the situation can be turned around, will be a long-term disaster.

Plans to combat global warming generally assume that continued use of coal for power plants is unavoidable for at least several decades. Therefore, starting as early as 2020, forecasters assume that carbon dioxide emitted by new power plants will have to be captured and stored underground, to cut down on the amount of global-warming gases in the atmosphere.

Yet, simple as the idea may sound, considerable research is still needed to be certain the technique would be safe, effective and affordable.

Scientists need to figure out which kinds of rock and soil formations are best at holding carbon dioxide. They need to be sure the gas will not bubble back to the surface. They need to find optimal designs for new power plants so as to cut costs. And some complex legal questions need to be resolved, such as who would be liable if such a project polluted the groundwater or caused other damage far from the power plant.

Major corporations sense the possibility of a profitable new business, and G.E. signed a partnership on Wednesday with Schlumberger, the oil field services company, to advance the technology of carbon capture and sequestration.

But only a handful of small projects survive, and the recent cancellations mean that most of this work has come to a halt, raising doubts that the technique can be ready any time in the next few decades. And without it, “we’re not going to have much of a chance for stabilizing the climate,” said John Thompson, who oversees work on the issue for the Clean Air Task Force, an environmental group.

The fear is that utilities, lacking proven chemical techniques for capturing carbon dioxide and proven methods for storing it underground by the billions of tons per year, will build the next generation of coal plants using existing technology. That would ensure that vast amounts of global warming gases would be pumped into the atmosphere for decades.

The highest-profile failure involved a project known as FutureGen, which President Bush himself announced in 2003: a utility consortium, with subsidies from the government, was going to build a plant in Mattoon, Ill., testing the most advanced techniques for converting coal to a gas, capturing pollutants, and burning the gas for power.

The carbon dioxide would have been compressed and pumped underground into deep soil layers. Monitoring devices would have tested whether any was escaping to the atmosphere.

About $50 million has been spent on FutureGen, about $40 million in federal money and $10 million in private money, to draw up preliminary designs, find a site that had coal, electric transmission and suitable geology, and complete an Environmental Impact Statement, among other steps.

But in January, the government pulled out after projected costs nearly doubled, to $1.8 billion. The government feared the costs would go even higher. A bipartisan effort is afoot on Capitol Hill to save FutureGen, but the project is on life support.

The government had to change its approach, said Clarence Albright Jr., the undersecretary of the Energy Department, to “limit taxpayer exposure to the escalating cost.”

Trying to recover, the Energy Department is trying to cut a deal with a utility that is already planning a new power plant. The government would offer subsidies to add a segment to the plant dedicated to capturing and injecting carbon dioxide, as long as the utility bore much of the risk of cost overruns.

It is unclear whether any utility will agree to such a deal. The power companies, in fact, have been busy pulling back from coal-burning power plants of all types, amid rising costs and political pressure. Utility executives say they do not know of a plant that would qualify for an Energy Department grant as the project is now structured.

Most worrisome to experts on global warming, the utilities have recently been canceling their commitments to a type of plant long seen as a helpful intermediate step toward cleaner coal.

In plants of this type, coal would be gasified and pollutants like mercury, sulfur and soot removed before burning. The plants would be highly efficient, and would therefore emit less carbon dioxide for a given volume of electricity produced, but they would not inject the carbon dioxide into the ground.

But the situation is not hopeless. One new gasification proposal survives in the United States, by Duke Energy for a plant in Edwardsport, Ind.

In Wisconsin, engineers are testing a method that may allow them to bolt machinery for capturing carbon dioxide onto the back of old-style power plants; Sweden, Australia and Denmark are planning similar tests. And German engineers are exploring another approach, one that involves burning coal in pure oxygen, which would produce a clean stream of exhaust gases that could be injected into the ground.

But no project is very far along, and it remains an open question whether techniques for capturing and storing carbon dioxide will be available by the time they are critically needed.

The Electric Power Research Institute, a utility consortium, estimated that it would take as long as 15 years to go from starting a pilot plant to proving the technology will work. The institute has set a goal of having large-scale tests completed by 2020.

“A year ago, that was an aggressive target,” said Steven R. Specker, the president of the institute. “A year has gone by, and now it’s a very aggressive target.”

Enough… I can’t stand it… time to go out in the back yard and clean up the piles and piles of building supplies, lumber, parts, whatnot, work off some of this angst. As my anti-condo-development in Lake City T-shirt says” HOW DENSE CAN WE BE?

How can it be?  The IGCC coal gasification project from hell, the zombie that lives on and on and on that even its developers, Excelsior Energy, don’t even dare bring before the PUC tomorrow, this boondoggle got yet another perk from the IRS!  $133.5 in tax credits!  WHATEVER ARE THEY THINKING?

