Public Hearing to Discuss New Power Plant

Residents are invited to a public hearing at 7 p.m. tonight to sound off on the creation of a gasification power plant in the city’s south end.

Environmental Generation Technology Advisor LLC wants to build and operate the facility on a     26 1/2-acre parcel of land near 8th and Central.

The first phase of the plan calls for a main building and two silos to be built on 12 acres of the land.

Florida-based R2 Automation would be contracted to build the technology and machinery needed to run the business.

While initial plans called for municipal waste being hauled in to fuel the power plant, the plans have now changed to where only clean, organic materials will be used.

R2 CEO Ronald Remus said he has built other types of green technology for BP and NASA over his 27-year career and understands the environmental concerns that projects of the sort can create.

This 10-megawatt power plant, however, will have “no gasses, no pollution and no odor,” he said.

It’s not going to be a transfer station and they’ll be no dump trucks visiting the facility, he said.  

Instead, he said, it will involve refuge-derived fuels which will go through a low-temperature gasification system and be turned into electricity.

Melanie McCoy, general manager of , is on board with the idea, saying it’s a great way to create jobs in the renewable energy sector.

It costs the city between 5 cents and 6 cents per kilowatt hour to create electricity from its coal burning plant, McCoy said. The new plant will cost about 7 ½ cents, she said, still measurably cheaper than other forms of renewable energy.

It costs about 10 cents per kilowatt hours for wind and between 15 cents and 20 cents for solar, she said.

The city will be purchasing all of the electricity created from the new plant and selling off what it doesn’t need, McCoy said.

She said the partnership will help the city meet a state requirement that all electric utilities must derive at least 10 percent of its power from renewable energy by 2015.

Councilmen Daniel Galeski and Leonard Sabuda voted against setting tonight's public hearing. They tried to introduce a resolution that would have held the matter for 180 days, but they had no support from their colleagues.

The public hearing is a part of the City Council meeting, which begins at 7 p.m. on the second floor of , 3131 Biddle Ave.