Idaho Power Co. is the latest utility to temper its enthusiasm for new coal plants, telling federal stock market regulators that escalating costs, permit issues and greenhouse-gas-emission concerns led it to abandon plans to build enough coal-fired electricity generation by 2013 to light 187,500 more homes. According to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing this week, the Boise-based utility “determined that coal-fired generation is not the best technology to meet its resource needs in 2013.” The company had planned to get an additional 250 megawatts from coal by then.

Instead, it now aims to develop a new natural gas turbine somewhere in southern Idaho by 2012, to augment plans to add 101 megawatts of wind generation in December 2008 and 45.5 megawatts of geothermal generation in phases between 2007 and 2011. One megawatt can light about 750 homes.

Across the nation, utilities have been making similar decisions, with at least 16 coal-fired power plant proposals getting scrapped in recent months and more than three dozen delayed as power companies face increasing pressure due to concerns over global warming and rising construction costs.

Source: Idaho Business Review