Here’s the press release:

IRS grants Mesaba Project $133.5 million in investment tax credits

Pass the barf bag…

See www.bitemebaitco.com

Promotion of IGCC and coal gasification takes a bizarre twist! What will the DOE think of next!

The DOE has announced their new FutureGen program, which focuses on Carbon Capture and Storage, but wait… read it… they say that the project has to be designed to capture 90% of CO2 emissions, but also say that it must capture and sequester ONE MILLION TONS ANNUALLY. OK, folks, let’s do the math… slowly ‘cuz I’m a math idiot. Using Mesaba as an example, 600MW produces at least 5.4 million tons annually, and so 90% of that is 4.89 tons annually. Under FutureGen, they’d have to capture, transport and store 1 million. OK, now what about the 4.89 tons minus 1 million = 3.89. We’re missing 3.89 tons that they’ve captured. So what is this? Why, it’s a fancy-schmancy CO2 CAPTURE AND RELEASE PROGRAM!!!

Here it is, straight from the horse’s… ummmmmm… nevermind (in tribute to Eight Bells, no horse’s ass awards for a while) Here’s what their press release says:

DOE’s draft FOA also requires that at least 50 percent of the energy output of the project’s energy conversion system must be used to produce electricity; the project must produce at least 300 megawatts (MW) gross electricity output; and the project must be located in the United States. In addition, the projects must be designed to achieve a goal of approximately 90 percent capture of carbon content in the syngas or flue gas and must achieve a minimum capture rate of 81 percent. Under the draft FOA, projects must also remove at least 90 percent of the mercury emissions based on mercury content of the coal, at least 99 percent of the sulfur emissions based on sulfur content of the coal, and reduce nitrogen oxide and particulate emissions to very low levels.

To ensure safe and permanent sequestration, DOE requires a number of monitoring and verification performance requirements for FutureGen project(s), including quantifying and assessing CO2 capture, transport, and storage aspects for the duration of a 3-5 year demonstration of a least one million metric tons of CO2 injected per year in a saline formation; monitoring the plume(s) of injected CO2 for a minimum of two years after cessation of the injection demonstration, with the results of the monitoring reported to DOE; and developing information necessary to estimate costs of future CO2 management systems.

What will they think of next? I sure hope they’re not thinking of a way to give Excelsior even more $$$$$$!

Oh, and before I forget — Greenpeace has joined the radical fringe organizations like the Department of Energy’s NETL and Wall Street in noting that Carbon Dioxide Capture and Sequestration ain’t happen’ anytime soon:

Greenpeace – False Hope

So, take that, FutureGen!

Somebody’s having another bad day… Tom Micheletti, Excelsior Energy, the Mesaba Project, IGCC, coal gasification, they’re all struggling, but put a muzzle on it, Tom — if you were my client, I’d fire you.  Instead, I have to thank you for providing your opponents with such hilarious reparte.

Here it is, verbatim, can you believe this rant?

Anti-Range Power’ will stop at nothing

Letter to the editor
Published: Wednesday, April 16, 2008 6:09 AM CDT
Tom Micheletti
Co-President and CEO
Excelsior Energy Inc

Editor:

I’m writing in response to your Monday, April 14 article about actions taken by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) last week confirming that state law means what it plainly says. In particular, the quote in your news story from Margaret Hodnik representing Minnesota Power (more properly known as “Anti-Range Power”) warrants a response. Ms. Hodnik’s quote, that Anti-Range Power (MP) was just seeking “clarification,” is totally disingenuous, at best. For over a year they have strained mightily to read very easy and straightforward statutory language (just ask Senator Tomassoni, who wrote it), to somehow not mean what it says. The words are so clear that even a third grader could tell you what they mean. What makes matters even worse is that before signing a contract last summer to undertake transmission upgrades required under Federal law, they insisted that Excelsior seek confirmation from the PUC on or before May 1 of this year that the transmission exemption granted by the legislature applies. Excelsior has been trying since last August to get the PUC to issue such a confirmation, which they did last Thursday. Yet Anti-Range Power (MP) last week, rather than asking that the PUC issue the confirmation (that they required) as soon as possible, instead asked the PUC to delay consideration of the transmission exemption issue. Far from “seeking clarification” they were actively seeking yet more unnecessary delay, proving yet again that they will stop at nothing to prevent the Mesaba Project from proceeding. Once again, they are concealing their true actions and intentions, hoping that people on the Iron Range will believe that they are not doing everything in their power to kill the Mesaba Project. The next thing you know is that the Anti-Range power guys will appeal the PUC’s Order, again proving where their hearts really are when it comes to job creation and environmental protection on the Iron Range.
*
This is all so similar to what the Anti-Range company is trying to get people on the Range to believe about their current pollution control expenditures at Clay Boswell, Taconite Harbor, and Syl Laskin coal plants: That is, they want people to think that they are cleaning up their polluting smokestacks out of their own kindness, generosity, concern for the health of people on the Range, and concern for the environment. In fact, they were required by federal environmental authorities to undertake those measures. And further, the Anti-Range company also filed lawsuits and lobbied to prevent the imposition of those very clean air (CAIR) requirements. Isn’t it time for Iron Range newspapers to take these people on when they are speaking half truths or no-truths?

