Scott Houldin of Twin River Energy

The law establishes a three-year moratorium on any new coal plant in Maine, while DEP develops new standards.

David Littell, Maine DEP commissioner, said that the law would put an end to whatever plans Twin River Energy Center might have had for a coal gasification plant here.

The new law requires DEP to develop new emission standards by August of 2011.  Any accepted future plan will also have to include capture and sequestration of carbon dioxide, a major contributor to global warming.  Littell warned that the process of developing standards might take longer than three years. 

“The vote was a clear statement that Maine does not want coal gasification plants in the state now,” he said.
Littell also said that he had had a call from an out-of-state developer interested in building such a plant in Millinocket within the last week.  Littell said the developer was unaware of the new legislation.

The bill was spurred by Twin River Energy’s attempt to build a coal gasification plant near the site of the old Maine Yankee nuclear plant.  Problems emerged immediately when it became clear that Twin River had no immediate plan for carbon sequestration - that is, taking carbon dioxide out of the emissions and storing it, generally underground, indefinitely.  There is no location in Maine where sequestration is practical, and no ready way to transport carbon to any sequestration site.  And Twin River was only prepared to capture 25% of the carbon it generated over the course of the plant’s lifetime.

Other problems also came to light during the process, leading up to a November 6 vote to change the town’s height ordinance, which would have cleared the way for Twin River to begin permitting.  Issues included the transportation of coal to the site, the storage of coal at the site, tensions between fishermen and coal barges, the vast amounts of water that would have been required, and traffic issues along the Route One corridor.

On November 6, Wiscasset voters defeated the height change by a vote of 868-707 - a 55-45% vote.

Even then, Scott Houldin, of Twin River Energy, suggested his company would consider coming back to Wiscasset with a revised plan.

“For the midcoast, this means that the Twin River project is dead,” said Steve Hinchman, an attorney for the Conservation Law Foundation in Brunswick.

In the last year, so-called ‘clean coal’ projects have been falling by the wayside in large numbers as cost overruns and concerns about carbon emissions are changing the way that Americans are willing to generate energy.  The most recent victim was the Department of Energy’s demonstration plant, the FutureGen plant, planned for Illinois .  The plant’s cost doubled to $1.8 billion, before ground was ever broken.

In 2007, 59 coal plants in the United States were canceled or shelved.

“We knew the proposed coal gasification plant in Wiscasset was a bad idea from the start—for lots of different reasons,” said Willy Ritch of the Back River Alliance. “But it’s now becoming abundantly clear that it just wasn’t ... and isn’t ... a real life, feasible proposal.”