Wolverine to apply for air quality permit with MDEQ

by Richard Lamb– Advance Editor

The ?Wolverine Clean Energy Venture? has moved closer to the next phase as the company intends to file an air quality permit request with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality this week. Filing of the 600-page document is a major step in the process of building a coal-fired power plant just outside the city limits of Rogers City. Ken Bradstreet, director of community and government affairs for the utility, revealed details in a presentation Wednesday in Rogers City with other leaders from Wolverine. If permits are secured, Bradstreet said, construction on the plant could begin as soon as 2009 and the plant could be in operation as soon as 2012 or 2013. The work leading up to the plant opening is great, he said. Bradstreet compared the work being done on the project behind the scenes to the way ducks look as they sit on the water, as he showed a slide of two ducks floating on a lake.

?There is a lot happening but not much is visible. Like these ducks, on the top of the water it doesn?t look like a lot is going on, but if you could see underwater, you would see there is a lot happening,? he said.

BRADSTREET RAN through a slide presentation about Wolverine before invited guests at a Wednesday breakfast. He spoke on what had been done on the project thus far in preparation for the possible construction of a base load power station just south of Rogers City. Plans now call for construction of two, 300 MW units using circulating fluidized bed (CFB) technology, a process identified to have lower emissions than conventional coal-fired power plants. Bradstreet began the presentation by saying Wolverine had about 100 employees, headquartered in Cadillac, and the cooperative serves 35 counties through its six members, including Presque Isle Electric and Gas Co-op, Cherryland Electric, Great Lakes Energy, HomeWorks Tri-County Electric, and Wolverine Power Marketing. In May of last year, Wolverine announced it had secured an option to purchase approximately 400 acres of previously mined land from O-N Minerals to evaluate the site for clean energy projects which could include base load and renewable generation for its member-cooperatives. A wind farm is also being studied, with a test tower installed last month, already accumulating data for that study. He said that no power plants have been built in Michigan since the 1980s and the average age of a power plant in the state is at least 48 years old. In answer to the state?s growing energy needs, as identified by the MDEQ, the state has called for more plants to be built.

?We can?t wait for a long lead-time solution, such as a nuclear plant. Detroit Edison has announced they are thinking about buying a nuclear plant and they think they might have it done by 2020. We can?t wait as long as it would take to build a nuclear plant,? Bradstreet said. Unproven technology, such as IGCC technology (combining coal gasification and combined cycle, with the potential to achieve the environmental benefits of gas-fired generation) are still very much experimental in nature, Bradstreet said. ?They are very expensive and so far not very reliable,? he said. ?Wolverine needs technology that is clean, but one that has proven itself so we know what we are getting.?

WITH THE filing of the permit request with the MDEQ, the project enters the development phase. ?There are a number of permits we are working on developing, but the big one is the air quality permit,? Bradstreet said. ?The development phase essentially goes through the time when we have all the permits in hand and we have solved all the issues and the question then goes to the board of directors, based on the economic quotes and the permit limitations,? he said. The development phase could take as long as two years, Bradstreet said. There are many variables in the process, but Bradstreet said the pieces are falling in place to proceed to the next step. ?A lot of that is the permitting phase, which could be as little as six months, and then we are expecting that some permits will be challenged by environmental groups and we expect some delays there until some of those issues are resolved. Ideally if we could break ground for the project in 2009, that would be our goal. A target date for commercial operations would be 2012 or 2013,? he said.

THE ECONOMIC side of the project reveals large numbers. The cost of the project is an estimated $1 billion with around 1,000 temporary jobs during the construction phase. ?We have done a formal spreadsheet on the plant operation, once the plant is up and running. We have identified 100 full-time jobs that the plant will need. So that is a good number,? Bradstreet

said. Bradstreet estimates average compensation at around $75,000 per year, with wages and benefits. ?They will be very good jobs,? he said. As for hiring locally, Bradstreet said it is to the company?s benefit to hire locally, but concedes the skills needed to run a power plant might require recruitment from outside of the area. Bradstreet said, ?We are very high on the local market and we think that there are a lot of people here that have the skills that would be valuable to us. Ultimately down the road, over the years naturally, we expect that nearly 100 percent of the local community would supply our needs.?

NEXT UP for the project, Bradstreet said in his presentation, is the air quality permit. ?Wolverine is very proud of the accomplishments up to this point. Our technology decision and our air permit application are huge steps in this process. One of the milestones in a project like this is putting the information together. I can?t over emphasize that this is a major milestone,? he said. Although optimistic the project will see fruition, Bradstreet said the company is ready to answer tough questions from those opposed. ?We know there is going to be environmental opposition, just watching what is going on around the country. There tends to be significant opposition to any project with carbon-based fuels. We guess this probably will not be any exception to that. But we are anticipating that. We expect that and it doesn?t rattle us. We know it?s coming and we will get through that process,? he said. ?We have prided ourselves all along at being open with the community and letting them know things as milestones like this come up, and we will continue to communicate with the community as the project unfolds.?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.