Plans to build a biomass boiler on the University of Wisconsin campus were nixed Thursday, leaving proponents of the plan dismayed at the loss of a potential new energy industry in the state.
Gov. Scott Walker and Department of Administration Secretary Mike Huebsch canceled the second phase of the aging Charter Street coal plant’s revamping, choosing instead to proceed exclusively with natural gas, UW Associate Vice Chancellor for Facilities Alan Fish said.
“The biomass boilers were $100 million more expensive. We’ll save anywhere from $50 to $70 million on the plant,” Fish said. “The decision was made to save money and give us a much cleaner plant.”
Although money is being saved, proponents of the biomass boiler claim the project would have been a boom to Wisconsin’s clean energy industry, which would lead to more jobs.
“Walker’s pledge to create 250,000 Wisconsin jobs is absolutely perplexing at this point, given that proposals like nixing biomass for Charter Street… do just the opposite,” Shahla Werner, Sierra Club spokesperson, said.
Sen. Fred Risser, D-Madison, echoed the Sierra Club’s sentiment, saying the biomass boilers would have refocused Wisconsin’s energy industry toward domestic fuels.
“Wisconsin should be moving toward promoting environmentally sound power using natural, domestic fuels, produced by Wisconsin’s agribusiness, forestry and paper industries, rather than piping in natural gas from out of state,” Risser said in a statement.
Having biofuel capacity, Fish said, would inevitably lead to a biomass industry in Wisconsin, because new jobs would be created to bring biomass products to the plant for burning.
The biomass boilers burn wood chips and pellets, switchgrass and corn stock to create the energy required for heating and cooling over 300 buildings on the UW campus. Businesses would sprout up along the supply chain to feed the plant’s demand for biomass material, Fish said.
He added the biomass boilers installed at the Charter Street plant would be significantly cleaner than coal, although the new natural gas capabilities Walker favors will make the plant pass state and federal pollution regulations.
Meeting regulations has been a problem in the past, leading to a lawsuit in 2007 from Sierra Club, where a U.S. District Court found UW and the Department of Administration in violation of the federal Clean Air Act.
The two parties settled, requiring the state to cut coal use at the plant by 15 percent, study ways to clean up and replace key components in the facility and identify violations in Wisconsin’s 12 other coal-fired plants in Wisconsin.
Currently, the plant meets all federal Clean Air Act requirements. After the plant moves to natural gas, air emissions will decrease further, Fish said.
The coal boilers at the Charter Street plant came from a used auto plant in Kenosha and are more than 60 years old. The plant will stop burning coal in the fall of 2011, when it will make energy using natural gas exclusively.
Construction will be completed in 2013, after the natural gas boilers have been installed.
“When it’s done, we’ll have a modern, 20th century fuel-efficient plant that will be good for our air in Madison,” Fish said.
