BEFORE THE
               NATIONAL COAL COUNCIL
                  FALL MEETING
             TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS

  

  

  
  
                            05 October 2016
                            Milwaukee, Wisconsin USA
  ___________________________________________________
                    BUNN & ASSOCIATES
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               Copyright 2016 All rights reserved.
  COUNCIL MEMBERS - 2016:
  MICHAEL D. DURHAM
  Chair
  The National Coal Council
  1730 M Street NW
  Suite 907
  Washington, D.C.  20036
  USA
  Founder
  Soap Creek Energy
  5252 North Lariat Drive
  Castle Rock, Colorado  80108
  USA
   PH 720-633-2911
   mikesoapcreek@outlook.com
  
  GREGORY A. WORKMAN
  Vice-Chair
  The National Coal Council
  Chair
  National Coal Council Finance Committee
  Director
  Fuels
  Dominion Resources
  120 Tredegar Street DC3
  Richmond, Virginia  23219
  USA
    PH 804-787-5702
    greg.workman@dom.com
  
  JANET GELLICI
  Chief Executive Officer
  National Coal Council
  1101 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
  Suite 600
  Washington, D.C.  20004
  USA
   PH 202-756-4524
   CL 602-717-5112
   FX 202-756-7323
   jgellilci@NCC1.org

  COUNCIL MEMBERS - 2016 (Continued):
  JULIA d'HEMECOURT, Attorney
  Legal Counsel
  Hunton & Williams, LLP
  2200 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
  Washington, D.C.  20037
  USA
   PH 202-419-2009
   FX 202-828-3721
   jdHemecourt@hunton.com
  DECK SLONE
  Chair
  National Coal Council Policy Committee
  Senior Vice President
  Strategy & Public Policy
  Arch Coal
  One City Place Drive
  St. Louis, Missouri  63141
  USA
   PH 314-994-2717
   dslone@archcoal.com
  DANIEL MATUSAK
  Physical Scientist
  Government Affairs and Analysis
  Office of Fossil Energy
  U.S. Department of Energy Liaison to
  National Coal Council
  U.S. Department of Energy
  1000 Independence Avenue SW
  Washington, D.C.
  USA
  
  HIRANTHIE STANFORD
  Director of Membership of Meetings
  National Coal Council
  1101 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
  Suite 600
  Washington, D.C.  20004
  USA
   PH 202-756-4524
   FX 202-756-7323
   hstandford@NCC1.org
  COUNCIL MEMBERS - 2016 (Continued):
  ROBERT O. AGBEDE
  President and Chief Executive Officer
  Chester Engineers
  1555 Coraopolis Heights Road
  Moon Township, Pennsylvania  15108
  USA
    PH 412-809-6576
    FX 412-809-6006
    ragbede@chester-engineers.com
  NICHOLAS K. AKINS
  Chair, President, and Chief Executive Officer
  American Electric Power Company
  One Riverside Plaza
  Columbus, Ohio  43215
  USA
   PH 614-716-3800
   FX 614-716-1603
   nkakins@aep.com
  SY ALI
  Principal
  Clean Energy Consulting
  7971 Black Oak Drive
  Plainfield, Indiana  46168
  USA
   PH 317-839-6617
   sy.ali@cleanenergyconsulting.com
  
  BARBARA FARMER-ALTIZER
  Executive Director
  Virginia Coal & Energy Alliance
  Post Office Box 339
  Lebanon, Virginia  42266
  USA
   PH 276-889-4001
   CL 276-970-5580
   FX 276-889-3055
   barb@virginiacoalenergy.com

  COUNCIL MEMBERS - 2016 (Continued):
  RODNEY ANDREWS, Director
  Center for Applied Energy Research "CAER"
  University of Kentucky
  2624 Research Park Drive
  Lexington, Kentucky  40511-8479
  USA
   PH 859-257-0200
   FX 859-257-0220
   rodney.andrews@uky.edu
  SHANNON ANGIELSKI
  Principal
  Governmental Issues
  Van Ness Feldman LLP
  Coal Utilization Research Council (CURC)
  1050 Thomas Jefferson Street, NW
  Washington, D.C.  20007
  USA
   PH 202-298-1825
   sma@vnf.com
  
  RICHARD L. AXELBAUM
  Professor
  Washington University (St. Louis)
  Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical
  Engineering
  Director
  Consortium for Clean Coal Utilization
  One Brookings Drive
  St. Louis, Missouri  63130-4899
  USA
   PH 314-935-7560
    axelbaum@wustl.edu

  

  COUNCIL MEMBERS - 2016 (Continued):
  RICHARD BAJURA
  Director
  National Research Center for Coal & Energy
  West Virginia University
  385 Evansdale Drive
  Suite 113
  Morgantown, West Virginia  26506-6064
  USA
   PH 304-293-6034
   CL 304-216-0360
   FX 304-293-3749
   rbajura@wvu.edu
    richard.bajura@mail.wvu.edu
  SHANNON BANAGA
  Director
  Federal Affairs
  TECO Energy, Inc.
  1331 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
  Suite 510 North
  Washington, D.C.  20004
  USA
   SMBanga@tecoenergy.com
  JANOS M. BEER
  Professor of Chemical & Fuel Engineering
  Department of Echical Engineering
  Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  25 Ames Street
  Room 66-301
  Cambridge, Massachusetts  02139
  USA
   PH 617-253-6661
   FX 617-252-1651
   jmbeer@mit.edu

  
  
  COUNCIL MEMBERS - 2016 (Continued):
  ROBERT A. BIBB, PE
  Chair
  Bibb Engineers, Architects & Constructors
  3131 Broadway
  Kansas City, Missouri  64111
  USA
    PH 816-285-5500
   CL 913-961-4477
   FX 816-285-5555
    bobbibb@bibb-eac.com
  
  JACQUELIEN F. BIRD
  JF Bird Enterprises
  1481 Fahlander Drive N
  Columbus, Ohio  43229
  USA
   PH 614-846-7498
   CL 614-218-4427
   jbird1@insight.rr.com
  RICHARD BOYD
  Manager
  Fuel Origination & Operations
  Dominion Energy
  120 Tredegar Street
  Richmond, Virginia  23219
  USA
   PH 804-787-5670
   Rick.d.boyd@dom.com
  Dr. LISA J. N. BRADLEY, DABT
  Vice President and Senior Toxicologist
  Haley & Aldrich
  360 Quaker Street
  Northbridge, Massachusetts  01534
  USA
   PH 978-846-3463
   lbradley@haleyaldrich.com

  
  COUNCIL MEMBERS - 2016 (Continued):
  F. WILLIAM BROWNELL, Esquire
  Hunton & Williams
  2200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
  Washington, D.C.  20037
  USA
   PH 202-955-1555
   FX 202-778-2201
   bbrownell@hunton.com
  
  DAVID BROZEK
  Senior Vice President
  Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems America, Inc.
  645 Martinsville Road
  Basking Ridge, New Jersey  07920
  USA
   PH 908-605-2760
   david.brozek@mhpowersystems.com
  CHARLES W. BULLINGER, PE
  Senior Principal Engineer
  Great River Energy
  1611 East Century Avenue
  Suite 200
  Bismarck, North Dakota  58503
  USA
   PH 701-250-2162
   cbullinger@GREnergy.com
  WANDA I. BURGET
  Principal/Owner
  Accord Resources Solutions
  Post Office Box 642
  Gillette, Wyoming  82717
  USA
   PH 307-896-9190
   CL 307-281-0148
   wburget@accordresourcesolutions.com

  
  COUNCIL MEMBERS - 2016 (Continued):
  Dr. FRANK BURKE
  Energy & Environmental Consultant
  1085 Glen Oak Drive
  Bethel Park, Pennsylvania  15102
  USA
   PH 412-327-4094
   fburke12@earthlink.net
  JOHN M. CASSADY
  Vie President
  Legislative Affairs
  NRECA
  4301 Wilson Boulevard
  Arlington, Virginia  22203
  USA
   PH 703-907-5500
   John.Cassady@nreca.coop
  DONNA CERWONKA
  Assistant Vice President
  Utility Coal
  CSX Transportation
  500 Water Street J842
  Jacksonville, Florida  32202
  USA
   PH 904-359-1684
   Donna_Cerwonka@csx.com
  HENRY J. CIALONE
  President and Chief Executive Officer
  Edison Welding Institute
  1250 Arthur E. Adams Drive
  Columbus, Ohio  43221
  USA
   PH 614-688-5122
   hcialone@ewi.org

  
  
  COUNCIL MEMBERS - 2016 (Continued):
  KIPP CODDINGTON
  Director
  Carbon Management Institute School of Energy
  Resources
  University of Wyoming
  Department 3012
  1000 East University Avenue
  Laramie, Wyoming  82071-2000
  USA
   PH 307-766-6731
   kcodding@uwyo.edu
  BRAD CRABTREE
  Vice President Fossil Energy
  Great Plains Institute
  9195 Seventieth Avenue, SE
  Ashley, North Dakota  58413
  USA
   Ph 701-647-2041
   bcrabtree@gpisd.net
  
  JOSEPH W. CRAFT iii
  President
  Alliance Coal
  1717 South Boulder Avenue
  Tulsa, Oklahoma  74119
  USA
   PH 918-295-7602
   FX 918-295-7361
   josephc@arlp.com

  

  
  
  COUNCIL MEMBERS - 2016 (Continued):
  MICHAEL D. CROTTY
  President
  MKT & Associates, LLC
  1776 Mentor Avenue
  Suite 402
  Cincinnati, Ohio  45212
  USA
   PH 513-703-2569
   Mcrotty@MKTassociates.com
  15 Dong Ping Road
  Suite 308
  Shanghai 200031
  PRC
   CL 86-1391-723-9971 (China) Skype
  
  JACK DALY
  Executive Vice President
  Director Fossil Power Technologies
  Sargent & Lundy, LLC
  55 East Monroe
  Chicago, Illinois  60603-5780
  USA
   PH 312-269-6257
   Jack.daly@sargentlundy.com
  
  MICHAEL R. DeLALLO
  88 Butler Lane
  Mohnton, Pennsylvania  19540
  USA
   CL 610-507-5189
   mrdelallo@gmail.com
   mdelallo@msn.com
  
  DAVID L. DENTON
  Senior Director Business Development
  Energy Technology Division
  RTI International
  3040 East Cornwallis Road
  Post Office Box 12194
  Research Triangle Park, North Carolina  27709-2194
  USA
   PH 919-485-2609
   ddenton@rti.org
  COUNCIL MEMBERS - 2016 (Continued):
  JOSEPH S. DIVOKY
  License Manager
  Joint Ventures & Technology Licensing
  Global Power Division
  Babcock & Wilcox Power Generation Group, Inc.
  20 South Van Buren Avenue
  Barberton, Ohio  44203-0351
  USA
   PH 330-388-7746
   CL 330-217-9411
   jsdivoky@babcock.com
  EDWARD (TED) DOHENY II
  President and Chief Executive Officer
  Joy Global, Inc.
  100 East Wisconsin Avenue
  Suite 2780
  Milwaukee, Wisconsin  53202
  USA
   PH 703-532-4900
   Ted.doheny@joyglobal.com
  GEORGE DUGGAN
  Vice President Coal Marketing
  BNSF Railway
  2650 Lou Menk Drive
  Second Floor
  Post Office Box 961057
  Fort Worth, Texas  76131-2830
  USA
   PH 800-795-2673
   George.duggan@bnsf.com
  
  JOHN W. EAVES
  Chair and Chief Executive Officer
  Arch Coal, Inc.
  1 City Place Drive
  Suite 300
  St. Louis, Missouri  63141
  USA
   PH 314-994-2700
   FX 314-994-2917
   jeaves@archcoal.com
  COUNCIL MEMBERS - 2016 (Continued):
  WILLIAM R. ELLIOTT
  Operations Manager
  Bechtel
  5275 Westview Drive
  Frederick, Maryland  21703
  USA
   PH 301-228-7303
   belliott@bechtel.com
  
  AMY ERICSON
  GE Power Marketing
  175 Addison Road
  Windsor, Connecticut  06095
  USA
   PH 202-495-4971
   amy.ericson@ge.com
  
  ELLEN EWART
  Vice President Research Global Coal Markets
  Wood Mackenzie, Inc.
  One Park place
  Suite 575
  Annapolis, Maryland  21401
  USA
   PH 410-295-4221
   ellen.ewart@woodmac.com
  
  MAOHONG FAN
  Associate Professor
  School of Energy Resources and
  Department of Chemical & petroleum Engineering
  University of Wyoming
  1000 East University Avenue
  Laramie, Wyoming  82071
  USA
   PH 307-766-5633
   mfan@uwyo.edu

  
  COUNCIL MEMBERS - 2016 (Continued):
  ALEX G. FASSBENDER
  Chief Executive Officer
  Ecovia Corporation
  2004 Byrd Road
  Vienna, Virginia  22182
  USA
   PH 703-229-9423
   alex.fassbender@ecoviacorp.com
  
  PAUL J. FELDMAN
  Chair
  Midwest ISO
  51 Warwick Stone Way
  Great Falls, Virginia  22066
  USA
   PH 317-249-5400
   CL 703-623-1762
   PaulFeldman@gmail.com
  
  ROBERT J. FINLEY
  Director
  Advanced Energy Technology Initiative
  Illinois State Geological Survey
  615 East Peabody Drive
  Champaign, Illinois  61820-6964
  USA
   PH 217-244-8389
   FX 217-333-2830
   finley@illinois.edu
  JOHN S. FISCHER
  Chief Executive Officer
  Breakthrough Energy, LLC
  7172 Old post Road
  Boulder, Colorado  80301
  USA
   PH 720-935-7100
   jfischer@breakthrough-energy.net

  
  COUNCIL MEMBERS - 2016 (Continued):
  DAVID M. FLANNERY, Esquire
  Member
  Steptoe & Johnson, PPLC
  Post Office Box 1588
  Charleston, West Virginia  25326-1588
  USA
  Chase Tower
  Eighth Floor
  707 Virginia Street East
  Charleston, West Virginia  25301
  USA
   PH 304-353-8171
   CL 304-539-1458
   FX 304-353-8183
   dave.flannery@steptoe-johnson.com
  MARK FORWERCK
  Managing Director North America
  LP Amina, LLC
  13850 Ballantyne Corporate Place
  Suite 125
  Charlotte, north Carolina  28277
  USA
   PH 704-944-5425 x 103
   mforwerck@lpamina.com
  DAVID A. FREDERICK
  Manager of Fuel Procurement
  First Energy Solutions Corp.
  76South Main Street
  Akron, Ohio  44308
  USA
   PH 330-315-7367
   frederickdave@firstenergycorp.com

  

  COUNCIL MEMBERS - 2016 (Continued):
  Dr. THOMAS K. GALE, MS
  Director of Technology Development
  Novinda Corporation
  999 Eighteenth Street
  Suite 1755
  Denver, Colorado  80202
  USA
   PH 720-473-8341
   t.gale@novinda.com
  PAUL GATZEMEIER
  CBCC
  7256 Highway 3
  Billings, Montana  59106
  USA
   PH 406-245-8542
   CL 406-696-9842
   paul.gatzemeier@earthlink.net
  
  SHEILA GLESMANN
  Senior Vice President
  Environmental and External Affairs
  ADA Carbon Solutions, LLC
  22 Belleview Drive
  Severna Park, Maryland  21146
  USA
   PH 410-544-5292
   Sheila.glesmann@ada-es.com
  
  DANNY L. GRAY, PE
  Executive Vice President
  Governmental & Environmental Affairs
  Charah, Inc.
  12601 Plantside Drive
  Louisville, Kentucky  40299
  USA
   PH 502-815-5017
   dgray@charah.com

  
  COUNCIL MEMBERS - 2016 (Continued):
  MATTHEW GREEK, PE
  Senior Vice President
  Engineering & Construction
  Basin Electric Power Cooperative
  7521 Beacon Loop
  Bismarck, North Dakota  58501
  USA
   PH 903-372-1030
   mgreek@bepc.com
  CLARK D. HARRISON
  Senior Manager
  Business Development
  CH2M
  4697 Logan Ferry Road
  Murrysville, Pennsylvania  15668
  USA
   CL 412-916-9300
   Clark.Harrison@ch2m.com
  WILLIAM HOBACK
  Energy Consultant
  Southern Illinois University
  Advanced Coal and Energy Research Center
  3590 Norwood Lane
  Tamaroa, Illinois  62888
  USA
   CL 618-318-2284
   Hobo528@gmail.com
  CLARENCE JOSEPH HOPF
  Senior Vice President
  Chief Commercial officer
  Fossil & Hydro-Energy Marketing
  Talen Energy
  835 Hamilton Street
  Suite 150
  Allentown, Pennsylvania  18101
  USA
   PH 610-774-4548
   CL 610-709-4451
   joe.hopf@talenenergy.com
  
  COUNCIL MEMBERS - 2016 (Continued):
  DANIEL R. JACK
  Senior Vice President
  Huntington Insurance
  9218 Route 119
  South Blairsville, Pennsylvania  15717
  USA
   PH 724-313-0903
   CL 724-72-2926
   FX 877-731-3343
   Daniel.Jack@huntington.com
  
  DENISE JOHNSON
  Vice President
  Material Handling & Underground
  Caterpillar
  901 West Washington CV 4110
  East Peoria, Illinois  61630
  USA
   PH 309-675-1980
   Johnson_Denise_C@cat.com
  
  Dr. MICHAEL JONES
  Vice President
  Research & Development
  Lignite Energy Council (LEC)
  Director and Technical Advisor
  Lignite Research Council
  Adjunct Professor of Physics
  University of North Dakota
  1016 East Owens Avenue
  Post Office Box 2277
  Bismarck, North Dakota  58502
  USA
   PH 701-258-7117
   MikeJones@lignite.com

  
  
