Skip to main content

Louisiana Governor Supports New Plants

Gov. Kathleen Blanco is backing a proposed $1 billion expansion of Louisiana's Big Cajun II coal-fired power plant, which has received a crucial state air permit. This is the third power plant proposal the government has backed, including one for a new nuclear power plant being considered by the NuStart Energy Development LLC Consortium.
Blanco gave her backing last month to Cleco Corp.'s plans to build a new power plant in central Louisiana that would be able to use multiple solid fuels, primarily petroleum coke, a waste byproduct of crude oil refinement. Two weeks later, the governor announced that Louisiana was competing to land the country's first new nuclear energy plant in three decades.

On Monday, the governor stood with officials from NRG Energy Inc., at the Big Cajun II power plant in Pointe Coupee Parish, for the permitting announcement vital to the planned expansion of the facility.

Blanco lauded all three power plant proposals as economic development drivers that, in addition to creating permanent jobs in Louisiana, would shrink the state's heavy reliance on natural gas for electricity, as the costs of gas skyrocket and drive up energy bills. The governor said the price tags of those energy bills are hurting businesses -- and the state's attempts to attract them.

"Our industrial base is suffering. Our homeowners are suffering. Everybody is. It's time we look at the sources of fuel diversification," Blanco said.

David Crane, president and CEO of NRG Energy, said Louisiana is the second most dependent state on natural gas for power generation -- and he said the price of natural gas has quadrupled in three years.
Technorati tags:

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

An Ohio School Board Is Working to Save Nuclear Plants

Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu

Why Ex-Im Bank Board Nominations Will Turn the Page on a Dysfunctional Chapter in Washington

In our present era of political discord, could Washington agree to support an agency that creates thousands of American jobs by enabling U.S. companies of all sizes to compete in foreign markets? What if that agency generated nearly billions of dollars more in revenue than the cost of its operations and returned that money – $7 billion over the past two decades – to U.S. taxpayers? In fact, that agency, the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank), was reauthorized by a large majority of Congress in 2015. To be sure, the matter was not without controversy. A bipartisan House coalition resorted to a rarely-used parliamentary maneuver in order to force a vote. But when Congress voted, Ex-Im Bank won a supermajority in the House and a large majority in the Senate. For almost two years, however, Ex-Im Bank has been unable to function fully because a single Senate committee chairman prevented the confirmation of nominees to its Board of Directors. Without a quorum

NEI Praises Connecticut Action in Support of Nuclear Energy

Earlier this week, Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed SB-1501 into law, legislation that puts nuclear energy on an equal footing with other non-emitting sources of energy in the state’s electricity marketplace. “Gov. Malloy and the state legislature deserve praise for their decision to support Dominion’s Millstone Power Station and the 1,500 Connecticut residents who work there," said NEI President and CEO Maria Korsnick. "By opening the door to Millstone having equal access to auctions open to other non-emitting sources of electricity, the state will help preserve $1.5 billion in economic activity, grid resiliency and reliability, and clean air that all residents of the state can enjoy," Korsnick said. Millstone Power Station Korsnick continued, "Connecticut is the third state to re-balance its electricity marketplace, joining New York and Illinois, which took their own legislative paths to preserving nuclear power plants in 2016. Now attention should