A tough bill to swallow

The day has been spent picking through the analysis and fallout from yesterday's deal between the governor and Sunflower to allow one of the coal plants in exchange for some renewable energy provisions. Realizing that this is Kansas and that we were unlikely to get the provisions any other way, judgment on the plan was suspended while we tried to figure out if the green provisions were meaty enough to justify giving in on the coal plant. The consensus seems to be - they are not.

Here are some of the articles from today: An account of legislator skepticism on the bill, including Parkinson's meeting with the Democratic caucus, was in the Topeka Capital-Journal.

“There will still be people who say this is a bad settlement,” Parkinson said.

Gee, ya think?

Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, D-Topeka, said he understood why Parkinson struck a deal with Sunflower to permit the construction of an 895-megawatt coal plant in Finney County. It was the only way to move renewable energy legislation through the Republican-dominated Legislature, he said.

Still, Hensley said he wasn’t certain the plant would ever be built. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and President Barack Obama were sending signals that more stringent regulation of air pollutants was on the horizon, he said.

“I think in terms of any future coal plants, much is contingent on future air standards,” Hensley said. “Everything is up in the air if they could ever construct a second plant.”

The second plant, y'understand. That's because, as this analysis of the deal from GPACE makes clear, the "compromise" was a lot of give and not much take: the renewable energy standards of 20% by 2020 are based on capacity and not on output (they could build a high-capacity plant and never fully run it); the net metering provisions are limited to areas with private utiltities, exempting municipal utlitlties and areas with rural co-ops like Sunflower; building efficiency standards are just for state buildings, and they're not building too many of those right now.

Worse, Kansas CO2 standards are to be no more stringent than the federal limits, and KDHE no longer has the capacity to derail the plants. So Sunflower can apply for another permit in 2 years, and if the federal standards aren't stronger by then, there will be no legal means for the state government to deny the permit (even assuming ol' Governor Sam would care to do so). Oh, and they agreed to decommission a couple of oil-burning electric plants that apparently haven't been in operation for 20 years.

And in exchange for all this, we get a freaking tremendous coal plant.

The Democratic party leadership is spinning this as a big win, though it's hard to see why. We were two days away from sending Sunflower home with nothing, and then we could have come back next year and reacted to whatever Washington does in the meantime, passing the energy standards without having the coal plants hanging over our heads. Parkinson in effect gave away the only card we had. As Scott Allegrucci of GPACE says in a blog entry, it seems that the governor has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

I remember when Obama first got inaugurated, before it became clear that the Republicans were going to say no to everything, we were debating what bipartisanship means you give up what you stand for for the sake of including members of the other party. Obama didn't, and it was to his credit. For all his posturing about being the energy governor when he took office, it's clear that, like the good moderate he is, the governor values agreement over principle. It's most unfortunate. The deal was also brokered directly between Sunflower and the governor; GPACE wasn't even in the room.

There isn't really anywhere to go from here. They'll pass the bill and he'll sign it. Whether Sunflower can get the thing built is another story; they claim to have the financing in place, and I guess we'll see if that's true. We'll also see if Congress can get something passed that will change the calculation in the meantime.

But there's a great sense of loss - even betrayal - amongst those who have been working on this issue for the past 2 years. It's a difficult pill to swallow.