  COUNCIL MEMBERS - 2016 (Continued):
  Dr. BRIAN KALK
  Chair
  North Dakota Public Service Commission
  3208 Chisholm Trail
  Bismarck, North Dakota  58503
  USA
   PH 701-328-2400
   FX 701-328-2410
   bkalk@nd.gov
  CASEY J. KAPTUR
  Principal Project Manager
  Runge Pincock Minarco
  6251 Greenwood Plaza Boulevard
  Suite 275
  Greenwood Village, Colorado  80111
  USA
   PH 303-914-4482
   ckaptur@rpmglobal.com
  MICHAEL KARMIS
  Mining & Mineral Engineering
  Virginia Tech
  100 Holden Hall
  Blacksburg, Virginia  24061
  USA
   PH 540-231-7057
   FX 540-231-4070
   mkarmis@vt.edu
  JOHN C. KENNEDY
  Vice President and General Manager
  Plant Operations - Ohio
  Dynegy
  312 Walbut Street
  Suite 1500
  Cincinnati, Ohio  45202
  USA
   PH 513-762-8250
   John.kennedy2@dynegy.com

  COUNCIL MEMBERS - 2016 (Continued):
  MICHAEL KENNEDY
  Assistant Director
  Division of Fossil Energy
  Kentucky State Department for Energy Development
  and Independence
  Kentucky Energy & Environment Cabinet
  300 Sower Boulevard
  Third Floor
  Frankfort, Kentucky  40601
  USA
   PH 502-782-6997
   michael.kennedy@ky.gov
  
  Dr. HOLLY KRUTKA
  Senior Research and Development Analyst
  Tri-State Generation and Transmission
  Association, Inc.
  Post Office Box 33695
  Denver, Colorado  80233-0695
  USA
   PH 720-872-7010
   CL 303-588-4322
   bkrutka@tristategt.org
  DAVID LAWSON
  Vice President - Coal
  Norfolk Southern Corporation
  3 Commercial Place
  Norfolk, Virginia  23510
  USA
   PH 757-823-5358
   dtlawson@nscorp.com
  
  JOHN T. LONG
  Chief Operating Officer
  Connemara, Ltd.
  10662 Misty Hill Road
  Overland Park, Illinois  60462
  USA
   PH 708-205-1930
   Jtlong11@gmail.com
  
  COUNCIL MEMBERS - 2016 (Continued):
  DANIEL T. MARTIN
  Senior Vice President
  Sales/Consumer Service
  Ingram Barge Company
  One Belle Meade Place
  4400 Harding Road
  Nashville, Tennessee  37205-2290
  USA
   PH 615-298-8373
   FX 615-298-8213
   martind@ingrambarge.com
  EMMANUEL R. MERLE
  President
  Energy Trading Company
  15 East Putnam Avenue
  Nbr. 3210
  Greenwich, Connecticut  06830
  USA
   PH 203-618-0161
   FX 203-618-0454
   thion@mindspring.com
  
  THOMAS METCALFE
  Senior Vice President
  Power Generation
  WE Energy Group/WE Energies
  231 West Michigan
  Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53203
  USA
   PH 414-221-5053
   tom.metcalfe@we-energies.com
  
  JEFFREY MILLER
  MJP Productions
  833 Wingate Drive
  Cincinnati, Ohio  45245
  USA
   PH 513-659-0000
   jmilleravid@yahoo.com

  COUNCIL MEMBERS - 2016 (Continued):
  RAFIC Y. MINKARA
  Vice President - Technology
  Headwaters, Inc.
  204 Lakeside Drive
  Kennesaw, Georgia  30144
  USA
   PH 770-330-0689
   rminkara@headwaters.com
  
  NANCY MOHN
  Director - Marketing Strategy
  GE Power Marketing
  175 Addison Road
  Windsor, Connecticut  06095
  USA
   PH 860-285-5748
   CL 860-794-8845
   nancy.mohn@ge.com,
  
  BETSY B. MONSEU
  Chief Executive Officer
  American Coal Council
  1101 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
  Suite 600
  Washington, D.C.  20004
  USA
   PH 202-756-4540
   bmonseu@americancoalcouncil.org
  
  CLARK A. MOSELEY
  Chief Executive Officer
  Navajo Transitional Energy Company
  Post Office Box 1749
  Window Rock, Arizona  86515
  USA
   PH 214-725-5785
   clark.moseley@navajo-tec.com

  
  COUNCIL MEMBERS - 2016 (Continued):
  RAM G. NARULA
  President
  Narula Energy & Environmental Consultants
  18326 Fable Drive
  Boyds, Maryland  20841
  USA
   PH 240-529-5064
   rgnarula@yahoo.com
  
  KENNETH J. NEMETH
  Executive Director
  Southern States Energy Board
  6325 Amherst Court
  Norcross, Georgia  30092
  USA
   PH 770-242-7712
   FX 770-242-0421
   nemeth@sseb.org
  
  Dr. KAREN OBENSHAIN
  Senior Director
  Fuels, Technology & Commercial Policy
  Edison Electric Institute
  701 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
  Washington, D.C.  20004-2969
  USA
   PH 202-508-5223
   kobenshain@eei.org
  
  MARY EILEEN O'KEEFE
  Vice President
  Business Development
  Athena Global Energy Solutions
   PH 312-4882-9701
   CL 312-420-4094
   MaryEileenOkeefe@aol.com

  
  
  COUNCIL MEMBERS - 2016 (Continued):
  JERRY J. OLIVER
  President
  Global Tech Management Services
  9519 Tarrant Court
  Houston, Texas  77064
  USA
   CL 832-661-5103
   Jjoliver826#aol.com
  
  FREDRICK D. PALMER
  Partner
  Total Spectrum
  507 Capitol Court NE
  Nbr. 100
  Washington, D.C.  20002
  USA
   PH 314-342-7624
   fpalmer@totalspectrumsga.com
  
  CARYL PFEIFFER
  Director
  Corporate Fuels and Byproducts
  LG&E and KU Services
  220 West Main Street
  Louisville, Kentucky  40202
  USA
   PH 502-627-2774
   CL 502-693-4071
   caryl.pfeiffer@lge-ku.com
  CAROLE PLOWFIELD
   PH 202-280-6019
   carole_plowfield2011@comcast.net
  ROBERT PUISSANT
  Senior Vice President
  Marketing and Sales
  Fuel Tech, Inc.
  27601 Bella Vista Parkway
  Warrenville, Illinois  60555
  USA
   PH 630-845-4440
   rpuissant@ftek.com
  COUNCIL MEMBERS - 2016 (Continued):
  ROBERT M. PURGERT
  President
  Energy Industries of Ohio
  Park Center Plaza Suite 200
  6100 oak Tree Boulevard
  Post Office Box 31247
  Independence, Ohio  44131
  USA
   PH 216-643-2952
   FX 216-643-2901
   purgert@msn.com
  Dr. MASSOOD RAMEZAN, PE
  Senior Technical Advisor
  Division Director
  KeyLogic Systems, Inc.
  M/S B922
  Post Office Box 10940
  Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania  15236
  USA
   PH 412-386-6451
   CL 724-554-3596
   mramezan@keylogic.com
  WILLIAM RANEY
  President
  West Virginia Coal Association
  Post Office Box 3923
  Charleston, West Virginia  25339
  USA
   PH 304-342-4153
   braney@wvcoal.com
  
  ANGILA M. RETHERFORD
  Vice President
  Environmental Affairs & Corporate Sustainability
  Vectren Corporation
  One Vectren Square
  Evansville, Indiana  47708
  USA
   PH 812-491-4218
   amretherford@vectren.com
  
  COUNCIL MEMBERS - 2016 (Continued):
  DANIEL A. ROLING
  President, Chief Executive Officer, and Director
  NOVADX Ventures Corporation
  12415 Mallard Bay Drive
  Knoxville, Tennessee 37922
  USA
   PH 865-323-2367
   droling@gmail.com
  
  TODD SAVAGE
  Executive Vice President/Group Leader
  Savage Companies
  901 West Legacy Center Way
  Midvale, Utah  84047
  USA
   PH 801-944-6600
   info@savageservices.com
  MARK SCHOENFIELD
  Senior Vice President - Operations
  Jupiter Oxygen Corporation
  2800 South River Road
  Suite 300
  DesPlaines, Illinois  60018
  USA
   PH 219-712-5206
   FX 847-928-0795
   M_schoenfield@jupiteroxygen.com
  
  JOHN J. SIEGEL
  Chair
  Bowie Resources
  6100 Dutchmans Lane
  Ninth Floor
  Louisville, Kentucky  40205
  USA
   PH 502-584-6022
   FX 502-587-6579
   jsiegel@bowieresources.com

  COUNCIL MEMBERS - 2016 (Continued):
  RICHARD C. SMITH
  Director
  Environmental Strategy and Analysis
  Ameren Services Company
  1901 Chouteau Avenue
  Mail Code 602
  St. Louis, Missouri  63103
  USA
   PH 314-554-3531
   RSmith3@ameren.com
  
  SHARON SJOSTROM, PE
  chief Product Officer
  Advanced Emissions Solutions, Inc.
  9135 South Ridgeline Boulevard
  Highlands Ranch, Colorado  80129
  USA
   PH 303-339-8856
   sharons@adaes.com
  CAROLYN SLAUGHTER
  Director of Environmental Policy
  American Public Power Association
  2451 Crystal Drive
  Suite 1000
  Arlington, Virginia  22202-4804
  USA
   PH 202-467-2943
   cslaughter@publicpower.org
  DECK S. SLONE
  Senior Vice President
  Strategy & Public Policy
  Arch Coal
  One City Place Drive
  St. Louis, Missouri  63141
  USA
   PH 314-994-2717
   dslone@archcoal.com

  COUNCIL MEMBERS - 2016 (Continued):
  MICHAEL G. SORENSEN, PE
  Senior Manager
  Fuel & Water Resources
  Tri-State Generation & Transmission Association
  Inc.
  Post Office Box 33659
  Denver, Colorado  80233-0695
  USA
    PH 303 254 3208
    CL 303 229 8039
    mgsorensen@tristategt.org
  G. SCOTT STALLARD
  Vice President of Asset Management Services
  Black & Veatch Energy
  11401 Lamar Avenue
  Overland Park, Kansas  66211
  USA
   PH 913-458-9764
   stallardgs@bv.com
  
  MARK STEMM
  Partner
  Porter, Wright, Morris & Arthur
  41 South High Street
  Columbus, Ohio  43215
  USA
   PH 614-227-2092
   mstemm@porterwright.com
  VICKY SULLIVAN
  Associate Vice President
  Policy Analysis
  American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity
  1152 Fifteenth Street, NW
  Suite 400
  Washington, D.C.  20005
  USA
   PH 202-459-4859
   CL 703-203-6703
   vsullivan@americaspower.org
  
  COUNCIL MEMBERS - 2016 (Continued):
  SCOTT TEEL
  Vice President
  Fuel Services
  Southern Company Operations
  600 North Eighteenth Street
  BIN-8160
  Birmingham, Alabama  35203
  USA
   PH 202-257-1247
   rsteel@southernco.com
  
  JOHN W. THOMPSON
  Director
  Fossil Transition Project
  Clean Air Task Force
  705 West Main Street
  Suite 101
  Carbondale, Illinois  62902
  USA
   PH 618-457-0137
   CL 618-203-6233
   FX 618-457-0513
   jthompson@catf.us
  PAMELA TOMSKI
  SAS Institute, Inc.
  1530 Wilson Boulevard
  Suite 800
  Arlington, Virginia  22209
  USA
   PH 202-390-8896
   ptomski@mac.com
  
  SARAH M. WADE
  Principal
  Wade, LLC
  1784 Lanier Place, NW
  Washington, D.C.  20009
  USA
   PH 202-250-4670
   swade@wade-llc.com
  
  COUNCIL MEMBERS - 2016 (Continued):
  DAMAN S. WALIA
  President and Chief Executive Officer
  ARCTECH, Inc.
  14100 Park Meado Drive
  Chantilly, Virginia  20151
  USA
   PH 703-222-0280
   dwalia@arctech.com
  
  KATHY WALKER
  President
  Elm Street Resources, Inc.
  Post Office Box 1718
  Paintsville, Kentucky  41240
  USA
   PH 606-789-4036 x 14
   Kwelmst@bellsouth.net
  JEFFREY L. WALLACE
  Chief Executive Officer
  Bahamas Power & Light
  115 Berry Ridge Road
  Fayetteville, Georgia  30215
  USA
   PH 404-819-8713
   jlwallac74@gmail.com
  
  KATHY WALTON
  Principal
  The Basic Industries Group, LLC
  1407 Second avenue
  Suite 3A
  New York, New York  10021
  USA
    PH 917 836 2000
    kwalton@thebasicindustries.com

  
  
  COUNCIL MEMBERS - 2016 (Continued):
  RICHARD M. WHITING
  Whiting Advisory, LC
  7 Twin Springs Lane
  St. Louis, Missouri  63124
  USA
   PH 314-691-2363
   rmwhiting@mac.com
  JENNIFER WILCOX
  Associate Professor
  Colorado School of Mines
  Chemical and Biological Engineering
  Alderson Hall 235
  1613 Illinois Street
  Golden, Colorado  80401
  USA
   PH 303-273-3885
   wilcox@mines.edu
  
  ROBERT WILLIAMS
  Senior Research Scientist and Associated Faculty
  Princeton Environmental Institute
  Princeton University
  140 Guyot Hall
  Washington Road
  Princeton, new Jersey  08544
  USA
   PH 609-258-5448
   rwilliam@princeton.edu
  KEMAL WILLIAMSON
  President - Americas
  Peabody Energy
  701 Market Street
  Suite 1400
  St. Louis, Missouri  63101
  USA
   kwilliamson@peabodyenergy.com

  
  COUNCIL MEMBERS - 2016 (Continued):
  STEVEN E. WINBERG
  Program Manager
  Global Laboratory Operations
  Battelle Memorial Institute
  505 King Avenue
  Columbus, Ohio  43201
  USA
   PH 412-298-6470
   winberg@battelle.org
  Dr. XIAOLIANG YANG
  CCUS Team Lead
  World Resources Institute
  PENDING MEMBERS:
  BLOCK ANDREWS, PE
  Strategic Environmental Solutions Director
  Burns & McDonnell
  9400 Ward Parkway
  Kansas City, Missouri  64114
  USA
   PH 816-349-6769
   bandrews@burnsmcd.com
  
  JASON BOHRER
  President and Chief Executive Officer
  Lignite Energy Council
  1108 North Parkview Drive
  Bismarck, North Dakota  58501
  USA
   PH 701-202-6915
   JasonBohrer@lignite.com
  JEFF ERIKSON
  General Manager Americas Region
  Global CCS Institute
  5425 Wisconsin Avenue
  Suite 600
  Chevy Chase, Maryland  20815
  USA
   PH 301-968-2401
   jeff.erikson@globalccsinstitute.com
  PENDING MEMBERS (Continued):
  HOWARD J. HERZOG
  Senior Research Engineer
  MIT ENERGY Initiative
  Room E19-370L
  Cambridge, Massachusetts  02139
  USA
   PH 617-253-0688
   hjherzog@mit.edu
  
  ROBERT G. HILTON
  Robert Hilton Energy
  1409 Centerpoint Boulevard
  Knoxville, Tennessee  37932
  USA
   PH 865-591-6500
   roberthiltonenergy@gmail.com
  
  MICHAEL J. HOLMES
  Director of Energy Systems Development
  Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC)
  University of North Dakota
  15 North Twenty-third Street
  Stop 9018
  Grand Fords, North Dakota  58202-9018
  USA
   PH 701-777-5276
   mholmes@undeere.org
  MARTY W. IRWIN
  Senior Technology Advisor
  PQR Energy, LLC
  4738 Arabian Run
  Indianapolis, indiana  46228
  USA
   PH 317-387-1542
   Mwio1@aol.com

  
  
  PENDING MEMBERS (Continued):
  DENNIS R. JAMES
  Director New Technology
  North American Coal Corporation
  5340 Legacy Drive
  Building 1, Suite 300
  Plano, Texas  75024
  USA
   PH 972-448-5473
   dennis.james@nacoal.com
  VELLO A. KUUSKRAA
  President
  Advanced Resources International, Inc.
  4501 Fairfax Drive
  Suite 910
  Arlington, Virginia  22203
  USA
   PH 703-528-8420
   VKuusraa@adv-res.com
  LEONARD J. MARSICO
  Partner
  McGuire Woods
  625 Liberty Avenue
  Twenty-third Floor
  Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania  15222-3142
  USA
   PH 412-667-7987
   lmarsico@mcguirewoods.com
  CHARLES S. McNEIL
  Chair and Chief Executive Officer
  NexGen Resources Corporation
  5251 DTC Parkway
  Suite 800
  Greenwood Village, Colorado  80111
  USA
   PH 303-751-9230
   emcneil@nexgen-group.com

  PENDING MEMBERS (Continued):
  EMILY S. MEDINE
  Principal
  Energy Venture Analysis, Inc.
  1800 Beechwood Boulevard
  Suite 300
  Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania  15217
  USA
   PH 412-421-2390
   emedine@evainc.com
  ZACHARY T. SPACE
  Chair
  CoalBlue Project
  c/o Vorys Advisors
  52 East Gay Street
  Columbus, Ohio  43215
  USA
   PH 614-464-6441
   ztspace@vorysadvisors.com
  CHUNSHAN SONG
  Director
  DOE/NETL
  University Coalition for Fossil Energy Research
  (UCFER)
  Director
  EMS Energy Institute
  Distinguished Professor of Fuel Science and
  Chemical Engineering
  The Pennsylvania State University
  University Park, Pennsylvania  16802
  USA
   PH 814-863-4466
   csong@psu.edu

  

  PENDING MEMBERS (Continued):
  BENJAMIN SPORTON
  Chief Executive
  World Coal Association
  Fifth Floor, Heddon House
  149-151 Regent Street
  London W1B4JD
  UK
   PH +44(0)20 7851 0052
   bsporton@worldcoal.org
  MATTHEW T. USHER, PE
  Director
  New Technology Development & Policy Support
  American Electric Power/AEP Generation
  1 Riverside Plaza
  Floor 22
  Columbus, Ohio  43215
  USA
   PH 614-716-3262
   mtusher@aep.com
  
