MEA plan avoids the obvious

I read with a sense of disbelief the plans for the new 100-megawatt power plant the Matanuska Electric Association board has approved. The power plant would comprise engine-driven generators manufactured in Finland. The engines are apparently a duel fuel setup, running on either natural gas or diesel. The plant will be built near Eklutna. The new power plant must be operational by 2014 when MEA’s contract for power with Chugach Electric is up.

First, I would like to ask the board why it approved the purchase of equipment that was not made in the United States? Were Cummins, Detroit, Caterpillar, Waukesha, John Deere — to name a few U.S. manufacturers of diesel power generation equipment — asked to bid?

Is it a good idea to put the success of the facility in the hands of a foreign source of supply and manufacture?

Secondly, does anyone on the board understand that we have a natural gas shortage in Southcentral?

It was stated in the article that there were unspecified potential natural gas deposits in the area where the plant is to be located that could be tapped to supply the gas needed to run the plant. Just how many years will it take to produce that gas? How many years of supply will that gas provide? Why would the needed gas well be drilled when every attempt to drill in the Valley previously was met with open hostility? How does the board intend to meet EPA emissions standards for air quality with its new power plant, if diesel fuel has to be used?

One has keep in mind that Agrium and the export liquid natural gas plant closed because of the diminishing Kenai/Cook Inlet gas supply.

To run the power plant on diesel is a step backward that is difficult to comprehend. One issue is the ever-increasing cost of diesel fuel; another issue is the emissions from the plant. If one considers that Red Dog Mine has a diesel power plant to provide power for the mine, and that power plant has been repeatedly fined by the EPA for its emissions, the portent for MEA’s plant in that regard bodes ill for the future. The cost of diesel will certainly bring into question the viability of the plant in terms of the cost of power to the consumer.

I can see the desire to provide an interim power solution with the looming specter of a compressor failure on the Kenai/Cook Inlet gas fields. That situation would interrupt power generation at Beluga and gas supplies for Southcentral Alaska for up to two years. If this plant is a stopgap measure, it should be a consideration of last resort.

One has to wonder why MEA’s board has rejected a logical and economical solution to power generation for the future of Southcentral.

What was that solution?

Coal.

The Matanuska Valley has a wealth of high-grade coal that will be exported and used elsewhere. Like most of our natural resources, MEA’s board is subjecting its consumers to the unnecessary loss of jobs and opportunity because of the vision of times now long gone when coal mines left great scars in the land.

Today’s reclamation law makes that issue moot.

The emissions of a coal-powered electric generation plant are also something grotesquely exaggerated.

Had MEA’s board approved a mine mouth power plant, the mine’s economics would be improved, MEA’s customers would enjoy reduced power costs and industry would have the low-cost energy that it needs to justify locating to the Mat-Su Valley.

Jobs and opportunity will be in increasingly short supply as the recession continues to impact Alaska’s economy.

Natural gas is not going to come south from the North Slope for at least another 10 years. Our governor and a shortsighted Legislature have ensured the state’s looming economic disaster. TAPS may end within three to five years. It was difficult to get the flow of oil restarted with the last shutdown due to a pump station leak.

The diesel power plant is one step forward, but three back. It is a solution of diminishing benefit and an example of a shortsighted worldview that is inconsistent with a power company’s purpose in the community. MEA’s board is not exercising good judgment in this case. This is a case, like Governor Parnell in his opposition to the all-Alaska natural gas pipeline to Valdez, of avoiding the obvious.

Larry Wood is a Palmer businessman and a 57-year resident of Alaska.