Companies rethink coal plants

WASHINGTON -- Even as demand for electricity rises, energy companies are delaying or scrapping plans for new coal-burning power plants because of the prospect of restrictions imposed by federal global warming legislation.

Power use in the USA could grow 22% during the next 20 years, according to the Energy Department. To help keep the nation's laptops and TVs humming, dozens of new plants that burn coal — by far the nation's largest source of electricity — were in the works.

President Obama and many members of Congress vow to cut U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide, the major "greenhouse gas" warming the Earth. Coal-burning power plants are the USA's single largest source of carbon dioxide.

Proposed coal plants around the nation face difficulties:

• Thursday, Alliant Energy dropped plans to build a coal-burning plant in central Iowa that would have been big enough to power nearly half a million homes and businesses. The company cited "increasing environmental, legislative and regulatory uncertainty regarding regulation of future greenhouse gas emissions" as part of the reason.

• Last month, NV Energy announced it would delay the construction of a coal-burning power plant in eastern Nevada until it can install "clean coal" technology to bury the plant's carbon dioxide. Such technology won't be widely available for a decade or more. "While uncertainty exists," NV Energy's Roberto Denis said of federal regulation, "we basically are standing still."

• Last month, Southern Montana Electric Generation & Transmission Cooperative halted work on a coal-burning power plant near Great Falls, Mont. Instead it will build wind turbines and a plant that burns natural gas, even though the combination will not make as much power as the coal plant would have.

• Also last month, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a Democrat, ordered state regulators not to approve new coal-fired plants until "all feasible and prudent alternatives" had been considered. Five plants are planned. The state attorney general and Republican legislators are challenging Granholm's directive.