  TOMASZ S. WILTOWSKI
  Director
  Advanced Coal & Energy Research Center
  Professor
  Department of Mechanical Engineering and Energy
  Processes
  Southern Illinois University
  Visiting Professor
  Technical University
  Ostrava, Czech Republic
  Carbondale, Illinois  62901
  USA
   PH 618-453-7000
   tomek@acere.siu.edu
   tomek@siu.edu

  
  
  PRESENTATIONS:
  MICHAEL D. DURHAM
  Chair
  National Coal Council
  1730 M Street NW
  Suite 907
  Washington, D.C.  20036
  USA
    PH 202 223 1191
    FX 202 223 9031
  JULIA d'HEMECOURT, Attorney
  Legal Counsel
  Hunton & Williams
  Dr. DARREN MOLLOT
  Associate Deputy Assistant Secretary
  Office of Fossil Energy
  U.S. Department of Energy
  1000 Independence Avenue, SW
  Washington, D.C.
  USA
  GREGORY A. WORKMAN
  Vice-Chair
  The National Coal Council
  National Coal Council Finance Committee
  Director
  Fuels
  Dominion Resources
  120 Tredegar Street DC3
  Richmond, Virginia  23219
  USA
    PH 804 787 5702
    greg.workman@dom.com

  

  PRESENTATIONS (Continued):
  THOMAS METCALFE
  Senior Vice President
  Power Generation
  WEC Energy Group/WE Energies
  231 West Michigan
  Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53203
  USA
   PH 414-221-5053
   tom.metcalfe@we-energies.com
  PETER KIRK
  Executive Business Operations
  NeuCo
  A General Electric Company
  
  WILLIAM SAWYER
  Manager
  Hibbard Renewable Energy Center
  Minnesota Power/ALLETE
  DANNY L. GRAY, PE
  Executive Vice President
  Governmental & Environmental Affairs
  Charah, Inc.
  12601 Plantside Drive
  Louisville, Kentucky  40299
  USA
   PH 502-815-5017
   dgray@charah.com
  JANET GELLICI
  Chief Executive Officer
  National Coal Council
  1101 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
  Suite 600
  Washington, D.C.  20004
  USA
   PH 202-756-4524
   CL 602-717-5112
   FX 202-756-7323
   jgellilci@NCC1.org
  
  ATTENDEES:
  THOMAS ALLEY
  Vice President Generation
  EPRI
  ROBERT BRAITHWAITE
  Manager
  Energy Sales & Transportation
  CNX Coal Resources
  
  WILLIAM F. BROWNELL, Esquire
  Hunton & Williams
  1900 K Street NW
  Twelfth Floor
  Washington, D.C.  20036
  USA
    PH 202 955 1555
    bbrownell@hunton.com
  JOHN CASSADY
  Vice President
  Legislative Affairs
  NRECA
  
  DONNA CERWONKA
  AVP Utility Coal
  CSX Transportation
  
  JOSEPH CRAFT
  President
  Alliance Coal
  
  DAVID DENTON
  Senior Director
  Business Development
  RTI International
  THEODORE DOHENY
  Chief Executive Officer
  Joy Global, Inc.
  WILLIAM ELLIOTT
  Operations Manager
  Bechtel Infrastructure Corporation
  ATTENDEES (Continued):
  JEFFREY ERIKSON
  General Manager Americas
  Global CCS Institute
  ROBERT FINLEY
  Illinois State Geological Survey
  
  JOHN FISCHER
  Chief Executive Officer
  Breakthrough Energy, LLC
  
  DAVID FREDERICK
  Manager
  Fuel And Transportation Procurement
  First Energy Generation, LLC
  Dr. NINA BERGAN FRENCH, PE
  Founder
  Clean Coal Solutions, LLC
  2297 Monticello Road
  Napa, California  94558
  USA
   PH 707-265-0700
   ninafrench@sbcglobal.net
  
  SUSAN JACKSON
  Manager
  CCP and Waste Management
  Santee Cooper
  THOMAS JANSEN
  Manager
  We Energy Group
  KIM JOHNSON
  President and Chief Executive Officer
  eBarton, LLC
  TRENT KOHL
  Manager
  Environmental Compliance Assurance
  We Energy Group
  
  ATTENDEES (Continued):
  AMISHI KUMAR
  Program Coordinator
  United States Energy Association
  KRIS McKINNEY
  Manager
  Environmental Strategy
  We Energy Group
  
  BARRY McNULTY
  Director
  Corporate Communications
  We Energy Group
  ROBERT MEIDL
  Principal Engineer
  Environmental
  We Energy Group
  
  AL MIHM
  Director
  Major Projects
  We Energy Group
  STEPHEN MILLER, Esquire
  Counsel
  Steptoe & Johnson
  Dr. DARREN MOLLOT
  Associate Deputy Assistant Secretary
  Office of Fossil Energy
  U.S. Department of Energy
  1000 Independence Avenue SW
  Washington, D.C.
  USA

  ATTENDEES (Continued):
  BRIAN NORRIS  Vice President  Vice President
  Business Development
  Bibb Engineers, Architects & Constructors
  3131 Broadway
  Kansas City, Missouri  64111
  USA
    PH 816 285 5500
    bobbibb@bibb-eac.com
  THOMAS SARKUS
  Industrial Partnerships Manager
  NETL
  SKIP STEPHENS, Esquire
  Washington Counsel
  Joy Global, Inc.
  PAT STIFF
  Vice President
  Coal Generation
  We Energy Group
  
  DOUGLAS WETJEN
  Director
  Coal Resources
  We Energy Group
  JON WOOD
  President
  CaolBlue Project

  

  

                       I N D E X
                                                Page
  
  Welcome
       By Michael D. Durham                       43
       By Julia d'Hemecourt                       48
  
  Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage:
  Outlook and Activities
       By Dr. Darren Mollot                       50
  
  We Energies' Coal Units:  Update on AQCS
  and Enhanced Flexibility Initiatives
       By Thomas Metcalfe                         86
  
  Industry Presentations:  Value-Added
  Opportunities for Coal
       Moderator:  Janet Gellici                 116
  
   Digital Power Plan Management:  Enhancing
   Coal Plant Environmental Compliance
       By Peter Kirk                             118
  
   Carbon-Eliminating Allam Cycle for Coal Power
   Plants
       By William Sawyer                         151
  
   Beneficial Uses of Coal and Coal Byproducts:
   Coal Ash and Rare-Earth Elements
       By Danny Gray                             180
  
  National Coal Council Business Reports         222
   Finance Committee
       By Gregory A. Workman                     223
  
   Coal Policy Committee
       By Deck Slone by Janet Gellici            229
   Communications Committee
       By Janet Gellici                          235
  
