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By William
Poe
The town of Lively Grove, Ill., is about to make the map—in a big
way. Situated in Washington County, about 60 miles southeast of
St. Louis, Lively Grove will be home to Peabody Energy Co.’s new
Prairie State Energy Campus, a 1,500-megawatt coal-fueled electricity
generation project.
In addition to producing enough electricity for 1,500 homes, experts
predict the proposed power plant and underground coal mine will
create thousands of jobs and help revitalize the Illinois coal industry.
“Prairie State construction will require ten million man-hours,”
says David Foree, executive secretary-treasurer of the Southwestern
Illinois Building & Construction Trades Council in Collinsville,
Ill. “The impact on our construction trades will be tremendous.”
Indeed, an economic impact study by Southern Illinois University–Carbondale
(SIUC) estimates that Prairie State will inject $2.8 billion into
the Illinois economy in new spending, job creation and induced economic
activity.
Plans to develop the Prairie State Energy Campus were
enthusiastically received at the announcement on the
steps of the Washington County Courthouse in Nashville,
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Peabody, a Fortune 1000 company headquartered in St. Louis, is the
world’s largest coal company. After years of planning, the company’s
$2 billion project is nearing the end of regulatory reviews. Vic
Svec, vice president of public and investor relations for Peabody,
says construction could get underway in 12 to 18 months, taking
from three to four years to complete.
“The Prairie State Energy Campus will produce clean, low-cost electricity
to stimulate the local economy and light millions of homes,” says
Peabody Energy’s Chairman and CEO Irl Engelhardt. “Prairie State
will create thousands of quality jobs for Illinois and Missouri
workers during its construction and hundreds of high-paying jobs
during its operation. It will be a major asset of the Southern Illinois
and St. Louis region.”
Once operational in 2008 or 2009, Prairie State will consist of
twin 750-megawatt electricity generating units. The power plant
will run on six million tons of coal produced from a new underground
mine adjacent to the plant.
Electricity from the plant will be distributed throughout the Illinois
power grid and transmitted to other Midwest communities, say Peabody
officials. Svec says the company is seeking partners to oversee
power plant construction and operations.
Area civic leaders see Prairie State as a linchpin project that
will help meet the region’s growing energy needs. Nationally, the
U.S. Department of Energy estimates that the nation’s power requirement
will increase by 45 percent over the next 20 years. Perhaps as many
as 1,300 new power plants and rebuilt transmission lines may be
necessary to meet those needs, federal officials say.
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Vice
President of Generation Development Dianna Tickner,
Management Associate Morry Davis and Vice President
of Generation Development Colin Kelly discuss progress
on the Prairie State Energy Campus in Southern Illinois.
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Jim Pennekamp, executive director of the Leadership Council Southwestern
Illinois, says Prairie State will go a long way toward meeting the
region’s growing electrical power load.
“The facility will be another asset that will help us meet the energy
demands of growing businesses throughout the region,” says Pennekamp.
“And to the extent that we can utilize those resources that are
available to us today in large quantities, such as Southern Illinois
coal, this project also helps us address a need for multiple energy
sources.”
Prairie State will not only provide energy, but also the new high-tech
transmission lines needed to carry the juice. Peabody officials
say they will fund transmission line construction upfront, resulting
in an infusion of millions of dollars into the regional grid—essentially
tripling the annual investments made by local utilities since 1990.
All of this is made possible through new technology, which will
allow the plant to burn high-sulfur Illinois coal while meeting
state and federal emissions standards. In the past, the Illinois
coal industry has been hurt by the 1990 federal Clean Air Act, which
made Illinois’ high-sulfur coal less desirable to burn than low-sulfur
coal from western states. But Prairie State will use pulverized
coal, which is ground to about the consistency of talcum powder,
and the by-product will be cleansed of all harmful emissions.
As a result, Peabody received a draft air pollution control permit
from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency on Feb. 4, and
hopes to obtain a final air quality permit sometime this summer.
Looking toward the future, Peabody estimates that Prairie State
will create about 450 new permanent jobs with wages that would be
more than 40 percent higher than the Illinois average. And that’s
in addition to the 2,500 jobs created during construction of the
plant and mine.
All of which has union leaders like Foree licking their chops: “This
will have the biggest impact of any project during my lifetime,”
he says.
William V. Poe is principal of Poe Communications, a St. Louis
advertising and marketing communications firm.
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