Coal plant: Compromise or sell-out?

The new governor today announced a compromise on the Holcomb coal plants: one plant will be allowed to be built, it will have a smaller capacity than the two proposed plants together but larger than what was proposed for each plant (895 megawatts instead of the 700 each that was proposed). In exchange, the legislature will pass some of the green provisions that were previously tied into the bill as sweetener, including energy efficiency measures, net metering, and renewable energy requirements (20% of KS's power from renewable sources by 2016).

Tomorrow's Eagle story is here, and Kansas Jackass has a post on it here.

One thing that Jackass mentions that the Eagle doesn't is that as part of the compromise, Parkinson agreed to take away from the KDHE director the authority to block construction of future coal plants.

It's hard to know what to think about this at first glance, based entirely on not having enough information on whether the green provisions are real or if they are the same kind of watered down placator that was in the original bill. On the one hand, we weren't going to get net metering without some sort of compromise, because the GOP legislators are so pissed off about failing to override Sebelius' veto that they weren't going to allow a separate bill. On the other hand, a) renewable energy standards, efficiency standards, etc. are probably going to be coming from Washington sooner rather than later, so there was no real reason to give in on the coal plant to get them, and b) the KDHE provisions are also extremely worrisome, as there is no good public policy rationale for giving in to industry on this point. If industry were to make all the decisions on regulation, we wouldn't have any regulations at all. Oh wait...

I would hasten to point out that just because they have the permit, doesn't mean that the thing will get built. They have to get the financing together, and the environment hasn't been so great for such large scale, old-technology projects lately. OTOH, rural electric coops are largely peopled by reactionary hacks, who are not under any pressure to make logical or financially prudent decisions, as Sunflower's actions throughout this controversy have amply demonstrated.

In other words, I'm reserving judgment until I find out more about the green provisions. If they're for real, I probably can live with this. If they're not, then we've been sold out. I need to learn more, and will post again when I get the information.