   Government Issues
       By Janet Gellici                          237
  
               NATIONAL COAL COUNCIL
              Meeting was held pursuant to Notice and
  Invitation at the Regency Ballroom, Hilton City
  Center, 509 West Wisconsin Avenue, Milwaukee,
  Wisconsin, USA, commencing on the 5th day of
  October, 2016, at 8:15 a.m. CT.
              Present:  Michael D. Durham, Chair;
  Gregory Workman, Vice-Chair; Janet Gellici, Chief
  Executive Officer; Sy Ali; Barbara Farmer-Altizer;
  Robert A. Bibb; Jacqueline F. Bird; Rick Boyd; F.
  William Brownell; John M. Cassady; Donna Cerwonka;
  Joseph W. Craft III; David L. Denton; Edward (Ted)
  Doheny II; William H. Elliott; Robert J. Finley;
  John S. Fischer; David A. Frederick; Sheila
  Glesmann; Danny L. Gray; Clark D. Harrison; William
  Hoback; John C. Kennedy; John T. Long; Tom
  Metcalfe; Jeffrey Miller; Rafic Y. Minkara; Nancy
  Mohn; Betsy B. Monseu; Clark A. Moseley; Ram G.
  Narula; Kenneth J. Nemeth; Mary Eileen O'Keefe;
  Robert M. Purgert; Mary Eileen O'Keefe; Caryl
  Pfeiffer; Robert Puissant; Dr. Massood Ramezan;
  Daniel A. Roling; Mark Schoenfield; Deck S. Slone;
  Michael G. Sorensen; Vicky Sullivan; Scott Teel;
  Kathy Walton; Gregory A. Workman; Xiaoliang Yang;
  Jeff Erikson; Dennis R. James; Charles S. McNeil;
  Emily S. Medine; Tomasz S. Wiltowski; Thomas Alley;
  Robert Braithwaite; Susan Jackson; Thomas Jansen;
  Kim Johnson; Peter Kirk; Trent Kohl; Amishi Kumar;
  Daniel Matusak; Kris McKinney; Barry McNulty;
  Robert Meidl; Al Mihm; Stephen Miller; Dr. Darren
  Mollot; Brian Norris; Thomas Sarkus; William
  Sawyer; Skip Stephens; Pat Stiff; Douglas Wetjen;
  and Jon Wood.
               TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS
              MR. DURHAM:  Good morning, Ladies and
  Gentlemen.  My name is Mike Durham, and I'm
  Chairman of the National Coal Council.
              The Fall 2006 Meeting of the National
  Coal Council is hereby called to order.  This
  morning we're fortunate to have a number of very
  special guesses from the Department of Energy.
              I'm pleased to welcome Dr. Darren
  Mollot, Associate Deputy Assistant Secretary for
  Clean Coal and Carbon Management with the Office of
  Fossil Energy.  We'll hear from Dr. Mollot shortly
  in his keynote presentation.
              Tom Sarkus, Industrial Partnership
  Manager with the National Energy Technology Lab.
  And, a special welcome to Dan Matusak, Government
  Affairs and an-, and Analysis in the Office of
  Fossil Energy, who is DOE's liaison to the National
  Coal Counsel.
              Apologize if I've missed anyone else
  attending from DOE.  Welcome, one and all.
              We have some exceptional speakers on
  today's agenda in addition to Dr. Mollot.  We've
  organized our industrial presentation today along
  the theme of value-added opportunities for coal.
              We'll hear from Tom Metchalfe, with We
  Energies, and providing an update on the company's
  air quality control systems and power plant
  initiatives.  We're grateful to Tom and We Energies
  for hosting the tour this afternoon at their Oak
  Creek supercritical units.
              Following Tom's presentation we'll hear
  from Peter Kirk, of GE's Digital Power Plant
  Management Technologies.  Bill Sawyer, of Minnesota
  Power, will provide us an overview of the promising
  Allum cycle technologies with applications for
  coal-based generation.
              And, we'll conclude with presentations
  from Danny Gray, which, with Charah, who will
  address beneficial use of coal, including coal ash
  and extraction of rare earth elements.
              We then conclude our program with some
  Council business.  In a minute we'll introduce our
  opening keynote presenter.
              Before doing so, I'll note that the
  meeting is being held in accordance with the
  Federal Advisory Committee Act and the Regulations
  that govern that.  Our meeting is open to the
  public.
              I'd like to welcome guests from the
  public who have joined us today.  An opportunity
  will be provided for our guests to make comments at
  the end of the meeting.
              A verbatim Transcript of this meeting is
  being made.  Therefore, it is important for you to
  use the microphone when you wish to speak, and that
  you begin by stating your name and affiliation.
              Council members have been provided a
  copy of the Agenda today.  I'd appreciate having a
  Motion for the adoption of the agenda.
              MR. NARULA:  So moved.
              MS. GELLICI:  Ram Narula is a first.
  Can I have a second?
              MS. MOHN:  I second.
              MS. GELLICI:  Nancy Mohn, M-o-h-n.
  Thank you.
              MR. DURHAM:  Respond, all in favor?
              (Whereupon, at 8:18 a.m. CT, a response
  was had.)
              MR. DURHAM:  Opposed?
              (Whereupon, no response was had.)
              MR. DURHAM:  Thank you.  I'd now like to
  call on NCC legal counsel Julia d'Hemecourt, with
  Hunton & Williams, who is joining us via conference
  call to provide us with our antitrust advisory
  base.
              MS. D'HEMECOURT:  Hi.  Good morning.
              The National Coal Council is a federal
  advisory committee to the Secretary of Energy.
  Membership in this confers no immunity from federal
  or state antitrust laws.
              As you know, the NCC has a set of
  general antitrust guidelines.  If you would like a
  copy, one can be sent to you.
              During this meeting we will abide by
  these guidelines.  If you feel we have strayed from
  them, please interrupt and we will seek legal
  counsel.
              Thank you.
              MR. DURHAM:  Thank you, Julie.
              It is my pleasure to now introduce our
  keynote speaker, Dr. Darren Mollot, Associate
  Deputy Assistant Secretary with the Department of
  Energy's Office of Fossil Energy.  Please note the
  detailed bios for all of our, our speakers are
  included in your packet.
              I would like to highlight a few of Dr.
  Mollot's accomplishments.  Dr. Mollot is Associate
  Deputy Assistant Secretary for Clean Coal and
  Carbon Management in DOE's Office of Fossil Energy.
              In this position, Dr. Mollot provides
  strategic direction, planning, and coordination to
  accelerate progress and technology research on
  advanced fossil energy and carbon capture and
  storage.  In his previous positions as Office
  Director for Advanced Fossil Technology Systems,
  Dr. Mollot guided research, development, and
  demonstration efforts in fossil power generation
  and crosscutting programs.
              He has served DOE in various roles since
  1992, most notably as Research Scientist and
  Project Manager at NETL, Team Lead at the National
  Carbon Capture Center, and Acting Deputy Director
  Assistant Secretary for the Office of Clean Coal
  and Carbon Management.
              He earned his Ph.D. from State
  University of New York in Buffalo in mechanical and
  aerospace engineering.  So, please welcome Dr.
  Mollot this morning.
  CARBON CAPTURE UTILIZATION AND STORAGE:  OUTLOOK
  AND ACTIVITIES:
              DR. MOLLOT:  Good morning.
              (Whereupon, at 8:20 a.m. CT, a response
  was had.)
              DR. MOLLOT:  First I want to thank the
  Council for the work it does.  The reports that you
  produce, I know it's a lot of work, and they do
  help move the needle in, in the right direction, I
  think, for a lot of technologies, and inform the
  Secretary.
              And, they're very much appreciated.
  This recent report you did, just did is very timely
  for us, on, on the Office of Fossil Energy, in
  particular, because we're starting now to really
  look at alternative uses for, for, for the carbon
  dioxide once it's captured.
              And, your insights and recommendations
  are valued.  And, so, I certainly appreciate that,
  personally.
              So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to
  give a relatively high-level overview of what we're
  doing and why we're doing it, and then I look
  forward to any questions after that or during the
  break, or any other time if you want to burrow down
  in any more detail on any of the topics that I'm
  covering here.
              So, okay.  My first-person button didn't
  work.
              Oops.  Now it worked twice.
              This is good.  I'll try and get back
  again.
              Aah, good.  All right.
              So, in case any of you have to use
  BlackBerries or anything like that, this is
  everything I'm going to say in the presentation,
  but I just say it in more detail.  So, the, the
  first thing, really, is this, all right?
              Carbon capture is needed domestically
  and globally, we believe.  And, CCUS, which is the
  carbon capture with the actual storage and
  utilization, is really acquired -- It would be very
  challenging to do it and meet those two-degrees C
  rise that we've all committed ourselves to without
  capturing carbon.
              The -- And, storing it somewhere.  As
  demonstrated now, I'll give you some of examples of
  how it's being demonstrated.
              I think many of you already know that,
  of course, so we can do it.  The question is cost
  of doing it, and performance.
              So, we know it's possible.
  Transformational technologies and other advanced
  technologies for lowering the costs and improving
  the performance are underway.  We'll talk a little
  bit about that.
              And, we need to do, obviously need to do
  that in order to make it widely available.  And,
  finally, technology's not enough.
              We need technology and policy, we
  believe, to actually push the needle on this and
  get this out into the targets that we need, we need
  to meet.  So, let me try going in more detail.
              I like this slide because it really
  gives the global feel of what this problem is.  I'm
  not sure if others have seen this but you know
  looking at the Americas, Europe, Africa and China,
  Japan, India.
              There's enormous amounts of CO2 being
  generated all across the globe, as we know.  So,
  solving this in one region or another region is not
  going to be enough.
              And, as a global issue, it's got to have
  global solutions, and that's why outreach is so
  important; working with our international partners
  is so important.  And, it's not just a one
  solution.
              Solutions that may work in the U.S. may
  have to be tweaked or changed to work in the
  geology and the economies of the other nations.
  And, so, working together is very, very important.
              I got that in there.  The other thing I
  want to, to point out, again, which is probably
  known, is that fossil is really the foundation
  right now of the economies, not just in the U.S.
              This is knot just a domestic one, but
  around the world.  And, just to kind of give you a
  feel, certainly there are renewables, which are
  important and growing.
              We have nuclear, which is mostly in the
  power sector.  But, look at oil, gas, and coal, and
  you'll see 65 percent in the power industry is
  reliant on it, fossil fuels that is, 95 in
  transportation, 90 in industrial, and home heating
  over 90 percent.
              It's not something that will change
  overnight.  And, so, to meet the targets that we're
  trying to meet in the 2025, 2030, 2040 timeframes,
  we'll need to capture some of that CO2.
              Lost that one.  All right.
              So, certainly there's international
  commitment, and, and, and force behind trying to do
  this, trying to get lower carbon sources of energy
  while lowering the carbon, lowering the amount of
  carbon from, from all sources of energy.  There are
  very, very challenging goals.
              In COP 21 they actually put an
  aspirational goal out there, as you know, of 1.5
  degrees C, as if 2 wasn't enough.  But, we're
  scientists.
              We like challenges, right?  And, that's
  what we're going.
              So, I believe that, that it's very, very
  hard to achieve that without CCS.  And, even
  getting negative CO2 emissions if we can by using
  biomass with the coal, those kinds of things.
              It's going to require new technologies
  to produce power, and I'll be talking about them a
  little bit more in just a few moments, that
  actually make the separation of the CO2 a lot
  easier, or maybe just separate it intrinsically.
              And, we'll need to get a value from the
  CO2, as well, at least in the early stages, because,
  because costs are still high right now.  And, in
  order to, to actually be able to, to get these
  first movers out there, you need to have more.
              Okay.  I think you look at various
  different, like, this report that just came out
  from National Academies, people are starting to see
  that you really do need CCS to achieve these
  targets.
              COP 22, which is going to be held here
  coming up soon, the first time ever CCS is actually
  invited to the COP 22.  So, it's coming along.
              We're starting to see others, also, are
  seeing that we have all this, this, this fossil
  energy out there, the fossil fuel sources out
  there.  We're going to keep using them, so we need
  to try to have the technologies that are out there
  that allow them to help us meet our goals.
              All right.  I just wanted to -- Some of
  these demonstrations, I'm sure many of you are
  aware of them already.
              But, right here there's a, there's a
  handful of technologies that are either operating
  or will be operating very, very soon.  There's
  quite an array of them.
              They're industrial projects.  They're,
  they're post-combustion capture projects, and there
  are, there are precombustion capture projects.
              So, we know how to do this.  We've been
  doing -- We've been capturing carbon dioxide for
  decades now, right?  The oil-and-gas and chemical
  industry?
              Now we just have to tailer it to our
  needs for the lower, lower concentrations and the,
  the higher, the larger sizes that we have to
  capture, and that sort of stuff.
              And, that exactly is what we're trying
  to do.  I'm sure it's better out there.
              I'm trying to do this.  Okay.
              So, we're also working on a lot of
  technologies and pathways, right?  So, we have a
  pretty good idea what we need to do to get from
  where we are right now to where we have to be.
              I just put this up as one of the
  documents if you say the way forward at that point
  of the review because that puts forth what we've
  got to do.  We've got to build more pilots.
              We've got to demonstrate retrofit
  technologies, expand uses to, to other fuels and
  other industries.  We need to partner
  internationally, and we need to merge fossil
  technologies with other technologies, as well.
              And, and, there are other roadmaps out
  there.  The point is, we, we have a path.
              We know what we need to do.  We're
  working to do that on the, on the technologies
  side.
              There you go.  Thought I'd give you a
  slide that just shows the FE goals and priorities.
              The three ones in the center have to do
  with oil and gas.  We do a bunch of stuff with the
  oil and gas, the petroleum reserves, and also
  fossil energy.
              But, the ones we really, for this
  presentation, the ones I care about are the first
  and the last one there.  One has to do with
  accelerating the pathways to CCS.
              Has to do with technologies, innovation.
  CCS is the, is the way to put these systems
  together differently.
              Smaller modular systems so you can
  deploy them more easily, as well as new
  technologies.  The last two there, domestic and
  international partnerships are important, and, and
  reducing the barriers, which can be anything from
  infrastructure, to, to regulatory.
              So, we need to work on those things.  In
  order to leverage our resources, though, and we'll
  talk a little bit more about this in a moment, we
  have these crosscut teams within the Office of, the
  Department of Energy.
              So, for example, for the subsurface, the
  geo-, Geothermal Program does a lot of things in
  the subsurface, as does our Oil and Gas Program,
  and, of course, for carbon storage.  And, so, by
  working together and seeing what areas that are
  working very, very similar, and can work with each
  other, we get to use our dollars a lot more
  effectively.
              And, we also get to crossbreed our
  ideas.  So, for example, in the oil and gas
  industry, when they're putting CO2 in the ground to
  bring up oil, we often get these fingering problems
  where the CO2 doesn't go in the direction you want
  it to go.
              It can't contact all the oil-bearing
  rocks in there as well.  And, so, they come up with
  a lot of solutions for that.
              Well, that's the same problem we have
  when we're doing, trying to do CO2 storage, right?
  We want to contact as much rock as we can when we
  put it under there so we lower the area which is
  being impacted on the ground that we have to
  monitor.
              Same for geothermal.  They're trying to
  get as much heat as they can.
              So, they also want to contact as much
  rock as possible.  So, a lot of that research
  that's being done by certain offices is useful to
  all mining.
              By doing that type of thing in, in
  several areas, including subsurface and
  supercritical and water and other things, we get to
  actually get a lot more bang for the Government's
  dollar.  So, that's, that's the other, that's the
  other thing.
              Okay, I talked about most of this stuff.
  We, we need to ensure that we can rely on, on
  traditional energy sources which we are relying on
  both here and around the globe, but we can do it in
  an environmentally and appropriate manner.
              And, this just talks a little bit about
  things I think I already, already talked about.
  Aah, good.
              I did want to spend just a couple of
  minutes on some of these crosscuts.  And, in case
  you're not familiar with them.
              I talked just a little bit just by way
  of an example of the subsurface one.  The energy
  and water one looks at lots of water issues.
              But, one of the ones I want to highlight
  is that you can look at water production from
  either an oil-bearing source or a saline aquifer
  that you're trying to go in and store CO2 in.  The
  water, you often pump up to the surface because you
  want to control where the plume is going
  underground, and for reasons like that.
              Well, you can clean up that water.  And,
  then you, you have a salable project, especially in
  arid, arid regions.
              So, we're working with the Office of
  Renewable Energy, who are working on saline and
  brackish waters for, for, to make potable water out
  of it.  So, they have a lot of technologies up at
  these lower TDS levels, total dissolved solids
  levels.
              The stuff that we're bringing up from,
  from subsurface typically has a lot more solids in
  it than what the technologies that the Renewable
  Energy folks can handle.  So, we work in that area,
  and then we take the, the, the work that they're
  doing in, in the higher TDS, like membrane work and
  that kind of stuff.
              We double the two together so that then
  we don't have to re-do that work and we, we become
  potable, or at least water you can use for
  agriculture and other uses for industrial plants.
  There's a lot other uses in the water that I won't
  go into right now.
              But, I just want to give you an example
  of how, how working together makes a lot of sense.
  Ditto for super CO2.
              There's a lot of working being done in
  that.  And, it's something that, that improves
  efficiency, lowers costs, and the lower the cost,
  that's, that's in important point.
              Solar is also.  The friends in the EERE
  and the solar program also.
              It's also of interest to the Nuclear
  folks where they, the small footprint of this
  technology and the simplicity of it certainly is,
  is of a great importance to them.  And, and, the,
  and, the Navy is also very interested in this
  technology for obvious reasons, the small footprint
  being one.
              And, so, what, what this -- What it is,
  for those who are familiar with the critical CO2,
  you're just replacing the steam and using
  supercritical CO2.  And, I lead that team, so I'm
  happy to talk at length of that if you would like
  to.
              One of the, the real problems, though,
  is for, for fossil fuel applications is that in
  certain asp-, in certain integrations from the
  direct-fire Allam cycle, you're actually burning
  and using the CO2 in your combustion to actually
  power the cycle.  And, so, as a, as a, as a result
  of that, you need to take CO2 off, because you'll
  have that as your waste, one of your waste streams.
              But, what you're getting is you're
  getting pure CO2 and you're getting it at
  relatively high pressure already, which makes the
  rest of the capture and the full amount of the
  compression you have to do very, very less.
              But, you have a lot, a lot of that.
  Grid modernization, again, is a lot of, a lot of
  linkages between the various factors there.  One of
  the, specifically of interest there that we're
  working on with, with that team is where you have a
  lot of intermittent power, you have base load
  power, and you have to make those two things match
  up, right?
              The speed at which the intermittent
  comes on and off has to work with the base load
  plants.  And, that can be a challenge.
              And, we're working on that to be able to
  do that.  There's a lot more on that grid, that
  grid modernization that I'm not going to touch on
  right now.
              And, finally, the materials is something
  that, that's a challenge for all the offices:
  Better materials, lighter materials that work
  better in the environments; higher temperatures,
  higher pressures at lower cost is a, is a huge, a
  huge challenge for us.
              Using a lot of more computational
  techniques are helping a lot.  And, I'd be more
  than happy to give you more detail on that if some,
  people were interested in what we're doing.
              Okay, here's the reason why we've been
  talking about this.  So, you look on the orange is
  the AEO 2014 curve.
              It's modified a little bit because of,
  it's based on what the negotiations were for how
  much we were going to have to remove, how much CO2,
  whatever our levels could be.  So, there were some
  policy factors in there that were added, et cetera.
              Nevertheless, that's about what that
  curve looks like right now.  And, what we promised
  to do was get down a lot lower.
              And, that's a lot lower, -- Right?  --
  as we all know.
              And, its a real challenge.  Doable
  challenge, but a real challenge.
              And, so, this is the real driver, and
  the bogies that we're, we're shooting for, okay?
  It's obvious that, that CCS right now is too costly
  for, for, for broad application, and that's,
  that's, that's not a surprise.
              One thing that, that, though, is
  happening, also, you see, is that when you have
  demonstration projects, they're, of course, more
  expensive than if they were four or five or six of
  a kind.  People look at those costs like a project
  that went in two and a-half billion dollars up to
  $6 billion, they say, you know, those are too
  expensive to do.
              But, a lot of those are artifacts of
  doing first-of-a-kinds.  And, those of you in this
  room who have done those know the cost can be a lot
  higher.
              But, that's perception that's, that is
  out there, and that's something I'll talk a little
  bit more about it, how maybe we can try to address.
  Okay.
              I want to talk a little bit about some
  of the technologies that were, that are, that are,
