The Wake

We poison the air with every flick of the light switch. Whether we know it or not, we each are guilty of pouring tons of toxic materials into our environment by using the modern marvel of electricity. Our society depends on it. Our planet suffers for it. But the Twin Cities’ power providers are seeking to change all of that.

Xcel Energy, the Twin Cities’ major power provider, has begun a project to clean up their power plants’ emissions. Dubbing the plan the Metro Emissions Reduction Project (MERP), the billion dollar renovation project is already in the third year of its six-year schedule. Through MERP, Xcel Energy will refit two of its existing power plants—the High Bridge plant in St. Paul, and the Riverside Plant along Minneapolis’s riverfront—with a new fuel source: natural gas.

“We at Xcel are very proud of this effort,” says Ron Elsner, an Xcel Energy representative and a MERP Project Manager at Xcel Energy’s King Plant. With natural gas, the Riverside and High Bridge Plants’ toxic emissions will cease entirely.

Despite a century of scientific and technological advancement, our conventional power plants continue to operate using the same time-tested method: using intense heat to generate steam that turns a turbine to generate electricity. Even nuclear plants operate on this principle, splitting atoms to run their boilers. But the majority of plants here in the Twin Cities still burn coal by the trainful to generate the megawattage our metropolis requires.

As anyone walking past a smokestack can attest to, coal does not burn clean. The smoke it produces holds many toxins, but the worst among them are sulfur dioxide, a chemical partially responsible for acid rain; mercury, the dense metal made famous by thermometers; NOX, a dangerous toxicant and all-around health hazard; and the denser parts of the smoke that settle back to Earth as particulate matter, or ash. These four toxins are responsible for, among other things, altering climate patterns, reducing air quality, polluting water sources, and increasing cancer rates throughout the urban population. Natural gas, by comparison, burns clean, producing no harmful byproducts and no particulate matter. This makes it ideal for urban industrial use.

Through a combination of renovation and reconstruction, both the Riverside and High Bridge plants will switch from coal-burning operation to natural gas-burning by 2008. Not only will coal become a thing of the past, but the facilities needed for coal-burning—the trains that haul tons of coal through the city and the technology needed to filter toxins from coal smoke—will also become obsolete. There will be no more belching smokestacks as a price for our power.

Price is, however, the major concern of the average consumer, and of paramount importance to students leaving the university with little more than debt to their name. And the change to natural gas comes with several key worries, not the least of which are the sheer cost of the fuel when compared to coal: generating the same amount of electricity by burning natural gas will cost roughly ten times as much as it previously did through coal burning. Natural gas is a more scarce resource than coal, and in high demand, especially in the Twin Cities. While everyone is in favor of cleaner power plants, consumers might not be willing to pay an extra figure on their electrical bills, or suffer through blackouts if Xcel’s natural gas lines run dry.

Luckily, Xcel Energy, and the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC), foresaw the potential problems a full year before the MERP began. To ensure that natural gas continues as needed at their retrofitted power plants, Xcel Energy has contracted individual gas lines to each plant individually, in accordance with the PUC’s 2003 Public Utilities Natural Gas Conference. Each contract will remain autonomous from Xcel’s other natural gas services. Additionally, Elsner is confident that the multiple major pipelines carrying natural gas into Minnesota—originating from both Canada and the south Midwest—will keep natural gas prices competitive, allowing Xcel Energy to maintain their own prices.

But competitive gas prices alone are not enough to make up for the cost difference in fuel. Because natural gas burns more efficiently than coal, the power output of each plant will rise dramatically: 80 megawatts (MW) for Riverside, and more than 270 MW in High Bridge. This substantial increase in output will allow both plants to function as Intermediate Plants, which operate about 16 hours a day for five days a week, as opposed to baseline plants, which run constantly to meet power demands. When the two plants are not in operation, the Twin Cities will rely on the local grid to make up the difference in power. Once the renovations are in place, Xcel Energy has estimated an increase of $3.50 to $4 on average monthly bills because of MERP.

Clean-burning fuels and increased power output aside, the Metro Emissions Reduction Project should in no way be seen as a final solution. As the Twin Cities grow, and power needs increase, Xcel Energy will need to look for new ways to meet the rising demands for electricity. “The resources that we need to meet the growing energy need,” cautions Elsner, “are well beyond what we’re adding with the MERP.” And as the Cities look to the surrounding power grid to make up for the growing need, the burden of providing electricity is shifted to power plants that still use polluting forms of fuel to increase their output. In this respect, conservation still remains the key in the environmental movement.