Reprinted in full from Harris News:
State’s regulatory approach on CO2 still evolving
By Chris Green
TOPEKA — The state’s approach to reducing its carbon dioxide emissions remains a work in progress following last year’s unprecedented decision to deny air-quality permits for two coal-fired power plants in southwest Kansas.
A year after the ruling by the state’s top environmental regulator, the state still lacks written guidelines that require firms to report their CO2 emissions or establish what levels of the greenhouse gas could be considered harmful.
However, three groups within state government have commenced studies of energy and environmental issues, including two that are specifically looking for ways to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions causing global warming.
In addition, the Kansas Department of Health and Environmental has started asking some companies to voluntary report their CO2 emissions, even as it awaits further guidance from the federal government on carbon emission regulations.
In nixing permits for the proposed Holcomb expansion project by Sunflower Electric Power Corp. and its partners last year, Health and Environment Secretary Rod Bremby cited the estimated 11 millions tons of carbon dioxide that the Hays-based utility’s plants would emit each year.
Scientists have linked the greenhouse gas to global warming and Bremby said he couldn’t ignore growing data about the dangers it presented. He also promised his ruling would be the first step in an emerging effort to address carbon emissions.
There are no state or federal regulations regarding carbon dioxide and so far, Sunflower has been the only applicant to see its permit request denied by KDHE because of the amount of CO2 being emitted by its proposal.
One company, Topeka-based Westar Energy, has received air-quality operating and construction permits for its coal-fired Jeffrey Energy Center near St. Marys after entering into an agreement with KDHE earlier this year to voluntarily measure and reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.
However, the operating permits for 13 other coal-fired generators up-and-running in the state — including the existing Holcomb plant — remain under the agency’s review, according to information provided by KDHE spokeswoman Maggie Thompson.
Supporters of the project, including the Legislature’s top Republican leaders, have seized on the uniqueness of the Sunflower ruling to argue that the cooperative utility’s permits have been unfairly denied.
The company is presently challenging Bremby in an administrative appeal that could ultimately wind up before the Kansas Supreme Court sometime next year.
Earl Watkins, Sunflower president and chief executive officer, said that because his company met all existing laws and rules, it has a right to the permits for the plants.
Bremby’s decision to deny permission for the plants’ construction has created uncertainty not just for Sunflower but other companies that might want to locate their significant projects in Kansas, Watkins said.
“You’re going to go someplace else where you understand there’s regulatory certainty,” Watkins said. “I think it’s impossible to measure the damage to the state of Kansas as result of this, because how do you measure that someone did not come that was planning on it?”
Ongoing studies
But Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and KDHE officials have denied accusations that the ruling has created uncertainty in the state and cite the issuance of 574 permits by the agency since last October as evidence of that.
Bremby has also said he based his decision in part on a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court case that deemed CO2 a pollutant. He also cited a state attorney general’s opinion giving him broad authority to protect the environment and human health, even in the absence of state or federal regulations.
Environmentalists have hailed Bremby’s decision as a landmark ruling, saying it was the first time that a regulator has cited global warming as a reason for blocking a coal plant.
Bruce Nilles, national coal campaign director for the Sierra Club, said the “watershed” ruling has paved the way for other states to recognize the need to limit CO2 emissions.
He notes that an top energy adviser to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama told Bloomberg, a business news service, last week that Obama would classify CO2 as a “dangerous pollutant,” should he be elected president.
Nilles said that possibility would be a natural extension of Bremby’s decision in Kansas.
“We’ve seen it become a national issue in a way that it really wasn’t before and Kansas really helped make that important,” Nilles said of the need to limit carbon emissions.
But Tom Gross, air monitoring and planning chief at KDHE, said the agency is still waiting for guidance from the Environmental Protection Agency, which has been looking at how to catalog and regulate greenhouse gases since last year’s Supreme Court decision.
While the state hasn’t moved forward with trying to limit the carbon emissions of other projects on its own, it has started to research the footprint of companies operating in the state.