  that are being out there.  This, again, is a high
  level.
              I'll be happy, again, to go into more
  depth after the session.  But, let me just say a
  few words about this.
              So, for, on the capture side of things
  you kind of -- There's, there's the, the technology
  that we're using right now have a lot of, a lot of
  room for improvement.  There are lots of things we
  know we can do right now with, based on the
  heating, et cetera, to reduce the costs of, of, and
  reducing the energy associated with using them.
              You know.  Like, getting higher CO2
  built into them and those kind of things.
              And, we're doing a lot of that stuff.  A
  lot of new solvents are coming out; ones that,
  nonaqueous ones that you don't have the water, you
  know, you don't have to heat up all this water and
  use all that energy.
              There is phase-change solvents.  There's
  all, all manner of solvents that allows us to use a
  lot less energy in regenerating, where a lot of the
  energy is used, and we're using that a lot.  And,
  also reducing the cost.
              There's also a lot of work being done in
  membranes, which is a, which is a, a unique and
  good solution that we're looking can looking at, of
  course.  And, then, there's solid absorbents, as
  well.
              But, the other thing that we, we, people
  often don't think about is the compression.
  Enormous amounts of energy go into compressing the
  gas, especially from low, low pressures to get all
  the way up to these high pressures.
              So, we're looking at several of these
  compression technologies.  Looking at at least two
  of them that I'm aware of pretty hard, actually,
  for a lot of years now, to reduce the cost of both
  the equipment, but also the parasitic cost.
              A lot of it has to do with just getting
  the efficiencies up, but some of it has to do with
  heat integration.  So, here's what we're thinking
  about relative to trying to reduce the cost in the
  near term of, of CO2, and get the infrastructure to
  start being built.
              There's a lot of industrial sources out
  there, as I'm sure most of you are aware, that
  already give concentrated CO2 sources off,
  concentrated CO2 streams off.  A good example is,
  is, is the ADM, the fermenting industry, where
  you're doing ethanol, those kinds of things.
              Basically, you have to drive these
  things off.  But, mostly, it's drying it out and
  you have a high concentrated source.
              And, that's relatively inexpensive, the
  carbon capture systems there.  There are lots of
  other technologies, also.
              There's, there's, there's the cement
  industry.  There are lots of other chemical
  industries that also have what you might call
  low-hanging fruit, where you already have a low
  concentration stream, so the actual capture of the
  CO2 is not that expensive.
              So, right now, for our plan, you're
  talking probably $62.00 a ton using today's current
  technologies.  We're moving to get that down to $30
  a ton, but before we do, we get a lot of those
  demos out there and, and operating with the
  technology, starting to move forward with
  industrial makes a whole lot of sense.
              And, I'm sure many of you know this, but
  last night I talked to a couple of people about
  things like this.  So, look where all these
  industrial sources are.
              They're all the places we'd love to
  build more infrastructure.  We've got a lot of
  infrastructure down here in the Gulf Coast region,
  but up here, building -- By, by being able to take
  this CO2, there are some oil fields up there that
  may be amenable to EER, which would be great.
              They just don't have a lot of natural
  CO2 on the East Coast because of the climate, and so
  you'd be able to actually take some of these,
  actually build up these infrastructure, and then,
  as the technology of the power plants come up here,
  you could actually have a lot more.
              The other thing that gets people
  comfortable with it shows the cost can be low.  The
  cost can be affordable, and there can be a lots of
  benefits to it.
              And, this is where a lot of the things
  in the study come into play.  There's lots of other
  uses you can use for it if you have this
  distributed, fixed distributors, and the sources
  are not as large.
              Technology -- I'll go off script.  I'm
  not on script anyway, but I'll draw a little bit of
  attention to you.
              So, one example is, like, fuel cells,
  solid-oxide fuel cells.  You can actually separate
  out the CO2.
              And, if you, you don't mix it you have a
  relatively concentrated stream of CO2 out there.  I
  was in Norway.
              They're using it in greenhouses, small
  amounts of CO2.  It's not that widely used in a lot
  of places, but it may be useful in a lot of places
  if you have a small source, like, couple-hundred
  kilowatt or megawatt source fuel cell, that may be
  the extent, but, yet, you can get power from that.
              That's not, that's not meant to be
  all-in.  That's just one off-the-cuff example.
              There's bottling plants.  There's all
  kinds of things that are niche markets, much
  smaller than markets you said you need to, to look
  at for some of these things, but they may make
  sense to get these first ones up and started.
              Another one, of course, would be, like,
  fertilizers and those kind of things.  So, that's,
  that's the strategy.
              Get, get stuff up and going.  Get the
  infrastructure.
              Get people to be comfortable.  Promote.
              Get the technology matured even more,
  and then go, go forward from there.  I'm not going
  to go through -- You asked a lot about this in your
  report.
              But, what I do want to say about this is
  the huge advantage of, of being able to, utilizing
  this as a revenue stream.  Obviously it makes,
  makes the numbers work, especially for the newer,
  the newer plants.
              The other thing is that in some of these
  cases you may not have a large enough, excuse me,
  market for that CO2, so you'll get some, some market
  for some of it.  But, even if, even if that source
  is not a big enough market to take all of your, all
  of your CO2, the amount that you need to store now
  is a whole lot less.
              So, that reduces the cost of it.  Okay,
  I want to get to that point that I was making
  earlier about your immediate needing policy as well
  as R&D.
              And, this chart -- I'm sorry.  It's
  very, very small.
              So, let me, let me just go through it
  for a moment here to let you know what some of
  these things are, are here.  So, if -- These first
  few here, the -- First let me tell you what the
  chart is.
              This is gigawatts, and this is similar
  thing, just a different scale for CO2 storage.  So,
  that's what it's showing.
              So, what they're saying here, by 2030,
  if you just had a base -- Well, these are both R&D
  programs, just different levels, okay?  So, this is
  basically R&D.
              And, by 2030, just, if you only have the
  R&D program, that's -- You're going to get -- What?
  -- about five gigawatts out there.
              These are four power plants.  There are
  incentives, and that's what these two are.
              And, by the way, if people are
  interested in getting the details behind these,
  there's a great Issue Brief that was done by our
  Policy Office.  I'd be happy to share it with you.
              It comes directly out of that, and talks
  about what the analysis looked like.  And, I'd be
  very happy to get you copies.
              It's a good, short, short read for those
  interested.  It was just -- A lot of these are tax
  incentives and production tax credits.
              And, there's 45Q credits over here.
  And, if you look at each of these individually,
  you'll end up, well, you know, anywhere from eight
  to ten or so gigawatts, just based on policy, by
  2030.
              But, combining, this is where you get
  this sum greater than the, than the parts.  By
  combining the, the R&D with these policy packages,
  now you really start to see some 2030 30 gigawatts,
  up to 40, you see, for power, kind of 50-gigawatt
  kind of numbers.
              And, there's a, the equivalent CO2
  restored by that.  There's some, some more
  granularity here with that CO2.
              We also have -- This shows, shows what
  natural gas represents, CCS retrofit of coal, and
  new coal CCS.  The new-coal is given there.
              The point is still the point that you
  need to go and combine both the policy and the R&D
  to make this, to make this actually work well.
  And, on top of this, if you're industrial, you
  know, you'll get it accelerated much faster.
              And, that, that's what our real goal is.
  This is based on, on them, on a model that, that
  they, they used, and based it off of some I8 Model
  12, but then they went off and tweaked a whole lot
  of other knobs to, to make the Policies match.
              Again, a lot more detail in that report.
  I'm going to -- Interesting you have no clock in
  here, so I have no idea how I'm doing.
              MS. GELLICI:  You've got about five
  minutes.
              DR. MOLLOT:  So, okay.  Yeah, that's
  fine.  So, thank you very much.
              So, tax -- I'll just go back and review
  some of those.  So, so, there are very significant
  tax numbers.
              These just talk about some of the tax
  incentives that were in the chart that I showed
  you.  You can read about that in a lot more detail
  in the report.
              If you want a copy, just let me know.
  But, just the normal tax incentives and stuff that
  many of us have seen around; a lot of the stuff
  that were in the 2017 Budget Request, et cetera.
              International efforts that are ongoing
  right now, and that is by no means an exhaustive
  list.  By the way, I have another little sheet of
  paper that I'm, -- It's been a long two days.  I'm
  in the habit of carrying around a lot of pieces of
  paper.  That could be dangerous.  -- of some of the
  achievements that we've had, and those kinds of
  things.
              Also very happy to share that with
  everyone, so I won't go into too much detail.  But,
  there are two sides to this.
              Obviously there's the policy effort, and
  also there's the technical efforts, where we work
  with others to, to have counter-face projects, to
  share information and all that stuff.  So, we're
  doing a lot in a lot of areas that I'm actually
  working on with the CO2 that, super CO2 that I
  mentioned.
              Maybe I didn't mention it before, but I
  mentioned, certainly, to people yesterday.  So, I'm
  not going to go into more detail.
              So, here's just my final slide.  So,
  just saying basically what I said before, right?
              Fossil energy's the cornerstone right
  now.  We need a strategy if we're going to meet the
  two-degree C in order to, to meet the strategy to
  CCS in order to, to meet that.
              That's it.  Thank you.  Appreciate it.
              (Whereupon, at 8:46 a.m. CT, applause
  was had.)
              MS. GELLICI:  Thank you, Dan.  Let's --
  We've got some time for some questions, so if
  anybody has a question for Dr. Mollot.
              And, while you're thinking of one, I
  know that there's a new initiative at DOE in terms
  of regional energy initiatives, regional energy
  partnerships.  And, I applaud the, the Department
  for launching those.
              Wondering if you could provide just a
  little bit of an overview or update on that effort.
              DR. MOLLOT:  I'm -- Well, look, I'm
  absolutely the wrong person to do that, but I'll
  still try.  So, the, the effort is, is, is a strong
  effort.
              Dave Moeller (phonetic) and Joe Joeby
  (phonetic) -- Dave Moeller is the brainchild,
  obviously, behind it.  Joe Joeby, Bob Ivey
  (phonetic), and several other people are really
  pushing that quite a bit.
              I think, I think, actually, Dan, are you
  involved in that as well?
              MR. MATUSAK:  Not so much, but I look it
  over.
              DR. MOLLOT:  I always point to Dan
  because he seemed to have his hand in everything.
  I think he has his hand in that, too.
              But, anyway, so, the point is we've
  looked at some of these regions of the country.
  We've certainly looked at the, the Gulf Coast
  region.
              I know some, some Southern States Energy
  Board has been involved in that.  We're looking now
  in the central States as well.
              Colorado School of Mines and NREL and
  others out in that area are looking.  Certainly
  been looking in California.
              The -- It's at the stage right now with
  where we're starting a lot of studies and work, et
  cetera.  We'll be expanding over the years,
  depending on the Budget, what they'll allow us to
  do.
              We're trying to get to some of the key
  critical layers right now.
              MS. GALLICI:  Back here?
              MR. ELLIOTT:  Bill Elliott, with
  Bechtel.  I'm always intrigued by carbon capture
  being too expensive today, with would 60 or $80,
  versus whatever number it needs to be.
              I'd like -- Is any work being done on
  the true cost of dispatchable low-carbon energy
  that would be meeting the Three Amigos commitment
  in North America?  I think we, I think we paint
  ourselves into a corner at times in saying what we
  have today is too expensive, when compared to what
  renewables plus storage would be to be
  dispatchable.
              And, is DOE taking a look at any policy
  level on this?
              DR. MOLLOT:  So, so, that's, obviously,
  a very good question.  It's on a lot of people's
  minds.
              And, so, there certainly are, are --
  There's work being done in looking at that.  But,
  even so, the lower we can get the cost, the better,
  right?
              And, so, right now, with the, with the
  state of the tech-, today's technology, it's, it's
  probably too high of cost, capital costs, if
  nothing else.  We think do a whole lot better.
              So, regardless of how that comes out,
  when you start looking at lifecycle costs and
  lifecycle for the coal plants, and how you evaluate
  that, -- And there are lots of people who do that,
  and I'm not one of them.
              And, and, in a way, it's, I don't know
  how useful it would be for me to engage in that
  conversation right now.  But, there are certainly
  -- There are studies and reports out, and I can
  look at them and try to find them and report back.
              I'd be more than happy to do that.
              MR. NARULA:  Ram Narula, independent
  consultant.  Doctor, your presentations are the
  most pragmatic I've seen from the DOE side.
              DR. MOLLOT:  Thank you, I think.
              MR. NARULA:  My concern is, as you
  rightly said, the costs are high and in timeframe
  in which we are moving forward with the cost now,
  in my judgment, and not only mine, Industry's
  judgment, is very, very slow, okay?  So, the net
  result is the Policy and the R&D are not really
  working hand-in-hand.
              So, we all need to put the, draw a line
  in the sand:  You cannot build a coal-fired plant
  unless you meet the supporting plans.
              So, utilities are discouraged.  They are
  not building any new power plants.
              The OEMs are pretty much getting out of
  this board-by-board business because they cannot
  sustain for another 20, 50 years without having an
  audit in place.  So, what do you have written as a
  Policy which goes this little bit more pragmatic
  way, and not put a Policy in place without anything
  supported with R&D because of your budgeted
  constraints?
              DR. MOLLOT:  Yeah.  Yeah.  Yeah.  I'm
  trying to answer that.
              Policy is driven by our elected
  officials, right?  And, and, what we need to do is,
  is do the best we can with technology, give them
  advice, which we certainly do on policy we feel
  would help to, to, to get, get this technology or
  that technology deployed.
              But, ultimately, the Policy is, is, is
  their's, and we follow what Policy they give us.
  And, that's really kind of a cop-out answer, and I
  know that.
              But, I'm not sure if my personal
  opinions on this would be, would be that helpful.
  First of all, they don't matter.
              But, but, certainly we do.  And, I
  think, though, now, to, to just step back for a
  second, I think that the senior folks, that a lot
  of the political officers in DOE do understand the
  problem.
              They really do.  What I mean is Dr.
  Moniz is really on top of all this kind of stuff,
  and he's pushing hard for all the things he thinks
  we need to be doing.
              But, there's a lot of conflicting
  people; people -- This is a democracy, which, as I
  say, is the worst form of government except for
  everything else, okay?
              So, there's a lot of challenge.  That's
  our strength, -- Okay? -- and it's also your
  challenge.
              There are people who have different
  views.  There are people who think we should shut
  down every bit of fossil right now.
              So, that's the answer.
              MS. GELLICI:  Any other questions?
              (Whereupon, at 8:52 a.m. CT, no response
  was had.)
              MS. GELLICI:  Thank you very much, and
  we appreciate you're being here today with us.
  And, thank you for sharing.
              Thank you.
              MR. DURHAM:  Yes, thank you, Dr. Mollot,
  for sharing your thoughts here today.
              I'd like to now turn the program over to
  Vice-Chair Greg Workman, who'll introduce or next
  keynote speaker.
              MR. WORKMAN:  Good morning.
              (Whereupon, at 8:53 a.m. CT, a response
  was had.)
              MR. WORKMAN:  It's my pleasure to
  introduce our next keynote speaker, Tom Metcalfe,
  Executive Vice President with the Energy, and a
  brand-new member to National Coal Council.
              So, welcome, Tom.
              Tom's full bio's included in your
  package.  I'd like to highlight just a few things
  out of, out of, out of the, Tom's bio, though.
              He was -- Tom was named Executive Vice
  President in April of, of 2016.
              So, congratulations on the recent
  promotion.
              In this role, Tom has responsibility for
  power generation, environmental and wholesale
  energy and fuels for We Energies and WPS.  He's
  responsible for the company's combined generation
  fleet, which includes about 5,000 megawatts of
  coal, approximately 3,300 megawatts of natural gas
  and combined cycle and combustion turbines that
  feed 337 megawatts of wind and 200 megawatts of
  hydroelectric generation, and a new 50-megawatt
  biomass generation unit we were talking about last
  night.
              Tom is also responsible for the
  company's steam services and chilled water business
  in, in downtown Milwaukee.  So, anybody had a
  problem with water quality last night, with your
  shower, grab a card from Tom.
              He'll be glad to address your concerns.
  Tom joined the Wisconsin Energy Corporation in June
  of 2004.  Previously he served with Merit Corp,
  leading the successful development of approximately
  3,000 megawatts of coal-fired generation in Asia
  and Australia.
              And, he earned his Bachelor's Degree
  with honors from Montford University in Lichester,
  United Kingdom.
              So, without further ado, welcome, Tom.
              (Whereupon, at 8:55 a.m. CT, applause
  was had.)
  WE ENERGIES' COAL UNITS:  UPDATE ON AQCS & ENHANCED
  FLEXIBILITY INITIATIVES:
              MR. METCALFE:  Well, thank you, Greg.
              Good morning, everybody, and welcome to
  Milwaukee.  I'm pretty confident when I say that
  Hurricane Matthew will not enter Wisconsin.
              But, I am interested in the show of
  hands.  Who's from the East Coast, maybe Florida?
              (Whereupon, at 8:55 a.m. CT, a response
  was had.)
              MR. METCALFE:  Well, good luck getting
  home.  You are welcome to stay here as long as you
  like.
              We'll find a dry spot for you somewhere.
  No, I'm really delighted that you all made it to
  Milwaukee.
              And, also, maybe quick show of hands.
  Who will be on the tour this afternoon?
              (Whereupon, at 8:55 a.m. CT, a response
  was had.)
              MR. METCALFE:  Okay, excellent.  Well, I
  expect we'll make that as efficient as we can for
  everybody.
              I'm going to talk a little bit about
  that today.  I might start by saying that, first of
  all, I'm honored to be invited to make some
  comments today.
              When Janet called me and asked me, and,
  you know, I had that feeling about being honored,
  but also slight clamor in my mind about how I
  reconcile my responsibilities to run our fossil
  fleet as efficiently and as responsibly as we can,
  with my environmental responsibilities to ensure
  that our emissions are as low as they can be, that
  we always meet our, our Permits, and operate our
  fleet within the ever-increasing regulatory, tough
  regulatory environment.
              Ultimately, I guess, I'm very proud of
  what we've been able to accomplish at We Energies.
  And, I'm going to talk a little bit today about
  what I'm going to call reinventing coal; about the
  things we've done to ensure the flexibility in our
  fleet to ensure that we can be viable and economic
  to meet the customer's needs into the future.
              I heard about some of those things this
  morning.  I also just wanted to, to thank Dr.
  Mollot, who I thought really did an excellent
  presentation, and talked a lot about all of the
  things that are happening on the control side in
  terms of industrial control and carbon
  sequestration.
              I'm also on the Generation Sector
  Council for the Electric Power Research Institute.
  We have Tom Alley with us here today who is, --
  Yeah, Tom's in the back of the room.  -- who
  basically runs that sector.
              And, I think EPRI has recognized that in
  order to really control CO2, in order to look a long
  way into the future, we also have to electrify the
  energy sector.  And, what I mean by that is
  ensuring it's not just electricity for, for the
  conventional uses that we have light now, but also
  converting so much of what we currently use fossil
  fuels into, into electric use.
              Transportation is the obvious one.
  Electric vehicles, I think everyone has recognized.
              But, across the transportation sector.
  Not just electric vehicles, but the, the, the
  trucks, the ports, marine.
              There is opportunities across the board
  for electricity.  And, I think when we control the
  source, and we can much better control the source
  in our power plants than we can the tail pipe of a,
  of a vehicle, then we have real opportunity to, to
  control and minimize CO2.
              Okay.  So, I'm going to just get started
  here.
              See if this works for me.  Just a quick
  little bit of propaganda on our company, WEC Energy
  Group.
              We were formed in, actually, just June,
  last year, when we purchased the Integris Energy
  Group.  And, we acquired five utilities at that
  time.
              And, so, WEC is the holding company.
  So, if you want to buy stock in the company, --
  This is our recommendation.  -- then you buy,
  basically, at the WEC level.
              And, you can see I've divided the
  company up into three areas:  Electric generation
  and distribution; natural gas distribution; and
  electric transmission.  And, each of the utilities,
  independent utilities that are wholly owned by WEC,
  you can see the assets that they have in each of
  those three years.
              So, We Energies, this is our logo.  We
  Energies also has assets in the electric generation
  and distribution business.
              Wisconsin Public Service, out of Green
