After spending several years searching for a site, Maui Electric Company is proposing to build a new power generation plant on 66 acres at Waena, near Pu`unene. The state Land Use Commission is now considering MECO’s application to place the site in the Urban land use district.
Maui Tomorrow, a non-profit environmental organization, is formally opposing the project. It argues that the power plant, to be fired with diesel oil, would worsen Maui’s air quality, contribute to global warming, and take prime agricultural land out of agricultural service. Rather than continuing to rely on fossil fuels to meet Maui’s future energy needs, it claims, MECO should develop clean energy sources, such as solar and wind power, and do more to reduce overall demand.
The Land Use Commission’s contested case proceeding is underway. The next hearing is scheduled April 8-9, on Maui.
The Problem
Maui Electric is a public utility, operating under a license issued by the state Public Utilities Commission. This means that Maui Electric has accepted responsibility for ensuring that its customers have electricity available when they need it and in quantities sufficient to meet customer demand.
To gauge future demand, utilities employ long-range forecast models. These models can range from sophisticated to crude, but generally take into account anticipated population growth, increases or decreases in anticipated household and commercial demand, technological advances, and the like.
The 20-year forecasts developed by Maui Electric in 1996 show average growth in demand of about 2.6 percent — a rate that, by the year 2016, will require a generating capacity of 315 megawatts. This includes the capacity needed to meet peak demands (299.3 megawatts), plus a reserve buffer in the event a generator is out of service. If MECO’s conservation plan (involving reduced demand, or demand-side management) is fully implemented, the capacity required falls about 10 percent, to 266.5 megawatts.
(At present, MECO’s peak demand is about 184 megawatts. By the end of 1998, anticipated peak demand will be about 190 MW — 187 MW if its demand-side management program, begun in 1997, bears fruit.)
If nothing dramatic occurs to change habits in energy consumption or demand, MECO will need additional power-generation capacity to meet consumers’ needs by 2016. The new Waena plant, with a capacity of 232 MW at its completion, is needed to meet that demand, MECO contends.
The Procedure
To build a new power plant requires approvals from several different agencies. Because MECO is a utility regulated by the PUC, it had to seek and receive PUC approval to spend funds to acquire the Waena site. (The 65.7-acre site was purchased in 1997 from A&B for approximately $1.87 million, according to MECO’s environmental impacct statement for the Waena plant.)
The site is in the state Agricultural land use district, where power plants are not an allowed use. For this reason, MECO must apply to the state Land Use Commission to place the land in the Urban district, a process involving the hearing of a contested case. The county and the state Office of Planning, both of which support MECO’s application, are by law parties to the contested-case proceeding. Other individuals and groups may apply to be intervenors. In the MECO case, Maui Tomorrow sought and has been granted such status, which means it has the right to present evidence and witnesses, and to cross-examine the witnesses presented by the other parties in the contested case. Unlike the Office of Planning and the county administration, Maui Tomorrow opposes MECO’s application.
Other permits that MECO will need to get before it can build any new facility include state Department of Health permits for construction noise, emissions, underground injection, and wastewater treatment. From the state Commission on Water Resource Management it will need well construction and pump installation permits. From the state Department of Transportation it will need permission to perform work on state highways to accommodate the new plant.
A number of county approvals will be required as well, including a community plan amendment (which MECO has already applied for) and a change in zoning.
Two federal approvals are required. One, from the Environmental Protection Agency, is a so-called “Prevention of Significant Deterioration” emissions permit. The second is a determination by the Federal Aviation Administration that the new plant, including its 150-foot-high stacks, will pose no significant hazard to air traffic.
If all goes according to MECO’s timetable, the last of the permits should be received by the year 2001. Installation of the first of four dual-train combustion-cycle units,1 each capable of generating 58 MW of electricity, will commence in 2002 and be operational in 2006. Construction of the remaining turbines will be phased in over the next 10 years, with the fourth and final turbine anticipated to be in operation by 2020.
The total cost of the plant, including land and generators, is estimated to be approximately $417.5 million, in 1997 dollars, for an installed capacity cost of $1.8 million per megawatt. Site preparation and installation of the first generating unit are expected to cost $105.4 million, which MECO will seek to pass on to its ratepayers in the form of a 1.76-cent-per-kilowatt-hour rate increase.
Air Quality
Once in full operation, 44 tanker trucks will be needed to deliver the 396,000 gallons of fuel the plant will consume daily. MECO proposes to burn the same kind of fuel uses now in its other plants: No. 2 diesel with a sulfur content of 0.4 percent by weight. Ultra-low-sulfur fuel, with a sulfur content of 0.05 percent (or one-eighth of what MECO proposes to burn), is available but somewhat more expensive. MECO has said that the gains in air quality to be achieved with use of the low-sulfur fuel do not offset the higher costs of fuel and of building the storage tanks needed to segregate the two types of fuel.
At peak operation, the plant is expected to release 880 pounds an hour, or 3,856 tons a year, of sulfur dioxide. (Burning the lower-sulfur fuel would result in release of one-eighth that amount, or about 482 tons a year of sulfur dioxide.)
