Ellen Anderson: Coal plant is a step in wrong direction

Big Stone II is a proposed new coal plant that uses old-fashioned polluting technology. It would be sited just across the border from Minnesota in South Dakota. However, 70 percent of the power will be brought to Minnesota electric customers on Minnesota transmission lines, and several Minnesota utilities are partners in the plant, so it's subject to approval by Minnesota regulators.

Minnesota law has been clear for years: If you can meet your projected energy needs with more conservation and renewable energy more cheaply, than you may not build an expensive new polluting coal plant. The purpose of the law is to give preference to the cleanest source of energy possible, and to protect ratepayers from paying for expensive new unnecessary polluting power plants.

In Janurary, state energy officials said Big Stone doesn't meet those legal requirements. But recently they flip-flopped and made a deal with the Minnesota partners to approve the plant.

The proponents say they cut a good deal because the coal plant will be required to "offset" its CO2 emissions, projected at 4.7 million tons per year. The problem with this phony offset requirement is that all it requires the plant owners to do is pay themselves some money for four years, while the coal plant will be spewing pollution into the air for some 50 years.

It's bad enough that Minnesota officials are ignoring environmental and consumer protection laws that have been on the books for years. What's worse is that this plant will undermine the new laws we passed in the 2007 legislative session: some of the strongest laws in the nation to promote more renewable energy, energy efficiency and conservation, along with very ambitious goals to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. It will be extremely difficult and politically challenging to pass laws that will steer our state toward those dramatic reductions, but our state agencies, led by the governor, just made the job much harder.

I applaud Pawlenty for leading the National Governor's Association on a clean energy agenda and calling on other states to reduce greenhouse gases. But Minnesotans must ask why he is in the national media leading the charge against global climate change and quietly back home doing his part to make the problem worse.

The coal industry has approximately 150 new coal plants on the drawing board, while Americans are demanding leadership to curtail our global warming emissions. Everyone has accepted that sooner rather than later we will have federal laws restricting greenhouse gases, like a cap on carbon emissions or a carbon tax. The coal industry strategy is to get as many of these plants built as possible before federal limits on CO2 are passed, and our governor is helping them.

Many of us admire the governor's words, but I would rather see action to stop climate change. The governor should say no to the Big Stone II coal plant, and he should lead the nation's other 49 governors to stop the other old-fashioned polluting coal plants from being built. The only coal plants that should be seriously considered now are those that will capture all the CO2 emissions, not the old-fashioned dirty kind. As we face the greatest challenge of our generation -- a changing climate that threatens the future of the planet and its living things -- we need to be moving forward, not backward.

Ellen Anderson, DFL-St. Paul, serves on the Energy, Utilities, Technology and Communications Committee of the Minnesota Senate.