Thompson said the agency has also mailed out a survey to various firms, offering them an opportunity to voluntary report their CO2 emissions. After the request, KDHE received 125 responses, including 22 from firms that had not even been mailed a survey. She said that 55 recipients did not respond.
Bremby specifically cited the importance of the Kansas Energy and Environmental Policy Advisory Group, which Sebelius created earlier this year through an executive order.
That panel, which Bremby is an ex-officio member of, is presently working with a Pennsylvania consultant, the Center for Climate Strategies, to develop a climate action plan for Kansas. The group’s initial report is due to come out in January.
The Kansas Energy Council is also studying smaller scale ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including a controversial proposal to lower the state’s maximum speed-limit on highways from 65 mph to 55 mph.
Legislative leaders have also created a special committee of their own to study energy and environmental policy.
Bremby said such discussions would be critical for the state to both address global warming and develop a sound energy policy for the future of Kansas.
“I am convinced that working together through these comprehensive process, which include the critical element of public input, we as a state can create policies that serve us well now and into the future.”
Reprinted in full from Hutch News.
Proposed wind deals deflating hopes
Harper, Barber landowners disappointed by offers small in profit, long in lease time
By Kathy Hanks – The Hutchinson News – khanks@hutchnews.com
Good news arrived in the mail for members of the Ridge Road Wind Farm Coalition when they received a second contract from a multinational corporation wanting to develop a wind farm on their land.
But after opening the envelopes from a subsidiary of BP Alternative Energy of North America Inc., any excitement was quickly deflated.
“The contract went from bad to worse,” Bill Devoe said. “I don’t think they want us.”
The coalition of about 40 landowners along Ridge Road, near the Harper-Barber county line, formed after first being courted by a leasing agent representing BP last spring.
In a flurry of companies trying to lease land for more wind farms in the state, some leasing agents push for a quick signature on the dotted line, landowners say.
“They sent a letter trying to find out if we were interested,” Devoe said. “Then they brought a contract.”
He said a leasing agent told him that if he didn’t sign, it was fine – they would go around him, it was a big country.
Landowners also learned from the first encounter that leases could vary. “If you don’t know about it, you don’t get it,” Devoe said.
Plus, the pages of his contract were all stamped confidential, which meant once signed, the terms of the lease became confidential.
Following an attorney’s suggestion, the landowners banded together in a hope to secure equitable contracts. They made a list of common requests.
“We want all contracts to read the same,” Devoe said.
The first contract offered landowners 2 percent of the profit from a wind turbine on their property, with the length of the lease to be 40 years. The second contract offered 1 percent more, but it extended the life of the lease another 10 years.
Frustrated, none of the coalition members have signed the contract, said Bessie Conroy, a Harper County landowner.
“We are not against wind farms,” Conroy said. “Ridge Road would be a terrific spot, and we would love to have them. But we want what is fair to everybody – fair payment for the wind generator and fair payment for the buffer zone.”
She wants specific details included in the lease, such as the depth of the concrete pad that will anchor the turbine in the ground, and terms for its removal if the turbine is moved.
Leasing land for wind is a relatively new domain. For advice, Pratt attorney Jack Black turns to lawyers in other parts of the state who have worked with developing wind farms. Black likens the contracts to oil and gas leases that landowners sign.
“People need to look long and hard at the contracts,” he said. “You may be dealing with really nice people, but if the contract is for 40 or 50 years, you are tying up a lot of things.”
Those nice people, who were around when the contract was signed, might not be there generation later. The company might even change hands.
The contracts should contain provisions to cover such details as access roads and changes in land ownership, for example.
Devoe is frustrated that he is asked to sign a contract with BP, yet no one from the company will speak with him.
“We don’t get to talk to the company, we have to go through a leasing agent,” Devoe said.
Carmen Farnbach of Lone Tree Leasing & Abstract, Harper, handles leasing for BP.
“Heavens no,” she said when asked if she ever rushed landowners into signing contracts. She encourages them to take their time, she said.
“See an attorney, talk it over as a family,” Farnbach said. “Every land lease is the same.”
She wouldn’t discuss the terms of the lease.
“That’s private information between BP and the landowner,” she said.
