SAULT STE. MARIE – So, you wanna build a $1.2 billion power plant?

Arranging state permits, getting financing and addressing community concerns during public hearings are just some of the major stepping stones faced by the Wolverine Power Cooperative, as the group goes about the process of building a new clean-coal burning power plant in Rogers City.

Ken Bradstreet, director of community and government affairs for the Wolverine Power Cooperative, laid out the status of the proposed plant to delegates of the 49^thconvention of the Michigan Building and Construction Trades Council. He said the green energy movement’s campaign against coal-burning plants is a major factor in slowing the process for getting the facility built.

“Today’s climate is down on coal,” Bradstreet said. When asked about the schedule for construction of the plant, he demurred: “A schedule? All we know is the day after we get our state permits, we will get sued” by opponents of the plant’s construction.

The Wolverine Power Cooperative, which was formed during the 1983 merger of two existing power cooperatives, is proposing to construct a baseload power plant, consisting of two units of 300 megawatts each. The plant would be located on a limestone quarry, which would have a dual benefit. The plant would use limestone as part of its emissions reduction process, and expanded dock access would provide access to lake freighters that could be used to feed coal to the plant.

The plant would be fueled by coal (about 80 percent) and biomass (up to 20 percent, from local timber or agriculture).  The circulating fluidized bed (CFB) technology proposed for the plant would be one of only 12 such plants around the nation, and is appropriate for a smaller baseload plant such as this one. Bradstreet said the CFB system introduces coal in chunks rather than in powder form, which he called a “fast ascending technology.”

Wolverine has spent nearly $20 million on development, engineering, permitting and legal fees. They have obtained a number of state and federal permits already, and the cooperative awaits three more, a state air quality permit and a new Environmental Protection Agency permit that addresses particulate air quality emitted by the plant. In addition, the plant still needs a permit to place residual ash into landfills.

Those hurdles need to be overcome, and now the Obama Administration is further complicating the process by pursuing Cap and Trade rules. They are intended to provide incentives for utilities to limit (or Cap) coal plant emissions and encourage them to Trade energy credits that favor the use of green technologies that don’t emit greenhouse gases.

“The biggest problem (to constructing the plant) is a regulatory culture that says no to coal,” Bradstreet said. “But coal is something we have abundantly – and there is no energy independence without coal.”

Wolverine is also studying wind patterns for the use of windmills near the Rogers City site. The utility cooperative owns nearly 1,600 miles of high-voltage transmission in 35 counties in lower Michigan. It already purchases wind energy from the Harvest Wind Farm in the Thumb area, which can produce electricity to serve 15,000 Michigan homes. But the operative word in the previous sentence was “can.”

“People are always asking us, why don’t you build more windmills?” Bradstreet said. “The short answer is, the wind doesn’t always blow.”

If and when all the regulatory hurdles are overcome, Bradstreet said Wolverine would then make the decision – which hasn’t been made – whether to proceed with construction.

If the green light is given to build the plant, he said construction would average 1,000 personnel in Rogers City during a four-and-a-half year period. With all the regulatory and political factors weighing in, Bradstreet still said he is “optimistic that by late 2010 we’ll be moving dirt” at the Rogers City site.