  Bay, also has interest in electric distribution and
  generation, but also in natural-gas distribution.
  In addition, we can see Minnesota Gas, Minnesota
  Energy, excuse me, People's Gas, which is the
  utility in Chicago, Michigan, which is commonly and
  affectionately know as the MaGoo, and North Shore
  Gas, also in Illinois, supply gas to our customers
  there.
              We have -- We're now about the eighth
  largest investment gas utilities in the United
  States.  Lastly, on the right you can see that
  electric transmission, we have a 60-percent stake
  in American Transmission Company.
              So, pretty sizable interest there.  So,
  this is my last slide on the company.
              Just the terms of our geographical
  footprint.  We were organized basically across the
  States you can see on the screen here.
              We have around 4.4 million customers,
  70,000 of electric, and 44,000 miles of natural-gas
  lines, and, as Greg mentioned, about, just under
  10,000 megawatts of generating capacity.  This
  footprint, and the assets employed here, represent
  about $16 billion in rate base.
              So, that's just to give you a feel for,
  for who we are.  Okay.
              So, as I mentioned, the agenda today,
  and I've just got just about half a dozen slides,
  fuel flexibility.  And, that's a big part, I think,
  of how we're going to be successful with coal.
              We, we strongly believe that coal is an
  important part of our fuel mix, and diversity is,
  of supply is very critical.  And, fuel flexibility
  is a big part of that.
              Going to talk about our air-quality
  control systems, Pleasant Prairie and Oak Creek.
  And, then, REACT, which some of you may have heard
  of.
              This is a reactivated coal technology
  that we employ at a smaller coal plant that we have
  in Wausau, Wisconsin.  And, then, a little bit
  about the future.
              So, Elm Road, this is the station that
  the folks going to be going on tour will see this
  afternoon.  This is a 2-by-634-megawatt plant.
              It was built in 2010 and 2011.  It went
  into service in 2010 and '11.
              It was initially designed to burn
  100-percent bituminous coal.  Now, during the
  design phase we saw some changes in pricing on the
  bituminous coal, and we recognized some challenges
  with relation to mercury capture with PRB.
              But, those challenges started to get
  resolved as we saw and demonstrated the carbon
  capture and mercury capture at our Pleasant Prairie
  facility.  So, during the design phase we made some
  modifications to this plant to allow us to burn a
  lig-, a more diverse mix of fuel, in the future.
              Now, the design change, I think the most
  fundamental design change we made was the change to
  our air gages.  And, I kind of liken this to the
  patient who's on the, on the operating table.
              If we hadn't have made that change in
  the design phase, and we wanted to make it later,
  we wanted to put a much bigger air heater there, it
  would have been a huge operation.  It would have
  been like taking the heart out of the patient.
              So, fortunately, we were able to make
  that change early.  We put much larger air heaters
  in to accommodate the higher moisture that we had
  encountered because of the fuel.
              That really set us in a good place to
  make much more, kind of minutia or finer changes in
  the future, which we, for the most part, made now
  to allow us to burn that big range of fuels.  So,
  our Air Permit gave us that flexibility.
              We took a go-slow approach.  Our
  coal-handling facilities enabled us to blend
  different mixes of fuel.
              So, we have both bituminous coal and
  subbituminous coal at the site now, and we can
  blend into, into the units any mix that we, we
  want.  And, so, we took a, a 20-percent incremental
  step.
              So, we went from 100-percent bituminous
  coal to 80-percent bituminous coal, bringing a
  20-percent mix in.  We recognized, and, and
  evaluated the challenges we have with that, made
  modifications, made forward, again, another 20
  percent, looked at the, the restrictions and the
  challenges we had, and then moved up another 20.
              And, we gradually picked it up to 100
  percent.  And, now I'm pleased to be able to say
  that we can go from one extreme to the other.
              We can make full load on 100-percent PRB
  with the equipment that we have.  And, so, the
  rationale for this project really comes down to a
  couple of key things.
              Cost competitiveness is, is, is
  critical, right?  Security of supply is critical.
              When the plant was first built,
  100-percent bituminous coal from the Appalachian
  Mountains predominantly, very difficult for us to
  ensure supply 100 percent of the time.  And, we've
  seen this a number of times.
              Having options to go west or east was
  really valuable.  Having lower emissions, obviously
  much lower in sulfur, but also some of the other
  emissions, such as mercury, was also improved
  through the fuel flexibility that we have.
              Mill pulverizer redundancy.  So, the
  units were built with five pulverizers each, and
  can only make full load, we can make full load,
  excuse me, with one spare.
              But, when you run 100-percent PRB, you
  need all five mills in to make full load.  Well, if
  we have an overhaul, now we have the ability to
  blend.
              We can go back to a 40-percent
  bituminous coal, take a mill out, and still make
  full load.  So, depending on the value of energy
  and capacity, our marketers will tell us, you know,
  "We want all five mills in."
              Well, we can't do that because one is
  out on outage.  But, we can give you four mills
  with a blend.
              Of course, they will take that, even
  though that might have an energy-cost impact.  But,
  that's the flexibility that I'm talking about here.
              Significant fuel savings.  You can see
  there, 25 percent to 50 percent a year, based on
  going from 100-percent bituminous, to 100-percent
  PRB.
              Now, that's not $50 million at that
  plant.  That's $50 million across our fleet,
  because now those, the units are working harder at
  the top.
              They're working much harder.  Their
  factors are higher.
              These are -- Our overall fuel costs have
  gone down.  Our customers benefit across our
  properties because this unit, this plant is, is
  working harder.
              At Pleasant Prairie -- And, again, this
  is just near the Illinois border south of here.  --
  we have two 600 megawatt, roughly, units.
              SCRs and scrubbers were installed in the
  late '90s and early 2000s.  First wet scrubber on a
  PRB unit in the U.S.
              Now, We Energies don't really like to go
  first with things, but this one worked out really
  well for us.  SOx down 95 percent.
              Nitrous oxide's down 85, mercury down
  85-plus.  And, we have 100-percent salable
  byproducts.
              So, we're able to sell all the, the fly
  ash, bottom ash, gypsum.  Hundred-percent.
              We don't landfill.  We landfill through
  the, the winder months, but then we mine out during
  the summer months during the construction season.
              Oak Creek -- Now, Oak Creek Power Plant
  is right next-door to Elm Road.  In fact, you can
  probably see -- The Elm Road Power Station is right
  here on the right-hand side, here.
              Now, this is about 20 miles south of
  here.  So, north of Pleasant Prairie, south of
  here.
              Oak Creek, four units we have just
  around 1,400 megawatts at Oak Creek; 1960 vintage.
  What we wanted to do, we looked at the options at
  the time to shutter the plant, replace with gas, or
  put in air-quality control.
              And, at the time, we, we felt that the
  least cost for our customers was to put in an
  air-quality control facility.  And, we really
  married the same design and footprint that we had
  at Pleasant Prairie which I talked about just a
  moment ago, and adopted it here at Oak Creek.
              And, that allowed us to save
  significantly on the construction costs.  We did
  have a geographical challenge as much as the, the,
  the benefits we get from the huge heat sink at Lake
  Michigan, and the cooling system, because we only
  have one cooling system at both facilities.
              This was a big challenge for us, because
  we couldn't build in the lake, right?  Ideally, we
  would have put the air-quality control equipment,
  which you can see here, the SCRs, the scrubbers,
  right outside the front door here.
              But, that meant building in Lake
  Michigan, and that wasn't going to happen for
  permitting and approval reasons.  So, we ducted the
  flue gas from the four boilers to the south.
              And, in fact, we ended up installing the
  largest Fairland SCR in the U.S., and the largest
  gas-to-gas heat exchanger of its type in the world.
  Again, very significant environmental benefits:
  95-percent reduction in SO2, 75-percent reduction in
  NOx, and, and mercury down more than 70 percent.
              Now I'm going to talk about a really
  interesting project.  Now, this project was
  acquired as part of the Integris acquisition.
              So, when we bought Integris in June,
  2015, we acquired Wisconsin Public Service.  And,
  Wisconsin Public Service, one of their sites is at
  Aston, which is in Wausau, in the center of the
  State.
              They have three units there that are
  operating.  Unit 1 is being shut down, but Units 2,
  3, and 4 is still in service.
              And, I want to talk about Unit 3.  Unit
  3 is 322 megawatts.
              It doesn't have the size to support the
  wet scrubbers and the SCRs and the conventional
  air-quality control units.  You can't spread that
  fixed cost over that small of a unit.
              So, what WPS looks at is a technology
  that was available in Japan called reactivated, or,
  regenerative reactivated coke technology, or REACT.
  And, this is essentially -- I've kind of likened
  this to your water filter.
              It's a two-phase carbon filter that
  removes sulfur dioxide and heavy metal through the
  flue gas, and, and recovers those through a
  regenerator.  And, I'm going to just share with you
  here -- Okay, I'll let you watch this for a few
  seconds, and then see if there are any questions.
              And, then I'll move on to the next
  slide.  So, here's how this works.
              The, the boiler is up here.  So, the
  plant, plant, the power plant is up here, and the
  flue gas, first of all, flows, flows through a
  conventional fabric filter, and then into what we
  call the adsorbent -- It's not an absorber.
              It's an adsorber, where there's
  thousands of tons of activated coke pellets.  And,
  the activated coke pellets basically have an
  absorption surface that attracts the sulfa dioxide
  and the emissions from the, from the flue gas.
              So, this is a moving bed.  So, as the
  adsorber, the activated coke, basically, flows
  slowly through this facility, is picked up at the
  bottom with the emissions entrained in the
  activated coke, goes up and into a regenerator.
              And, the regenerator is just a big heat
  exchanger where we, in a furnace, we fire natural
  gas to create heat that, at about 1,000 degrees,
  you've got the activated coke, remember, laden with
  the emissions, running down one side of the heat
  exchanger, and you've got heat now gas from the
  furnace at about 1,000 degrees on the other side of
  the heat exchanger.
              So, the activated coke, then, that heat
  drives off the emissions, drives off the sulfa
  oxide, and we generate this sulfur-rich gas that
  then goes through a series of scrubbing process and
  is dried, mixed with water, creates H2SO4, or
  sulfuric acid.
              So, here, now, we've taken, with this
  system we've created a salable byproduct.  We've
  taken the sulfur out of the coal.
              We've created sulfuric acid.  And, I'm
  pleased to say that this facility has now been in
  service now for about a month and has proven to be
  extremely effective at removing emissions.
              We just sold our first three tankers of
  sulfuric acid last week.  So, this is really a very
  interesting technology that I think is unique
  because, one, it's, it's cost-effective for a unit
  of this size, and provides us with a product that
  we would otherwise have land filled.
              Okay.  So, supporting a cleaner energy
  future.
              And, I think, you know, I've talked
  about some of the things we've done with our coal
  fleet.  We are also in the process and have retired
  older, less-efficient coal units.
              We have, I think, more to do.  We've
  added combined-cycle natural-gas units.
              We have two primary sites.  We have
  added state-of-the-art coal-fired generation.
              I talked about the El Moro Generating
  Station, and invested more than $1 billion in
  renewable energy, including the two monitors.
              And, then, lastly, the air quality
  control equipment that I talked about.  About one
  and a-half billion has been invested at the coal
  plants, as well.
              So, what does all that mean?  Well, if
  you can back to 2000, and look at our emissions,
  I'm rebaselining everything in terms of percentage,
  you can see the reduction in emissions in terms
  much SO2, NOx, and mercury.
              Quite substantial:  80- to 90-percent
  reduction in all those emissions.  And, PN, also,
  has seen reductions, although I don't have that
  shown here.
              As far as CO2, during the same time
  period we've been able to drop CO2 emissions, in
  terms of rate, by about 23 percent.  And, you can
  see.
              This is our fuel source makeup here:
  Coal, about 50 percent; nuclear, natural gas, and
  then renewables.  So, for the future, we think
  requirements are going continue to be part of our,
  our mix.
              We do think that coal firing is, is an
  opportunity with us, as well, with natural gas
  supplies where they're at.  I think we're looking
  at and testing our coal units with a combination of
  coal and gas because for every BTU of gas we
  introduce to the boiler, obviously, there's a
  corresponding reduction in CO2.
              We've converted a number of stations
  from coal to gas, as well.  The Valley Power
  Station provides all the steam heat for the
  downtown area.
              And, for anybody who had an
  interruption, please do let me know about that.
  I'll have a chats with my manager.
              Renewables, we're going to continue to
  invest in renewables, combined-cycle and, and the
  operations combined-cycle units, they are right now
  driving our base-load generation, and the big, big
  part of our CO2 reductions, as well.
              The other technology that we're
  embracing is RICE, Reciprocating Internal
  Combustion Engines.  We have just announced
  recently a project in the Upper Peninsula of
  Michigan to replace a coal-fired facility that we
  have at the power plant in Marquette with
  reciprocating engines.
              These are natural-gas-fired engines, 170
  megawatts in two different sites.  Very flexible.
              Very efficient.  Very low-carbon.  And a
  better idea.
              Energy efficiency, of course, is going
  to be part of the mix, both on the supply side,
  both within our plants and also on the demand side.
  And, then, lastly, trading.
              So, with that, I think that's my last
  slide.  I'll open it up for questions.
              MS. GELLICI:  Thank you.
              Please join me in thanking Tom for his
  presentation.
              (Whereupon, at 9:15 a.m. CT, a response
  was had.)
              MS. GELLICI:  Do we have any questions?
              Tom, I just wanted to thank you for your
  welcome, and while these folks are thinking of a
  question for you I'd like to welcome you to the
  National Coal Council, and also to the United
  States.  I understand you just became a citizen, so
  thank you.  Congratulations.
              MR. METCALFE:  Well, thank you very
  much.
              (Whereupon, at 9:16 a.m. CT, a response
  was had.)
              MS. GELLICI:  Questions for Tom?
              AN ATTENDEE:  Hi.  Kathy Drumkowski
  (phonetic) with Ljung.
              I talked about a regenerative gas
  exchanger that was unique.
              MR. METCALFE:  Yeah.
              AN ATTENDEE:  It's, it's not a
  Ljungstrom end heater?  Or, what, what is it?
              MR. METCALFE:  It's a Ljungstrom end
  heater.
              AN ATTENDEE:  Okay.
              MR. METCALFE:  They -- As a matter of
  fact, Ljung built it for us.  It was one of your,
  one of your subsidiaries.
              Yeah, it was, it was actually URS
  Washington Group, which, of course, now is actually
  part of Ljung.  So did a great job thank you.
              AN ATTENDEE:  Quick question.
              MR. METCALFE:  Yeah.
              AN ATTENDEE:  I'm very much intrigued
  with two technologies, the REACT and the RICE.
              MR. METCALFE:  Yeah.
              AN ATTENDEE:  But, basic, simple
  question.  If you had to look at the cost of
  operating the plant before and after, was it
  beneficial to the customer base, or did it increase
  the cost more?
              MR. METCALFE:  Yeah.  That's, that's a
  great question.
              When we do a cost benefit analysis, we
  have to look at the alternatives -- Okay?  --
  because oftentimes the stay-as-you-are is not an
  outcome that we can accommodate.
              So, we always look at:  Well, what are
  the alternatives?  If we didn't build the REACT
  project, for example, what would we have done to
  fill that supply gap?
              And, you know, we could have shut the
  plant down and done combined-cycle gas.  We could
  have put wet scrubbers and NCR conventional
  air-quality control units on it.
              And, we do think in terms of life-cycle
  cost and their present value.  And, in every case
  the REACT project showed us to have the lowest cost
  to the customs.
              And, in fact, the Commission agreed to
  that in the, in the Application that we made and
  the approvals that we obtained.  Same with RICE.
              Exactly the same.  We do a cost benefit
  analysis and have to demonstrate that the new
  technology is the least cost for our customers.
              AN ATTENDEE:  I, I fully appreciate
  that, and understand that that's what should be
  done, and that's good business practice.  But,
  that's not really the answer I'm looking for.
              I'm trying to put this in perspective.
  What is this incremental Regulation I'm dealing
  with now doing to the cost of electricity?
              MR. METCALFE:  What is the incremental
  Regulation -- Oh, I see.  Okay.  So, --
              AN ATTENDEE:  I mean, was it -- If you
  did have to adjust the plant any to meet any
  Regulation, what did it do to the cost base?
              MR. METCALFE:  Okay.  Well, I, I can
  answer that in terms of REACT.
              There's a parasitic mode, and there's a
  cost to run the, the reactor facility, okay?  Both,
  there's chemicals that we need, obviously, the
  activated coke to make up.
              When you look at all that, the
  additional cost per megawatt-hour is about $3 per
  megawatt-hour, something like that, three to $4 per
  megawatt-hour.  So, that -- If that answers your
  question.
              MS. GELLICI:  Tom, I noticed that the,
  the renewables, and you said that that would be
  increasing.  I'm wondering if there, the -- What is
  the mandate here in Wisconsin for renewable energy,
  and how, how close are you to getting to, to that,
  that point?
              MR. METCALFE:  We're, we're ten percent,
  and we're already well, you know, we've already met
  that, that ten-percent requirement for renewable
  energy as a component of our total mix.  And, you
  know, I think, yeah.
              So, that ten percent.
              MS. GELLICI:  Wind?  Wind, or solar?
              MR. METCALFE:  Yeah.  Well, anything you
  can go -- Whatever qualifies.
              So, renewables includes wind, includes
  solar.  I think Kris McKinney -- I don't think
  biomass is part of that, right?
              I hadn't thought about it that way.
              MR. McKINNEY:  It is allowed.
              MR. METCALFE:  It is allowed.  Okay.
              So, biomass is part of that, too.  We
  have a 50-megawatt plant, which helps us reach
  that, that, that ten-percent goal.
              MR. BULLINGER:  I'm Charlie Bullinger,
  of Great River Energy.  Thanks for the
  presentation.
              Couple of questions.  Your large FTG --
  And maybe you're going to give us later today, but
  I'm curious about a little more detail on that at
  some point.
              And, then, maybe more of interest to me
  would be the 20, 40, 60, 80, 100 blend scenario.
  Lessons were learned, obviously.
              You saw some cause and effect.
              MR. METCALFE:  Yeah.
              MR. BULLINGER:  Would you believe able
  to share those lessons learned?
              MR. METCALFE:  Yeah.  Actually, I can
  share a couple.
              The things that you least expect --
  Right?  -- are going to be the things that
  challenge you most.
              So, as we gradually stepped up the
  percentage of PRB in the fuel mix, we fully
  expected that we were going to have issues with
  exit temperatures in our mills, -- Right?  -- which
  is why we put the bigger air heaters in.
              What we weren't expecting is the higher
  SCR inlet temperatures, and some of the CO2 or CO
  variables that we saw.  And, so we've -- That's
  been our biggest challenge, is managing CO.
              We have very, very tight limits on out
  Permit.  And, also, managing the, the exit
  temperatures from the economizer into the SCR,
  trying to keep those temperatures below 800
  degrees, for, for obvious reasons, metallurgical
  reasons.
              But, we're getting close.  And, it's,
  it's a, a question of, of tuning the air,
  additional foot-load capacity, or keeping our, our
  furnace clean, and controlling the position of the
  firewall, if that answers your question.
              MR. BULLINGER:  Yeah, thank you.
              MS. GELLICI:  And, I think we'll have an
  opportunity learn more once we're out at the, the
  tour site.  So, thank you, Tom, for the
  presentation, and also for making the tour
  available this afternoon.
              Thank you so much.
              THE SPEAKER:  Thank you, Jan.
              (Whereupon, at 9:21 a.m. CT, a response
  was had.)
              MR. WORKMAN:  Thank you, Tom.  We
  greatly appreciate your presentation.
              Look forward to seeing some of these
  initiatives you've addressed later on this
  afternoon at, at Oak Creek Plant.  And, another
  thank-you to, to both our keynote presenters this
  morning.
              (Whereupon, at 9:22 a.m. CT, a response
  was had.)
              MR. WORKMAN:  We're going to take a
  30-minute break and reconvene probably at -- Want
  to call it 10:00 o'clock, or -- 10:00 o'clock.
  But, before we do, Janet has a couple of details
  she wants to talk with the group about.
              MS. GELLICI:  Thank you, everyone.  I
  just want a couple of housekeeping items related
  to, primarily, the tour this afternoon.
              So, if you have signed up for the tour
  and I would suggest kind of checking out of the
  hotel now during the break.  We realize that folks
  have planes to catch this afternoon.
              I promise we will have you back here to
  the hotel at 4:00 o'clock.  The Hotel is also very
  aware that you have planes to catch, so they've
  made special provisions.
              If you will leave your luggage with them
  at the front desk, they'll be able to expedite your
  pickup of that luggage when you get back here.  So,
  so, don't leave it in the staff room in the back,
