Her Dirty Secret

Last September, Sebelius' press secretary, Nicole Corcoran, told Platts Coal Trader magazine that the governor would consider a moratorium on new coal plants if the Kansas Energy Council recommended it. (In 2004, Sebelius appointed the 35-member council of energy stakeholders — from citizen activists to utility executives — who advise the governor on energy policy.) But Ken Frahm, co-chairman of the council, says the group has not dealt with the issue of Sunflower's expansion. "She has not directly asked us to study it at all," he says of Sebelius.

Appointee Sarah Dean says global warming has been conspicuously absent from the group's agenda since the governor created the council three years ago. A longtime Sebelius supporter, Dean says it wasn't until this winter — after the uproar over Sunflower — that greenhouse gases became a topic of discussion.

Sebelius did ask the Kansas Corporation Commission (the state agency that regulates public utilities) to study the economics of adding wind to the Kansas power grid. That research assessed the real price of dirtier coal-fired power by adding the health costs to Kansans and the impact on the state's environment.

In correspondence with the Pitch, Corcoran initially suggested that the research had been completed. But when asked for a copy, the press secretary said the study was still "in the final edit stage." Information in the study could factor into the debate about Sunflower's expansion; Corcoran now says it will be released "in the near future."

Meanwhile, thanks to Sebelius, Kansas is starting to tap into its lucrative wind resources. In May, the governor and Kansas energy executives held a press conference to announce an agreement in which the six utilities vowed that wind would supply 10 percent of the state's power by 2010. The governor's office estimates that the current slate of new wind projects will put Kansas at 11 percent by the end of the decade.

But that impressive statistic doesn't factor in 1,400 megawatts of new coal power, which would overshadow the projected 1,100 megawatts of new, clean power from wind.

In fact, Griffith says, all of the governor's green initiatives would be overshadowed — or directly undermined — by the new plants at Holcomb.

With a life expectancy of more than 50 years, the new plants would also make some of the state's environmental efforts more difficult. For instance, this summer, Kansas signed on to the Climate Registry, in which officials from more than three dozen states hope to establish a system to track global-warming pollution, then work with states to reduce their greenhouse gases. But with Kansas poised to add another 10 million tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere each year, finding ways to cut greenhouse gases would be hard.

Sebelius has been working behind the scenes to move energy production in a cleaner direction, Tom Thompson says. He served in the Kansas House with Sebelius in the early 1990s, sits on the executive board of the Kansas Democratic Party and lobbied for the Sierra Club during the 2007 session. "When she wants to, she can be very hands-on," he says.

But other state leaders — even Republicans — have been doing more. In February, governors from seven states created the Western Regional Climate Action Initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And governors from New Jersey, Arizona, California, Florida, New Mexico and Washington have signed executive orders directing reductions in their states' global-warming gases by 2010.

Under the direction of Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the California Public Utilities Commission announced earlier this year that it wouldn't allow utilities to purchase electricity from coal-fired power plants because they cough up too much carbon dioxide. In Florida, after pressuring Florida Power and Light to kill a proposed coal-fired power plant, Republican Gov. Charlie Crist held a press conference to applaud state regulators for denying the company's permit last month.

Crist also signed an executive order directing Florida regulators to set greenhouse-gas limits for state utilities.

That's what Sarah Dean wants the state of Kansas to do: Take carbon dioxide into consideration before it gives any power plant the go-ahead. But without a sympathetic leader like Crist or Schwarzenegger in the governor's mansion, Sarah and Ray Dean are suing the state of Kansas to try to get it done.

As an appointee to the Kansas Energy Council, Dean knows that the KDHE doesn't consider carbon dioxide a pollutant and doesn't take the greenhouse gas into account when it's reviewing an air-permit application.

Initially, the Deans petitioned the KDHE to classify CO2 as an air pollutant and to reconsider the Sunflower permit. They argued that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that the Environmental Protection Agency should regulate CO2. The Deans reasoned that Kansas should follow the highest court in the land.

State officials disagreed. Yvonne Anderson, general counsel for the KDHE, replied that the state of Kansas doesn't have to act on CO2 until federal laws are established.

"This is a huge deal to an awful lot of people, and there's an awful lot at stake," says Reid Nelson, one of the Deans' attorneys. "But you'd get more due process contesting a traffic ticket than we're getting here."