Mercury and carbon dioxide spewing out of a smokestack 40 miles west of Platteville may not sound good, but what choices do we have?

According to the Energy Information Administration, a branch of the Department of Energy, 52 percent of electricity in the United States was produced by coal-fired power plants in 2000. In 2007, Alliant Energy proposed a 300 megawatt coal plant in Cassville that would provide power for its customers in southwest Wisconsin. Last November, the state Public Service Commission rejected Alliant Energy’s proposal due to environmental concerns. Now Alliant Energy is looking to expand one of its current coal plants, Nelson Dewey, in Cassville.

I and others welcome the prospect of environmentally friendly, sustainable solutions replacing the old, polluting coal plants. However, it is not always feasible.

Many would endorse wind energy, but it poses some problems. Construction costs for a single 300 megawatt wind farm are less than a coal power plant of the same size, but reliability is problematic. A wind farm is not producing maximum power all the time; at best, wind power is supplemental. Energy can be stored in batteries, but batteries are expensive and a lot of energy is lost when it is converted from direct current to alternating current.

Alliant Energy already has wind farms in place or in development to supplement some of the power usage in Wisconsin. Three sites in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa will have an approximate 500 megawatts capacity. According to Mike Nickeson, hiring manager from Alliant Energy, wind power cannot be depended on all of the time. The wind may not be blowing hard enough to produce power, or it can even be blowing so hard that the wind turbines have to be shut down to prevent them from being destroyed.

In southern states, solar-electric power is an option because direct sunlight and minimal cloud cover allows power production most of the year. Northern states do not have the long solar production periods to make a solar site feasible.

Nuclear energy is clean, but it  is cost prohibitive and produces hazardous waste. Nickeson said that nuclear energy costs three times more per megawatt to produce than coal. He said that paying off a nuclear plant would take over 60 years.

Natural gas is a more clean burning fuel but can also be expensive. Piping the gas requires underground, pressurized tubing.
“Natural gas costs up to seven times more per kilowatt,” Nickeson said. “It’s always tough to beat coal.”

The last option Alliant Energy has is to buy power from WE Energies and use it for Alliant Enegy customers in southwest Wiscosnin. If this is the option that Alliant Energy has to use, the energy would be produce mainly by coal anyway.

If the electric companies are paying more to produce the energy, we will be paying more on our electric bills. For now, an integrated power production solution, including coal, seems to be the best option. It would not be economically or physically possible for Wisconsin electric companies to convert all of their existing and future plants to renewable sources.