The Garden City Telegram

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Power move

Published 2/1/2010 in Commentary : Editorial

For anyone eager for the planned expansion of the Sunflower Electric Power Corp. plant at Holcomb — and there are many in this community — notable news came last week on a couple of fronts.

During a visit to the Garden City Noon Lions meeting, Sunflower chief executive officer Earl Watkins spoke with optimism about the renewed prospect of the Holcomb expansion project.

A deal last year cleared the way for Sunflower to build one coal-fired, 895-megawatt plant instead of two 700-megawatt units initially proposed but shelved due to the state's 2007 denial of an air-quality permit.

Watkins told listeners that in spite of the Environmental Protection Agency recently declaring greenhouse gases — mainly carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels — a public health threat that could lead to the first federal limits on climate-changing emissions from cars, factories and power plants, he predicted "no meaningful climate legislation will come through this year."

Either way, we would expect Sunflower — which at Holcomb has the cleanest coal-burning plant in Kansas — to meet any guidelines imposed at the state or federal level.

In another positive bit of news last week, President Obama in his State of the Union address urged the pursuit of more clean coal technologies, among other energy initiatives.

Specifically, the president said: "... to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country. It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development. It means continued investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies ..."

Obama's mention of the need to advance the use of clean coal was encouraging as Sunflower remains ready to move forward with a Holcomb project featuring state-of-the-art carbon-mitigation technologies. Sunflower also has made needed strides in diversifying its energy portfolio by incorporating wind and other renewable sources.

Obama made it clear that future legislation should power a diversified energy portfolio that creates clean energy jobs and benefits consumers.

For supporters of Sunflower's proposed Holcomb expansion, that's been the goal all along.

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