Not since the building of the Clay Boswell plant in 1980 has any significant job-creating or environmental investment been made by that Duluth-based power company. If they truly cared about the Iron Range and its customers on the Iron Range, they would be helping us to get the Mesaba Project constructed as soon as possible. Instead, the new crop of anti-Range executives are doing exactly the opposite, with shareholder profits being the only thing that really matters to them, even if they say otherwise. All Range residents have to do is just look around to see what they have built in the last 25 years: essentially nothing. They spend more on Florida swampland than they do in our natural resource-filled lands. Perhaps it’s time for the legislature to revoke the Anti Range Power company’s monopoly service territory on the Iron Range, and give it to a company that won’t abuse such authority to the detriment of those for whom they are supposed to serve. Much higher electric and natural gas rates are on their way, no thanks to a company that seems to care less about its Iron Range bread and butter, and one that thinks that its effort to cover up its actions to do whatever it takes to prevent the Mesaba Project from becoming a reality is apparently not important, or is without consequences.

Thanks for the opportunity to comment.

Tom Micheletti
Co-President and CEO
Excelsior Energy Inc

… and what’s he ranting about?  Here’s the original article:

Excelsior Energy goes 1-1 before commission
CEO, project opponent, both sound upbeat
By Mike Jennings,
Hibbing Daily Tribune
and Lisa Rosemore,
Grand Rapids
Herald-Review
Published: Monday, April 14, 2008 6:08 AM CDT
Excelsior Energy won one and lost one when the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission ruled Thursday on requests dealing with the Mesaba Energy Project, a coal gasification power plant that Excelsior wants to build on the Iron Range.

By a 3-2 vote, the commission approved Excelsior’s request to exempt transmission infrastructure for the project from a certificate of need

Normally, utilities must convince the commission that there’s a need for a project they propose. But, under a 2003 law, the Mesaba Energy Project won’t require a certificate of need if it qualifies as an innovative energy project — and the commission has already ruled that it does.

The commission’s ruling Thursday extends the exemption from a certificate of need a step further — to the equipment that would transmit the power the Mesaba plant produces. Minnesota Power, rather than Excelsior, might have to build or own some of that transmission equipment.

The utilities commission, meeting in St. Paul, ruled against Excelsior on a second issue. The company’s chief executive called that issue the less important of the two, but the co-chair of a group that opposes the Mesaba project disagreed.

The adverse ruling dealt with a two-phase negotiating process that is supposed to fulfill a legislative mandate. The Legislature has said that, if Excelsior meets the innovative energy project standard, it is entitled to a power purchase agreement with Xcel Energy, a giant utility with more than 3 million customers in eight states.

Last August, the utilities commission declined to sign off on a first-phase agreement, which would have obliged Xcel to buy the 603-megawatt output of the first power production unit that Excelsior wants to build. Xcel filed an appeal, but the state Court of Appeals ruled it premature.

Phase two negotiations would be aimed at requiring Xcel to buy still more power from Excelsior. Excelsior had asked for an indefinite stay of that phase, but on Thursday the commission denied that request on a 5-0 vote.

“It went very well,” Excelsior CEO Tom Micheletti said of Thursday’s hearing in a telephone interview. He said the transmission issue was the more important of his company’s two petitions.

But Charlotte Neigh, co-chair of Citizens Against the Mesaba Project (CAMP), said the hangup on a power purchase agreement stymies Excelsior’s progress toward construction of a power plant near Taconite, the company’s preferred site.

Excelsior needs an agreement on power sales to Xcel “because that gives them a captive customer, which is what they absolutely must have,” Neigh said. She said she didn’t think “that winning the transmission thing was significant at all.”

Micheletti voiced disdain for Minnesota Power, which asked the commission to delay a decision on transmission infrastructure until final action on the power purchase agreement has been taken.

“They (Minnesota Power) are taking frivolous and unwarranted positions on state law,” Micheletti said. “I have a new name for them: ARP — anti-Range power.”

