Emma Creek Coal Energy

Coal along Emma Creek

Soft sandstone bluffs striped with jet-black coal alongside Emma Creek

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The Emma Creek Energy Project was a proposal for a large coal-fired power plant that still remains in the conception process. This 200 megawatt plant was to be located near the Jumbo Dome lease tract owned by Usibelli Coal Mine Inc., 15 miles from Denali National Park. At a proposed $420 million (in 1992 dollars), this plant would have produced more power than all of the existing coal-fired plants in Alaska combined. It would be a circulating fluid bed (CFB) plant and was projected to use 1.5 million tons of coal per year. The primary advantage of a power plant located at this site would be reduced transportation costs of the fuel and of waste back to the mine site for burial, but the power would also have to be transported a significant distance to consumers in Fairbanks and Anchorage. At the time of the proposal, the plant was estimated to take 7.5 years to permit, design, and construct but has not gone beyond the conception stages and has met with a mixed and mostly lukewarm response from power companies.

Energy frontier

The site of the proposed Emma Creek Power Energy Project and Healy CTL project.

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Date Created: Mon, 19 Apr 2010 18:53:41 -0800

Last Modified: Sun, 26 Dec 2010 20:44:50 -0900