The developer of a Nantucket Sound wind energy project hopes to begin producing clean energy by 2010, after winning final state environmental approval yesterday, but the project still faces a major remaining hurdle: an expansive federal government review.
The Interior Department plans to release a draft report next month, but will not finish its review until early next year. And well-funded opponents, who have dogged the project for six years, waging legal and political warfare in efforts to derail it, are likely to challenge the permits required to build the wind turbines off the Cape and Islands.Meanwhile, Jeff Montgomery from the News Journal has had a look at newly released documents detailing projected carbon emissions from the proposed coal powered electric plant in Sussex County:
A power plant proposed for the Millsboro area could increase Delaware's statewide greenhouse-gas output by 50 to 60 percent or more at a time of rising global pressure for cutbacks, according to newly released details about the project.
The NRG Energy disclosures about its next-generation coal plant are expected to focus more attention on coal plant emissions and company plans to inject a majority of the waste carbon dioxide deep beneath Millsboro -- an option based on untested assumptions about Delaware geology and undetermined rules for "sequestering" the waste gas in deep, local wells.
"There's no hiding the fact that, unsequestered, the NRG proposal will significantly increase CO2 emissions," said Philip Cherry, a Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control policy manager and member of a team now considering power plant bids by NRG, Conectiv and Bluewater Wind LLC.NRG has proposed to capture a portion of carbon emissions from the new plant, provided that rate payers pay for the capital equipment. With this newly released batch of documents, we may be able to better estimate how big that cost could be.
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