Excelsior Energy contended that the law regarding certificates of need and transmission infrastructure for an innovative energy project was very clear and the certificate was not needed. Margaret Hodnik, vice president of regulatory and legislative affairs for Minnesota Power, said her company held a different view.

“We feel it (state law) wasn’t clear enough,” Hodnik said. “We wanted clarification.”

Excelsior and Minnesota Power have an agreement about connecting the proposed coal gasification plant near Taconite to a sub-station near Blackberry that is owned by the power company.

Neigh said statements made by the commission chairman, LeRoy Koppendrayer, during Thursday’s meeting gave reason to believe he does not want the Mesaba project to go forward. A transcript of the meeting is not yet available.

The commission will hold further discussions later on power purchase negotiations.

Mike Jennings can be reached at mike.jennings@mx3.com. To read this story and comment on it online go to www.hibbingmn.com.

Here’s another from the Timberjay, note the last part where Bill Storm says he’s got to do some homework (DUH!):

Wednesday, April 16, 2008      Volume 19, Issue 14

Excelsior Energy seeking to delay power purchase ruling
By Marshall Helmberger

Excelsior Energy is asking the state’s Public Utilities Commission to put an indefinite hold on its request for consideration of a power purchase agreement, or PPA, for the second phase of its proposed coal gasification plant on the iron Range.

The PUC is set to hear Excelsior’s request at its April 10 meeting in St. Paul.

The company’s request for delay comes in the wake of last fall’s decision by the PUC to deny Excelsior’s request for a PPA with Xcel Energy on the first phase of its proposed Mesaba Energy project. The PUC, back in September, ordered Excelsior and Xcel, along with Minnesota Power, to continue negotiating over the terms of a PPA, but those talks have yet to produce a deal and no further action on the original PPA request is scheduled at this time.

Excelsior principal Tom Micheletti expressed optimism about the progress so far, but he expressed some frustration at the reluctance of the state’s utilities to accept the Mesaba Project and the coal gasification technology it entails. “The PPA is taking way too long,” he said. “It is unfortunate, that all the Minnesota utilities are not with us in helping to solve these problems, instead of just stonewalling the project and stonewalling the technology,” he said.

The lack of a PPA is key at this point, since all parties involved agree that without it, the project won’t move forward. Utilities like Xcel have argued they don’t need the power from the Mesaba plant and they say the technology can’t provide power at an affordable price in any case.

Janet Gonzalez, a staff analyst with the state’s PUC, said no one has a clear idea of the cost of power from the Mesaba plant at this point. She said preliminary cost estimates aren’t reliable since a number of factors haven’t been adequately defined. She acknowledged, however, that power produced by the plant will be more costly than from existing sources. “But that’s generally true with a new plant,” she said.

While Excelsior is seeking a delay on the second phase PPA at this point, Minnesota Power is asking the PUC to decide the matter now. According to Gonzalez, that’s because Minnesota Power wants to challenge a ruling made by the PUC last year, that determined that the Mesaba Project does qualify as an “Innovative Energy Project,” which gives it special regulatory exemptions under state law. Minnesota Power’s earlier attempt to challenge that decision was put on hold by the judge pending a decision on the second PPA.

Even as progress on a PPA appears at a standstill, Micheletti said Excelsior continues to move forward with siting and permitting work, although that process is facing challenges as well. The federal Environmental Protection Agency has raised some fundamental questions about the public purpose of the project, siting decisions, and other matters in a Jan. 11 letter sent in response to a draft environmental impact statement on the project. The EPA letter was just one of 122 comment letters which state officials will have to draft responses to before the EIS can be finalized. Bill Storm, who is overseeing the process for the PUC said some of the comment letters have raised issues that will likely prompt his team to do additional research instead of simply drafting responses to comments.

Here’s something I found while randomly googling around today, always looking for something about Excelsior Energy’s Mesaba Project, the IGCC coal gasification project from hell that just won’t go away, the slowest demise of a putrid power plant I’ve ever seen…

Anyway, here’s a powerpoint from Steve Jenkins, and what’s important is the slides just at the end, where he’s comparing SO2 emissions of various IGCC proposals and the two existing plantlets (mini plants):

Steve Jenkins – IGCC Environmental Performance: A Review of Air Emission Rates for U.S. IGCC Projects in Development

What important is that the emissions predicted for Excelsior Energy’s Mesaba Project are significantly higher than the others, SIGNIFICANTLY HIGHER.  When Alan Muller had questioned the Excelsior witnesses at the hearing, they’d said that a more effective means was “too expensive.”  From the charts in Jenkins’ powerpoint, it seems something to pay attention to!