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Greenhouse gas credits for region's largest coal plant?

Print | Comments () Posted by Beth Daley January 6, 2009 06:28 AM

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By Beth Daley, Globe Staff

Maybe you’ve read the headlines about the giant sludge pond of fly ash -- a byproduct of burning coal -- that swallowed a piece of the Tennessee landscape last month, raising with it a host of questions about the toxic material.

It turns out Massachusetts has its own fly ash controversy.

Brayton Point (Globe photo)

The Conservation Law Foundation is outraged that state environmental officials have given conditional approval for the region's largest coal-fired power plant to receive what could be millions of dollars in greenhouse gas allowances for recycling fly ash and using it in the production of cement. Dominion, the owner of the Brayton Point power plant in Somerset, says about a ton of greenhouse gas emissions are avoided for every ton of fly ash used in cement production.

There is, of course, irony that a toxic byproduct of burning coal -- which already releases enormous amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere -- would be eligible for greenhouse gas credits at all.

But CLF's argument centers more on something called additionality: whether Brayton Point was going to recycle the fly ash anyway. The environmental group argues that the nation's coal-burning industry already regularly recycles fly ash for cement -- and increasing regulation on ash is pushing even more recycling to take place. To give Brayton Point credit for it is like giving a student extra academic points for carrying a backpack to school: He is going to carry it whether or not you reward him for it.

“It’s absurd,’’ says CLF’s Seth Kaplan. “It fails the additionality test completely.” He says it’s also impossible to measure how much greenhouse gas emissions are truly displaced by using fly ash.

State environmental officials say Dominion decided to build a fly ash recycling plant voluntarily in 2006 -- when it wasn't considered regular business practice and Brayton Point wasn't required by law to build the plant. That convinced the officials to conditionally deem it as “additional” under so-called "Filthy Five" rules, regulations that were among the nation's first to limit CO2 from power plants and financially encourage them to develop cleaner technologies.

Now, those Filthy Five regulations are being eclipsed by a 10-state pact called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), and state officials say Brayton Point's fly ash credits can be converted into some RGGI allowances. Still, they note they are giving the power plant less than half the credit it wants for fly ash recycling -- and are requiring a review in 2010 to see if plant should continue getting it. State officials say they are reviewing CLF's comment letter to see if fly ash recycling has become a common business practice in recent years and if they should take it into consideration when deciding whether to give final approval.

Dominion, Brayton Point’s owner, says its recycling plant is one of only four in the country and Massachusetts regulations allows the company to get greenhouse gas credit for the fly ash plant.

What do you think? Should Brayton Point get the credit?

tags Brayton Point, coal, Dominion, fly ash, Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, RGGI, Somerset, Tennessee