Energy-Arizona^1.4

Arizona Range News, Editorial, July 25, 2007

In a perfect world, things are black and white. When something is good, it is all good, and the converse is true. This is not a perfect world.

And so it is that the proposed Bowie power plant is not all good or all bad. For those living under a rock, SouthWestern Power Group II, LLC, has proposed developing an integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) power plant in Bowie instead of the natural gas combined cycle plant that was originally proposed in 2001. They changed to coal because of the increasing and fluctuating cost of natural gas.

SWPG is now in the process of securing approvals for the facility that will be known as the Bowie Power Station. The County Board of Supervisors will rule on their rezoning request in August or September. As an indication of how complicated this whole thing is, the supes have hired a consultant to help them understand whether this is a good idea or not. We applaud that action, because it is truly complicated.

There appear to be a lot of positives about the proposed plant. IGCC plants are much cleaner than their old-fashioned predecessors, such as Apache outside of Willcox. And the levels of permitted pollutants will not increase with the switch from gas to coal. The developers are still bound by the original environmental limits that came with the 2001 application.

That means that all the byproducts from power generation must be dealt with by SWPG. So the days of producing mountains of ash and just leaving it there to accumulate are gone. The proposed plant will capture carbon dioxide before it is released into the atmosphere. That byproduct is much sought by growers. But if SWPG cannot come up with a commercially viable method for using the carbon dioxide, they still cannot just dump it into the environment.

Jobs will be created during construction and later and revenue will be generated. Moreover, additional electrical capacity will be generated to fuel future growth.

On the other hand, while IGCC plants are cleaner than conventional plants, they still result in additional emissions of greenhouse gases. That is troubling in a time of global warming.

Although this is a better way to use coal, coal is still a non-renewable resource. We wish the same amount of zeal and technical expertise would be devoted to generating power with renewable resources.

And there are still questions about who will use all the byproducts of the plant. The developers don't have all the answers on who will use the byproducts and whether or not they can make this a viable business.

As we said before, this is not a black and white issue. But then life rarely is. Given all of that, and barring any troubling new information the county's consultant might uncover, we still think this is a decent project. It will be good for Bowie and the county in the long run.