  because I'm going to have to unlock the door and
  you're going to have to come up here.
              So, so, to, to kind of expedite your
  getting out of here, get your luggage now, take it
  to the front desk, and they'll store it for you
  there.
              In the back of your badges, if you
  signed up for a lunch, you should have a lunch
  ticket.  So, we will be -- I'll give you some
  instructions on where lunch will be later.
              But, if you have, think you have signed
  up for lunch and you don't have a ticket, you might
  want to take this opportunity during the break to
  go ahead and talk to Hiranthie Stanford to make
  sure that you get a lunch.  So, -- And, with that I
  think that's all.
              Oh, presentations.  Folks have been
  asking.
              As always, we will be posting the
  presentations on the NCC web site.  Those will be
  up next week.
              So, every presentation that we receive
  today will be posted.  So, -- And, Bob Bibb has a
  question.
              Yes, sir.
              MR. BIBB:  The, the front end of the
  schedule for the tour, 1:00?
              MS. GELLICI:  Um-hum.
              MR. BIBB:  Going on, on a bus, or van,
  or --
              MS. GELLICI:  Yeah, the, the tour --
  I'll just take care of those instructions now,
  then, since we have a couple minutes.  So, lunch is
  going to be downstairs on the lobby level.
              So, you can take the elevator down to
  the lobby level, or you can take the escalator down
  to, two levels to the lobby where you checked in.
  Not the lower lobby where the check-in desk is.
              We're going to have box lunches there,
  so you can pick them up and get on the bus.  And,
  we'll direct you to the bus.
              For those of you who aren't going on the
  tour, you can pick up a lunch.  If you signed up,
  you can pick up your box lunch and enjoy it here or
  on the road to the airport, or wherever you'd like.
              So, answer that question?
              MR. BIBB:  That's 12:15?
              MS. GELLICI:  Twelve-fifteen, lunches
  are, will be available, and the bus departs at
  12:30.  And, it's about a -- What, Tom?  --
  20-minute drive, 20-, 25-minute drive out there and
  back.
              So, again, we will have you back at
  4:00.  All right?
              With that, we'll reconvene at 10:00
  o'clock.  Thank you.
              (Whereupon, at 9:25 a.m. CT, those
  present took a brief recess and returned at 9:59
  a.m. CT, after which the following occurred:)
  INDUSTRY PRESENTATIONS:  VALUE-ADDED OPPORTUNITIES
  FOR COAL
              MS. GELLICI:  If you can kindly make
  your way to your seats, we would like to get
  started with the second part of our program.  Thank
  you.
              Again, if you could kindly make your way
  to your seat, we would like to get started.  We
  want to make sure we're done in time for the tour,
  so I appreciate your help.
              Thank you.  Thank you.
              Just a couple of other reminders with
  respect to the tour this afternoon.  There, there
  is a dress code, so, please, no skirts, no
  open-toed shoes or high heels, gentlemen.
              Ladies, we're fine.  We will be
  adjourning at 12:15 today, and the bus leaves at
  12:30.
              So, if you do need to make a change of
  any sort, please plan accordingly.  Thank you very
  much.
              So, I'd like to kick off our Industry
  Presentations session this morning by introducing
  Peter Kirk, who is Executive of Business Operations
  with NeuCo, which is a GE Company.  Just a reminder
  that the full bios for our speakers are included in
  your packets, but just as a brief introduction, I
  wanted to let you know that in his current role,
  Peter leads worldwide business operations for all
  G.E.'s boiler operations digital profile for
  coal-fired steam plant customers.
              He joined G.E. in April of this year
  after his former company, NeuCo, was acquired by
  G.E., and where he served as President and CEO of
  that group.  Prior to joining NeuCo, Peter held
  numerous leadership roles in the energy sector,
  including with PlugPower, Inc., which is a
  developer of stationary fuel cells, with overseas
  private investment corporation Enron, and JP Morgan
  Chase.
              So, quite a breadth of experience.
  We're delighted that Peter's able to join us here
  today.
              Please join me in welcoming Peter Kirk.
              Peter.
              (Whereupon, at 10:01 a.m. CT, a response
  was had.)
  DIGITAL POWER PLANT MANAGEMENT:  ENHANCING COAL
  PLANT ENVIRONMENTAL COMPLIANCE
              MR. KIRK:  Okay, great.  Thank you.
              I sound great on paper.  Really
  impressed with myself.
              Thanks for taking the time here.  I want
  to run through some things that we're pretty
  excited about at G.E.
              G.E., as you know, has a vision for
  digitizing all of its business lines.  And, the
  first, first digital entity that they set up was
  Power NeuCo.
              And, NeuCo was a part of that strategy.
  Alstom, Legacy Alstom is a part of that strategy.
              And, I want to talk a little bit about
  what G.E. is bringing to, bringing to coal.  So,
  G.E., we've been just amazed, having been very
  domestically focused prior to joining G.E., how
  strong the demand is globally.
              And, as we think about things like
  carbon, and we look at things like how global
  carbon emissions are, are, are tracked and, and are
  important, most of the countries that I've been to,
  and that's -- I don't want to say most of the
  countries, but it's most of the big ones.  -- in
  the last six months, this is a more, is a stronger
  problem.
              And, people don't have, either don't
  have good access to electricity, or electricity.
  And, it's something that I had seen in my life in
  going overseas.
              Lots of people don't have it.  Everyone
  needs it, and so this sort of frames everything
  that G.E. is about in terms of:  How do we deal
  with, with the issues that are confronting coal,
  and the particular problems that are caused in the
  markets like ours?
              So, there are some strong global trends
  in, in power.  And, we'll get to sort of how this
  is particularly working out in the U.S., but
  overall we will all feel these.
              They're slower GED growth.  There is a
  real need to make your own markets and make your
  own, make your own success.
              The slow GDP growth, I think, is
  particularly strongly felt here.  It's there, but
  it is not strong.
              But, it's, it's a global thing that
  we're also seeing develop.  There are always
  resource constraints.
              There's only so much coal.  Gas is cheap
  here; it's expensive abroad.
              There's only so much sunlight.  There's
  only so much wind.
              And, that leads to financial
  constraints.  And, so, in response, what the
  industry is, is seeing is that there is a lot more
  growth in the emerging regions.
              It's viewed by companies like G.E. that
  clean energy is a real opportunity.  We agree with
  that.
              We also think that coal has to be a
  real, a real strong, strong piece of the story.
  And, the digital capabilities is what I think we'll
  spend some time on today to concentrate on today,
  and use my company's purchase to that as a, as a
  concrete example of what G.E. means by that, and
  what we can enable.
              But, there's a, there's a real story
  around that that goes beyond the funny commercials.
  So, there's going to be a mix, a mix that's needed
  in meeting world demand.
              Fossil fuels is about 60-percent of the
  industry, as we saw in a couple of presentations
  this morning.  It's a must.
              Everyone knows it's going to be there.
  How do you make it as clean as economically viable
  as possible?
              Renewables are growing really fast off a
  very low base, and we're learning more and more as
  we integrate more of those resources into the mix,
  what impact that has on the rest of the, on the
  rest of the fleet.
              In some markets that are accommodating a
  lot of wind we see that emissions from more
  traditional am resources like coal actually get
  worse because the plants are popping around all the
  time to accommodate the, the wind load.
              And, in emerging markets, as we talked
  about, that's really where most of the growth is
  going to come from.  Every company, every country
  has its unique needs.
              But, that's where the investment in coal
  is really, really strong.  And, so, the, the end,
  the end goal that everyone has is affordable,
  reliable, sustainable power, an we're trying to
  bring everything we can to bear on that.
              This, this slide, I think, is really
  interesting because if you look at the investment
  that's being made, most of the investment in gas is
  actually U.S. investment.  Most of the investment
  in renewables is actually developed world
  investment.
              And, so, if you put that increase in, in
  terrawatt hours in coal in the context, that's a,
  in the context of our reduction in coal that we'll
  talk about in a bit, that's actually a big increase
  in coal capacity around the world.  And, so, it is
  absolutely right on that, that carbon is a, it's a
  global issue, and I just think that there is not a
  whole lot of global cooperation and burden sharing
  that's going on right now.
              Okay.  So, here is what we see in the,
  in the U.S. power market.
              We see something very different.  Coal
  generation is shrinking a lot.
              So, this is, this is generation.  You
  probably have seen this graph before.
              But, the big winner here, although
  renewables are going up by quite a bit, the big
  winner here is gas.  And, that's, that's driven
  partially by the increased burden of Regulation,
  but there are just market fundamentals out there
  around gas that have changed, and appear to be, you
  know, relatively sustainable and long-lasting.
              It's kind of ironic.  I came to NeuCo,
  now G.E., and left my fuel-cell company because
  Wall Street stopped believing in us gas was
  hovering above $7.00 a therm, and it wasn't coming
  back down.
              And, now, 15 years later, no one
  anticipated what was going to happen with gas, and
  now here we are.  But, we're seeing, we are seeing
  a reduced unit count in terms of coal, coal units
  in our, in our industry.
              And that really does -- Even Europe, I
  think, has basically stabilized there.  That really
  does set us apart from, from the rest of the world.
              So, what are the consequences?
  Capacity's going down, and capacity's going down
  strongly.
              This is a ten- or 11-percent reduction
  in the, in the coal capacity in our market.  What
  does -- What is that driven by?
              It's driven by unit closures, which
  would be the next slide.  There we go.
              And, the remaining boilers going to be
  bigger, they're going to be cleaner, and they're
  going to be newer.  From our perspective, our, our,
  our initial market is basically disappearing.
              Our, our initial market was mid-sized
  coal units that were never going to afford an SCR.
  And, we came in and optimized fuel and air, reduced
  toxicity.
              Those boilers are largely disappearing.
  What's left are more amenable to our technology,
  but they impose, -- Which is good for us, I guess,
  but it imposes some real risks on the system.
              If you -- Essentially what's been, what,
  what's been eliminated here is a lot of redundancy.
  So, you have a lot of smaller units.
              If you have a big unit that was set to
  be dispatched, couldn't be dispatched for whatever
  reason, you had a bunch of other resources to go
  with it.  That sort of flexibility that was built
  into the system and sort of naturally eked out of
  the system, is being removed by, by, by the
  closures.
              And, I -- And, I just point out that, as
  NeuCo, being a very plant-focused, we've been very
  close to the customer, and a lot of places that we
  sold to and had customers have been closed down,
  and Ohio being one of them.  And, that's what this
  -- It's just a very difficult thing to see.
              Okay.  And, supply and demand leads to
  this sort of stagnant coal industry and limits
  their ability to respond because they have lower
  prices and less demand.
              They're, they're in a very, very
  difficult spot.  So, what are the drivers?
              Never thought we'd be here, but your
  coal and gas can be competing for base load.  Very
  large coal units on economic shutdown for weeks at
  a time.
              Dispatch at big state-of-the-art coal
  companies, coal plants at 35, 40 percent.  It's,
  it's an extremely competitive market, and
  efficiency is a big part of that.
              The intermittent nature of renewables,
  and some fluctuation in gas prices means that
  there's a, there's a big driver towards
  flexibility.  Coal plants, many of them are just
  not doing what they were built for.
              They're moving around.  And, so,
  enabling plants to be more flexible in response to
  the demand is, is valuable.
              And, environmental Regulations, this is
  everything from, you know, new-source reviews to
  the Casper Regulation, to the MAT Regulation.  It's
  sort of an ever-tightening, ever-tightening
  standard.
              And, the more you can get out of your
  existing assets, the better.  And, that's just a
  constraint that, regardless of any other market
  conditions, is going to be there, and has to be,
  and has to be adhered to.
              So, let's just step away from that for a
  minute.  It might feel like you're kind of in a
  box.
              It might feel like, okay, this is, this
  is -- I, I see the tools that I have available to
  me, and I'm going to try to fashion a response to
  it.  But, it's, it's interesting to think about
  what digitization has done to other markets.
              I drove a cab when I was in college.  I
  have a lot of Irish relatives in Boston, so I hear
  people complaining about the, the devaluation of
  their medallion a lot.
              And, if you look at Uber, it's, Uber is
  driving.  And, Uber is now the biggest taxi company
  in the world; doesn't own any vehicles.
              It kind of stood the industry on its
  head.  Apple -- And, this is a particular interest
  to G.E., but Apple's the world's largest
  supersoftware company, and it, it doesn't write
  very many apps.
              It has a platform that supports app
  writing, but it doesn't have very many of its own.
  And, Amazon recently overtook WalMart as being the
  worlds's largest retail Chrome store.
              So, I don't know how many direct
  analogues there are between here and the power
  industry, but digitization, getting into, getting
  into the Internet of things, leveraging big data,
  are real opportunities that change the way we do
  business.  And, I'd like to talk a little bit about
  how NeuCo does that in a few slides as sort of a
  key enabler in coal, and relate that to the overall
  G.E. strategy.
              It is coming.  Industry, industrial
  Internet of things is, is going to be out there.
              There are -- If you can look at any, any
  number of sort of more available points, control
  points, information points out there.  Smart meters
  are gaining traction.
              Inter-, Internet-connected light bulbs,
  cars connected to the Internet.  And, G.E. machines
  out there in the world produce a tremendous amount
  of data every day.
              That's data about how these plants are
  being dispatched, how, how demand is being
  communicated to them, how they are, maintenance
  history and future is impacted by their operation,
  what their current operation is.
              We have a picture of a windmill here,
  but coal, as we'll talk about in a minute, is a
  real opportunity to leverage a lot of data, and,
  and, and better integrate that into companies'
  understanding and, and fleet response.
              Energy is actually going digital.  There
  is a huge amount of investment going into
  generation, transmission and distribution,
  consumption, microgen.
              This is a good example of where there
  have been silos, and where those silos can be
  pulled together by, by leveraging data.  And, it's
  very interesting to think that while fuel cells are
  really not that big of a part of the mix, but solar
  panels on roofs are turning customers into ultimate
  producers.
              And, so, there's a tremendous
  opportunity to use data to pull these together and
  wring out, wring out efficiency, wring out longer
  life, wring out better maintenance regimes, and
  without affecting service to the, to the consumer.
              What is the Industry asked for?  These
  probably haven't exchanged that much, but better
  performance, greater reliability, emissions
  compliance is a, a must, and growth must be
  profitable.
              So, this is something that we've seen
  throughout our history.  Has some new motivators in
  terms of environmental Regulations and requirements
  in terms of meeting gas price.
              But, the biggest change is really what,
  what technologies are available to, to do better
  with what we have.  So, G.E. talks about this in
  terms of OT/IT convergence.
              If you've seen the commercials, they
  make, they make a very strong case, and it's very
  important to them that the industrial side be
  married to the digital side.  Getting an app that
  tells you where to get the bottle of wine you want
  when you're in a city, that's not a vital service.
              There isn't a NERC SIP requirement that
  that pricing be only displayed to you.  There are a
  whole set of different requirements for the
  industrial Internet, but it is very, very worth
  doing.
              When I hear about the Internet of
  things, I think I've heard many, many times that,
  "Well, I can get an app that will make sure that my
  refrigerator compressor doesn't come on when my AC
  comes on," and that's about $7,500-worth of asset
  that you're optimizing.
              A billion-dollar power plant is a much,
  much bigger opportunity.  It's a much better
  opportunity, and that improvement that can be made
  with, with software is using both physical and
  analytical devices.
              So, we have, we have software that sits
  on plants and moves things at, at plants, and then
  makes all of the data that comes with that greater
  operating window available to the sort of
  high-powered analytics that can be done on the
  Cloud that G.E. is investing heavily in building,
  and building securely with its San Ramon operation.
              We fall into a category, ourselves,
  something like brilliant machines.  This is where
  local action can be taken to make that machine
  respond to its existing operating conditions in
  ways that were probably not contemplated when it
  was built.
              Many, many units were running
  off-design, and, and many units are using fuel that
  they didn't, didn't used to, and meeting load
  curves that they weren't built to make.  And, so,
  enabling machines to intelligently respond to, to
  what's going on around them is a really important
  part of the, of the G.E. vision.
              Industrial big data, what do you do with
  all that data?  What -- A very large generator will
  have lots of experience with its plants.
              And, to take an example, if you've got
  a, a, a, a, a certain designed pulverizer, and you
  own 100 of those, then you know a lot about the
  maintenance, about the lifing, about how different
  fuels impact that pulverizer.  If you could pool
  that information with other owners, and, you would
  have -- and, and get a bigger index, a real-time
  index of how those pulverizers also respond to
  operating conditions, your knowledge of what's
  going on will be a lot deeper.
              And, so, when we think about scaling,
  it's about creating community opportunities like
  that that can help to, that can help to feed the
  industry's overall understanding.  And, finally,
  extremely important to us because of where our, our
  software sits, is people.
              How do you make this interact with
  people successfully?  And, so, you might not think
  of them this way, but coal plants are really big
  data machines.
              The complexity that goes along with a
  coal plant compared to a gas plant -- And, being
  absorbed by G.E., along with a lot of explaining
  about how complex these, these, these are, there,
  an example would be there are 23 or 24 failure
  modes that are tracked in gas, reasons for you to
  go with a coal plant.
              With a natural-gas combined-cycle plant,
  it's 11 or 12.  There's just -- There, there's a
  lot more going on in a, in a coal plant.
              Now, what we have done additionally is
  optimize fuel/air distribution, and optimized the
  cleaning processes.  So, we sit right in the
  boiler, and we interact with that boiler through
  the control system.
              There's a server on site that can see
  the system.  It's all NERC compliant.
              We think in the coal world that's really
  where value is created.  That's where value is
  destroyed.
              They're -- The, the operating challenge
  that's, that's there for operators is kind of a, a
  really great textbook application of where human
  ability to interact with data meets its limit.
  Every, every minute, the operator has access to,
  say, 400, 600 data techs that are tracking and
  informing him about what's a going on in the
  process.
              And, he's got a big, chaotic process to
  manage.  The, the, the firing of, firing of coal, I
  don't have to explain to you.
              That's a giant, chaotic, data-rich
  process.  And, the operator has access to things
  that impact how that process performs.
              But, if he needs to read 600 data tags,
  and then he needs to move 40 things, some of them
  every 20 seconds if he's chasing something like CO,
  some of them every 12 minutes, but he needs to move
  40 of them, it's, it just can't be done.  It's not
  that they're bad operators or they're not paying
  attention.
              It's just not possible.  The companion
  process to that is the sutfin (phonetic) process.
              So, we take control of the boilers, and
  we respond to actual operation and cleanliness in
  the boiler.  Now, doing better with each of those
  things is really good.
              We bring down blowing operations by 20
  to 30 percent.  We make heat rate better by
  two-and-a-half to three-quarters percent with this
  product.
              And, when you're going that, you know,
  you're not cleaning dirty tubes, so we see more
  production because we're not eroding dirty tubes by
  putting water on metal at 1,000 degrees.  But, the
  bigger opportunity -- And, this is where it plays
  into the, the G.E. story.  -- is that those two
  processes are the biggest disturbers of each other.
              They're the biggest disturbance area
  that each other have.  You have bad combustion,
  you're not nailing your CO.
              You're going to have slag deposition.
  And, whenever you blow suit, you're introducing
  exogenous to fuel/air control, changes in how the
  fuel and air are mixed.
              So, we take the opportunity to pull
  those two together.  And, that, in this specific
  case, means that we can really do a lot for the
  plant's efficiency, reliability, and emissions.
              But, it's also, it's sort of a, a, a
  bigger story.  We're also looking at now including
  the polarizer.
              We're looking at reaching out to the
  steam turbine to grab sliding pressure.  It's a
  really good example of how the bigger company of
  G.E. is giving us opportunities to even get to the
  water side on the condenser, and on the --
  Particularly with ultrasupercritical units it