In addition, the plant would release at full operation 196 tons a year of sulfuric acid mist; 1,484 tons of nitrogen oxides (NOx); 692 tons per year of fine particles (less than 10 microns in diameter); 948 tons of carbon monoxide; and 132 tons of volatile organic compounds, or VOCs. (Since the turbines emit carbon monoxide and VOCs at higher rates when they are not at full power, the total emissions of these pollutants may be expected to rise.)
The Clean Air Act requires new sources of emissions to use what is called Best Available Control Technology, or BACT, to minimize release of airborne pollutants. Despite what the term “best available” implies, BACT need not be the technology that results in the lowest levels of emissions possible. That technology is called LAER, or Lowest Achievable Emissions Rate, and the Environmental Protection Agency requires it to be used in so-called “non-attainment” areas where ambient air quality falls below what the EPA has deemed to be minimally acceptable (areas where standards have been attained — hence, “attainment” areas). Because Hawai`i’s air quality meets the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) of the EPA, new sources of air pollution in Hawai`i need meet only the BACT requirements, and not LAER.
Several people commenting on MECO’s draft environmental impact statement for the Waena plant faulted the utility for not committing to install equipment and processes that would result in the least possible pollution. This idea was best expressed by Jim Williamson of Kihei:
“MECO should be making every effort now to reduce the emissions at the plant to a BACT equivalent to LAER. If that is done, particularly for oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and fuel sulfur content, air emissions will not, and should not, generally be an unresolved issue, as stated in the EIS… Many of us believe that we in Paradise should not just be content to have air emission standards which are average throughout the country. I firmly believe that the majority of Mauians would be willing to agree to a reasonable increase in power rates if it meant improving the air quality in this beautiful island.”
In response, Mark Willey, the project engineer for CH2M Hill, the consulting firm preparing the EIS for MECO, stood behind the BACT: “The application of lowest achievable emission rates, or LAER, applies only to areas not in attainment with NAAQS.” To the suggestion that ultra-low-sulfur fuel be burned in the plant, Willey responded: “The product cost difference and importation costs would result in an estimated 20 percent increase in the cost of fuel… Further increases would be potentially incurred as the result of the need for MECO to build new storage and distribution facilities… in order to segregate the 0.05 percent sulfur diesel from diesel fuel that contains a higher amount of sulfur.”
In any event, Willey continued, the EPA standard for sulfur in fuel is 0.8 percent; what MECO is proposing to use — fuel having 0.4 percent sulfur — “exceeds this standard at one half the sulfur content.”
Global Warming
Nationally and internationally, reliance on fossil fuels has been targeted as one of the major causes of global warming. Increased levels of greenhouse gases (so-called because of the effect they have of trapping heat in the lower atmosphere) are predicted by many scientists to result in higher average temperatures and rising ocean levels. In Hawai`i, use of fossil fuels results in emissions totaling about 2 pounds of carbon dioxide for each kilowatt-hour of electricity sold. For an average household that uses 500 kWh a month, that means about half a ton of CO2 emissions, or six tons a year.
MECO was criticized by several people who commented on the draft EIS for its continued reliance on fossil fuels despite growing awareness of the role they play in global warming. In response, MECO claimed that this issue was out of bounds. For example, in reply to the comments from Greg and Masako Westcott, Willey of CH2M Hill wrote: “It is not reasonable to expect that the EIS include an examination ‘of the real costs of fossil fuels’.”
In a similar vein, Maui Tomorrow commented that MECO should plan to move away from reliance on fossil fuels. Willey responded by taking note of MECO’s evaluation of other possible energy sources — methanol, ethanol, solar, and wind — during the integrated resource planning process undertaken several years ago. The outcome of that process, Willey stated, was the determination that, “for capacity planning purposes,” such alternatives were not useful since they could not be counted on to provide baseline power, or power on demand.
Maui Agency Balks
In addition to the approval of the Land Use Commission, MECO also needs the approval of the County Council for rezoning of the area proposed for the Waena plant. The land, now in Agriculture, interim zoning, needs to be rezoned to Urban, Heavy Industrial.
The proposed change in zoning was heard first by the county Planning Commission, which advises the council on rezoning requests. When the commission considered the issue on March 10, however, the proposal did not win support of a majority of the commission members. Instead, the commission voted unanimously to pass the matter to the council with no recommendation, but with a list of concerns it advised the council to consider.
Among the items the commission advised the council to consider were the prospect of more aggressive demand-side management measures; a possible review of MECO’s growth predictions; and the impact of rising fuel oil costs on ratepayers.
The Maui County Council is expected to take up MECO’s rezoning request in June.
1.Each dual-train combined cycle generating unit consists of two combustion turbines (each capable of generating about 20 MW), and two heat recovery steam generators that use the waste heat from the turbines to power a steam turbine (generating an additional 18 MW.) MECO’s timetable calls for installing the two combustion turbines first, with the heat-recovery steam generation system installed as the last element in the dual-train combined cycle unit. Thus, each of the four phased-in DTCCs is itself installed in phases. The first combustion turbine is scheduled to be operational in 2004; the second in 2005, and the first heat-recovery steam generation unit (recovering steam from the two combustion turbines), in 2006. The next year, 2007, the first combustion turbine in the second DTCC is to be installed, and so on, through the year 2016.
— Patricia Tummons
Volume 8, Number 10 April 1998