Solving Problems through Efficiency
It seems Arizona Public Service, the operator and majority owner of the Four Corners Power Plant in Fruitland, New Mexico, has decided how it wants to deal with new EPA regulations requiring more effective control of haze-producing emissions at FCPP. This is an issue I’ve been following for a while, so it’s interesting to see how it’s developing. Basically, rather than install expensive selective catalytic reductions systems on all five of the units at FCPP, APS will close the three older, less efficient units and replace the output they generated by buying out Southern California Edison‘s share of the two remaining units, which are newer and more efficient. Edison is inclined to agree because of regulations in California pushing utilities there to move away from coal. It’s not clear to me at this point what Edison will use to replace the output from FCPP (probably natural gas), but from a climate standpoint anything is better than coal. APS will also reduce its carbon emissions substantially by closing the older units. Since the output of the newer units will not change when the ownership does, the net result of this deal will be an overall reduction in emissions. Closing the three older units will reduce the overall capacity of the plant from 2100 to 1540 MW, according to the numbers given by APS. The numbers I have, from the EPA’s Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, are slightly lower.
The current and proposed ownership breakdown of the five units is shown below. Note that in addition to being more efficient than the older units, the newer units are much larger. APS isn’t giving up much in shutting down the old units since it gets to replace their output with Edison’s share of the newer units.
This deal still has to go through a maze of regulation, of course, and it’ll be years before it’s fully in place. One of the hurdles will be renewing the lease with the Navajo Nation, which owns the land. The current lease expires in 2016. It seems APS is going to handle the lower workforce needs for the smaller plant through attrition, which is smart since it means no immediate job losses which might jeopardize tribal approval of a lease extension. The lease would be a bit lower, which could be an issue. The deal also needs approval by various federal and state regulatory agencies, which will take some time. Installing the new emissions control equipment at the two remaining units will take time anyway, though, so activity can be ongoing during the regulatory process.
This seems like a very good result to me. It solves a variety of problems in a way that is mutually beneficial to pretty much all the parties involved. There are some who object to keeping the plant open at all, but closing it entirely isn’t really an option. This is a very large power plant and there’s nothing that can plausibly replace it in the near term. Given that, shutting down the older, less efficient units and only using the newer, more efficient ones would be a very good outcome.