  becomes really important to have both sides of that
  tube absolutely as perfect as you can make them.
              But, this is all to say that G.E. is
  reaching into the assets.  It, it's got a strength
  there.
              Its acquisition of Alston brought it
  strongly into coal.  They're going to continue to
  invest in that.
              And, that's going to be part of their,
  sort of all forms of generation, -- "Our," I should
  say.   -- all forms of generation power and play in
  the industry.
              So, just as an example, I know Mr.
  Metcalfe was talking before about CO control over
  fire air.  We have a customer in Texas that has a
  125-parts-per-million unit on CO.
              Big, well-run plant.  With people in
  control their average is 107.
              And, that's pretty good.  They need to
  be able to take care of excursion.
              Our target, and our result, is 123.  So,
  they really trust us to keep us right on, keep them
  right on that edge.
              And, it's an example of what can be done
  with, with, technology.  And, I should thank Tom
  Sargus and the whole DOE.
              Part of what made us, I think, appealing
  to G.E., and gave us a platform, was about $40
  million in Department of Energy contracts that
  we've executed on in the mid-2000s.  So, thank you.
              I am not having the best luck with this
  thing.  Aah, okay.
              So, G.E. has a, a, a vision for the
  digital power plant for steam for us.  I think that
  we should be the textbook case for how G.E.
  acquires software companies.
              We've lost no one.  We're really happy
  to be there, and the options that they open up to
  do basic research around things like fuel
  analyzers, look at digital opportunities to improve
  the boiler, change the way that the work is
  guaranteed, talk about long-term results, not test
  burns.
              These are all things that we could never
  do on our own that G.E. is, is really helping to
  bring to the table.  So, we, we think there's a big
  opportunity to improve the efficiency of the, of
  the fleet.
              One of our best customers in Arizona, we
  attribute two-and-a-half-percent heat rate
  reduction to NeuCo, with an asterisk.  It's not
  just NeuCo.
              It's the physical changes that needed to
  be made to the plant to improve heat rate that
  NeuCo brought to the customer by applying
  artificial intelligence.  We couldn't do that.
              We could only do that as NeuCo on our,
  on our own.  Now, with G.E., we can bring the full
  weight of the Alston organization, and to the, to
  the, to, to the table.
              So, we think that we can get a
  percent-and-a-half efficiency, taking that
  approach.  We think we can really help to reduce
  unplanned downtime.
              That's both through our trick, which is,
  you know, helping to, you know, avoid eroding your
  tubes, but also by the high-powered analytics that
  G.E. can bring to:  Where are you going to run into
  your maintenance problems?
              When should they best be scheduled?  How
  do you pile those up?
              We were talking last night, Rick Ellis
  and I, about:  Is there a new philosophy that needs
  to be taken to, to outages and downtimes?
              You know, if you are a big coal plant
  that has 35-percent dispatch, well, first of all,
  that 35 percent is super-important to you, and you
  want to be available when it's there.  It's, it's
  not like:
              "I have all the time in the world.  I
  don't need to maintain."  But, "I've got to be
  ready when it need it ready."
              Do we have to do the outages in the
  spring and the fall?  Or, could we take a look at,
  you know, sort of, "How do I optimize by fleet
  outage strategy?"
              G.E. is building the analytics to do
  that.  So, the winning equation -- And, I, am I
  close to being done?
              Okay.  I want to leave some time for
  questions.
              So, the wining equation for us, let's
  get to that one-point efficiency improvement.
  Let's save money for the plant.
              It's a real, it's a real savings.  It's
  a CO2 savings.
              So, many if you, if you go through the
  computations, that we've done to, to, to figure it
  out, it's about double.  So, if we can get a
  percent, a percent and a-half, that gets to be
  somewhat significant contribution to coal plants
  needing the clean, clean power plant.
              You have to increase flexibility.  We
  need better ramp-in capabilities.
              Some of our very fast-acting
  technologies that are closed-loop help us do that
  better.  You also need to understand your fleet's
  ability to ramp with different units, and
  availability to integrate that into real-time
  decisionmaking.
              You always -- You, you have to comply
  with the emissions Rules.  A part of what we do is
  written into the MATS Regulation.
              It's -- There's sort of a standard
  benefit you can get if you have a rural network
  that you don't get.  That leads to less risk, but
  it's a lot more fluid than that.
              CO2 is an unknown.  NOx is a known.
              These are all going to be local, and we
  see them actually, some of them coming into the
  developing markets.  But, this is really the most
  stringent market that we are aware of for emissions
  compliance.
              And, all of that has to lead to, and
  should lead to better economics.  So, lower life-,
  lower lifecycle cost, profitability growth, and,
  ultimately, access to financing if you're able to
  outperform the rest of the fleet.
              So, the key take-aways -- I really am a
  big, a big proponent of this.  These, these coal
  plants, they feel like -- We, we recently had a
  film crew come out to one of our customers, and
  they were from the Bay Area in San Francisco.
              And, they are -- They're their own guys.
  You know, they're pretty, pretty different sort.
              Great, great bunch of guys, but they
  said, they told me, they said, "We'll show up here
  in the morning so that we can get the drone to fly
  over the plant, and maybe try to go down a
  conveyor."
              And, I said, "You're going to get a
  drone to fly over one of these secure facilities?
  I don't know that this --."
              Turned out they didn't.  It wasn't one
  of the key ones, so it wasn't as stringent.
              But, I said, you know, this,
  I don't know if you're a fan of one of these
  movies, but I have daughters and I certainly am.  I
  said, "This is going to be like Capital City meets
  District 12."
              And, they met, and they got along just
  fine.  So, we've been in this world, this, this,
  this practice of leveraging data in coal-fired
  plants for 15 years-plus.
              We've done it successfully.  We've got a
  better home now at G.E. to do that.
              And, I really would just like to have
  you, as a take-way, that there really is a good
  opportunity to leverage advanced artificial
  intelligence, big data, the, the Internet of
  things, and you've got the assets in this fleet now
  that, really, in my mind, the most amenable to
  doing it.
              So, with that I'll open up to questions.
              MS. GELLICI:  Anyone who has any
  questions, if you could kindly make your way over
  to the microphone.  Thank you.
              And, while Rob is getting up, maybe I'm
  in the minority here, but when you talk about OT
  and IT --
              MR. KIRK:  Oh, yeah.  So, sorry.
              Operating technologies and Information
  Technologies so that there should be a seamless
  connection between -- You know, think of it as your
  BCS or your PLC that has all the plant data in
  there with things like neuro networks,
  multi-vari-predictive control, traditional
  trulistics.  Sorry.
              MR. NARULA:  Ram Narula.  Sorry.
              The question I have is that if you look
  into the coal fleet, you may have 40-year-old, and
  maybe 200-megawatt unit, and maybe very new unit
  with 800,000 meg unit.  Doesn't it break you in
  terms of the timeframe and the size of the unit
  where you think the payback is rather short for the
  use of this technology?
              MR. KIRK:  Certainly the way that NeuCo
  priced ourselves, you were not, unless you had a
  special problem, if you were under 100 megawatts,
  it probably didn't make sense.  But, the way that
  G.E. is going about it is to make a megawatt
  sensitive place-in model, so that we should be able
  to cover more.
              But, the, the, the older -- We got
  started in the, the older fleet.  It was:  If you
  couldn't afford a new SCR, and you were buying NOx
  allowances, you were only a neural solution at the
  time.
              If it weren't for that NOx gun to
  people's heads, they would have never pulled the
  trigger in putting a neuro network in, in, you
  know, contact with their DCS.  Now, we've worked on
  the product.
              We have, you know, different options.
  Technically it's more acceptable to the operator
  now.
              The operator knows that he can't chase
  CO by moving something every 20 seconds.  And,
  we're able to nail it for him, so he likes it
              He doesn't want this support job back
  once he's given it away to somebody else.  And,
  that's us.
              So, to answer your question, we're
  actually seeing more of the new units in the
  international markets.  We've worked on a lot of
  the older units, a lot of the older control
  systems.
              And, the nice thing is we're agnostic
  because we've never been associated with a, with a
  bigger company.  So, --.
              MR. NARULA:  So, really, that, what
  you're saying is you can customize each need to
  make it one composition.
              MR. KIRK:  Yes.
              MR. NARULA:  Thank you.
              MR. ALI:  Sy Ali, with Clean Energy
  Consulting.  You talked about the coal side of it.
              Jeff Elliott talks about improving gas
  turbine cycle systems availability.  What kind of
  percentage-wise improvement would you predict using
  NeuCo application on it?
              MR. KIRK:  It's interesting.  We have
  done a little bit of work in gas.
              That was just sort of forced on us by
  market conditions.  We've looked primarily at duck
  burner optimization.
              So, we went away from the turbine
  because -- And, this is a really interesting
  difference between the coal and the gas side of
  the, the fleet.  A turbine manufacturer owns the
  assets, or he makes the asset.
              He makes the control and he owns the IP
  around it.  So, he really owns that asset.
              And, he can provide a lot of value that
  way.  Does not exist on the coal side of the fleet.
              You've got this divorce between control
  and hardware.  And, there's no IP there.
              So, as a result, no ones really invested
  much in that knowledge layer.  We're kind of the
  way to get to that knowledge layer.
              G.E. has a very strong position around
  that knowledge layer on the turbine side of the
  world.  But, they're reaching out to be broader
  than that to reach the whole plant.
              And, so, the work that we've done in
  duck burner optimization is essentially enabling
  you to predict whether you're going to be able to
  be at or exceed max capability, and should you be
  firing your duck burner so that you can use your
  fuel.  You have available more to provide
  Regulation.
              So, we don't, we haven't, we haven't yet
  intruded ourselves or been in that conversation.
  We're really pretty focused on how it's going to --
              MR. ALI:  Yeah.  I worked on gas
  turbines at G.E.  That's why I asked.
              MR. KIRK:  Yeah.  Okay.  Thanks.
              Just a final comment.  I said to my wife
  before coming here that, you know, it's been hard
  for a guy like me to get into meetings like this,
  you know, because, you know, sure, the technology's
  new and all that.
              It's really the domain of older guys
  with white hair or no hair.  Now that's changing.
              You know, my wife said, "Look in the
  mirror.  It might not be the industry that's
  changing that much."
              I think she had a point there.
              MS. GELLICI:  One last question that I
  have.  Do you envision that some of the
  improvements that you're able to realize with some
  of this digitizing, would, would that be a
  compliant option for, like, the clean power plants
  or some of the other?
              Do you envision that this might --
              MR. KIRK:  I do.  I think if you look at
  the MATs, I think that the MAT Regulations took us
  by surprise.
              It looked like we lobbied for it.  But,
  you get to extend your time between the tunings,
  testing, outages that you need to do, and you need
  to retain less information from those, from that
  process if you're using a neuro network to, to
  optimize for NOx and CO.
              And, so, we didn't know that that was
  going to be in there, but that's sort of a
  hardwired benefit that you get because of
  flexibility around outages.  So, all of that is to
  say that we think EPA is pretty friendly to our
  technology.
              I don't really know why.  I guess I'm
  happy about it, but we've been part of Consent
  Decrees, you know, that optimization has to be a
  part.
              And, so, I think that they do recognize
  some, some of that.  Thank you.
              (Whereupon, at 10:35 a.m. CT, a response
  was had.)
              MS. GELLICI:  Thank you very much,
  Peter.  Appreciate that.
              Our next presenter is Bill Sawyer, who
  is Manager of the Hibbard Renewable Energy Center
  at Minnesota Power, which is an ALLETE company.
  Bill is, as I mentioned, manages the, the Renewable
  Energy Center, and it's one of five electric
  generation facilities that are owned and operated
  by Minnesota Power.
              He has been the Plant Manager there for
  three years.  Prior to assuming that position he
  led the Project Development Team for Minnesota
  Power, which is responsible for the development of
  new electric generation resources for the Company,
  as well as for R&D of new technologies.
              Would you please join me in welcoming
  Bill Sawyer.
              Bill?
              (Whereupon, at 10:35 a.m. CT, a response
  was had.)
  CARBON-ELIMINATING ALLAM CYCLE FOR COAL POWER
  PLANTS:
              MR. SAWYER:  Thank you, Janet.
              Good morning, everyone.  Thank you for
  the invitation to be here.
              What we've heard so far this morning is
  a lot of great presentations.  And, a lot of the
  messages, key messaging, the key take-aways from
  these pres-, those presentations are going to carry
  through to what I'm going to talk about here today.
              So, what do we know about the coal
  industry, the utility industry, and the world
  today?  We live in a carbon-constrained world, and
  we live in an ever-increasing carbon constrained
  world.
              And, the pressures on coal continues to
  increase.  And, so, we, as an industry, need to
  find solutions for carbon for our industry, both
  for existing facilities, power plants that are out
  there today using coal, and we need to find new
  technology solutions for plant replacements or
  additions for new load for our utilities.
              And, what I'm here to talk about today
  is a new technology that we, in our initiative,
  feel is really one of those solutions for new
  plants, plant replacement, load additions for
  utilities.  That's called the Allam cycle.
              You heard Dr. Mollot, earlier this
  morning, mention the Allam cycle in his keynote
  presentation as, really, a, a technology that is
  being developed as a transformational technology.
  It's not just taking one step forward and
  increasing efficiencies and reducing costs for our
  utilities.
              It's taking a leap forward by really
  transforming what that technology is going to do
  for us today.  Now, your first question might be:
              Why is there a guy with a title Manager
  of Renewable Energy Operations here today talking
  to us about coal?  We use coal in our facilities at
  Minnesota Power.
              My facility burns biomass, but also
  combusts coal.  And, three of the other four power
  generation sites for Minnesota Power are coal-fired
  facilities.
              And, within the operating companies of
  ALLETE, which is the parent company of Minnesota
  Power, and our publicly traded company, we also own
  coal, and we mine coal.  So, we take it from the
  very beginning, all the way through to the utility
  side.
              The, the coal mine operation that we
  have is called BNI Energy, which operates BNI Coal,
  which is a lignite mine in North Dakota.  That
  supplies a mine mouth plant there.
              So, we know coal.  We've been in coal
  for many decades.
              The plant I manage today was originally
  built in 1929.  So, we've been in coal for many,
  many, many years, and we know a lot about coal.
              What do we know about coal historically?
  Coal has been king.
              Number-one fuel for electric generation
  in the United States.  Number-one fuel for electric
  generation across the world, across the globe.
              The chart on the right-hand side of the
  chart here is just a comparison of coal consumption
  historically, and a look forward for coal
  consumption on some of the larger countries around
  the world.  And, you can see by the top line, the
  red line, that China dwarfs the United States in
  terms of coal consumption.
              More than four times the amount of coal
  consumed in China than the United States, in those
  two countries alone.  So, this is not just a
  domestic challenge.
              This is an international challenge for
  us.  But, with coal being king, what else do we
  know about coal?
              Coal is king until it's not.  In the
  year 2015, just one year ago, natural gas equaled
  coal for fuel used for electric generation in this
  country, in the United States.
              You've got two charts up here on the
  slide.  Both come from the EIA's annual energy
  outlook.
              The left-hand chart shows historical and
  future electric generation fuels under a clean
  power plant scenario.  The chart on the right shows
  the same fuels under a nonclean power plant
  scenario.
              What's consistent between these charts
  is coal decreases; natural gas and renewables
  increase for electric generation.  And, so, by the
  year mid-2020s, to late 2020s, under either
  scenario, they're showing that natural gas
  overtakes coal for fuel for electric generation.
              A huge challenge for us in the industry.
  Why is that?
              A lot of it's around carbon; carbon
  intensity for coal compared to carbon intensity to
  natural gas.  Of course, other pressures out there
  in terms of costs, costs of natural gas.
              But, certainly, we're here today to talk
  about coal, and we're here today to talk about
  solutions for coal.  Energy industry challenges for
  us:  Coal cost reliable generation, it's channeling
  in today's regulatory environment.
              We've heard that a lot today already.
  We're all very familiar with that.
              At the same time, there's a lot of
  natural gas showing up on our markets.  But,
  natural gas also has challenges long-term with
  carbon, with CO2 emissions.
              And, renewable generation options have
  been increasing.  You saw that on the chart that
  was just up here on the last slide.
              Lots of new renewables being built here
  today in the United States.  But, intermittency is
  the challenge for renewables for our electric
  industry, and, and, specifically, for companies
  like our company, Minnesota Power.
              So, the electric utilities side of
  ALLETE, Minnesota Power, is a smaller utility in
  northeastern Minnesota.  We have about 1,800
  megawatts of load, but what's unique for us is we
  serve some of the largest electric users in the
  country in the taconite mines in the paper mills in
  northeastern Minnesota.
              These are companies that take hundreds
  of megawatts each from us for each plant.  And,
  they take energy around the clock.
              They take energy 24 hours a day, every
  day of the year.  Intermittency is not a good thing
  for them in their operations.
              You know, so we know very well the value
  of base load generation, and the need for base load
  generation to support our industry.  What do we
  provide in the electric industry today?
              We provide security, comfort, and
  quality of life for our customers.  Intermittency
  does not help on any of those.
              What do we have for supply out there for
  fuels?  Coal and natural gas in the United States.
              Based on recent EIA data from 2014, at
  the production levels in 2014, we would have a
  250-year supply of coal in this country.  And, we
  would have an 85-year supply of natural gas.
              Large supply, long -term supply of
  resources, challenged on the environmental side
  with carbon Regulation.  How do we marry those two
  together?
              We need a solution that includes new
  technologies that will allow us to use those fuels,
  and allow us to use those fuels in a more efficient
  way, and in an affordable, economic way.  So, our
  vision, and our call to action really is to develop
  a transformational technology to meet these two
  challenges to marry these two pathways together and
  bring us back to a future for the energy industry,
  not just for our industry, but for our partners
  that we're involved with in the State of North
  Dakota, in this Allam cycle initiative, for the
  Country, and globally, to really provide that
  next-generation energy solution that we can all use
  to continue on in the coal industry.
              In our answer to that, as you've heard
  the, the name mentioned already today, is the Allam
  cycle.  So, the Allam cycle is a new technology, a
  new power cycle that's being developed by a company
  called Eight Rivers Technology.
              Eight Rivers, Eight Rivers Capital is a
  venture capital firm that owns the Patents and the
  rights to the Allam cycle.  So, they're our key
  partner in developing this technology.
              And, the Allam cycle really is a
  next-generation technology.  It provides the
  promise of increased efficiency, with estimates for
  coal-fired Allam cycle power plant at near
  50-percent efficient.
              That's 1.4 times higher efficiency than
  the U.S. coal fleet average today.  It provides the
  promise for affordable energy from coal, and
  keeping costs reasonable for our customers.
              Economic power generation from the Allam
  cycle, with estimates on the cost of energy from
  Allam cycle power plans between four and five cents
  per kilowatt hour with CO2 sales, or six to seven
  cents per kilowatt without CO2 sales.  So, right in
  the range of current-generation technologies.
              And, the promise the Allam cycle, as you
  heard from Dr. Mollot this morning, is really the
  way the power cycling is designed.  It is a
  supercritical CO2 cycle.
              There is no water used in the cycle, so
  you do not take water and heat it to make steam.
  You combust your fuel in an oxygen environment at
  high temperature and high pressure, and what's
  coming out of your combustor is supercritical CO2
  and water.
              Pull the water off.  The supercritical
  CO2 is used to drive the turbine.
              And, so, the density of the energy in
  that power cycle is very high.  And, because of
  that high density of energy, you're allowed to have
  a smaller footprint for your plant.
              So, another one of the benefits of an
  Allam cycle plant is that it's only going to take
  about 20 percent of the space to build an Allam
  cycle plant as it would to build a traditional coal
  plant.  You don't have a lot of the equipment
  needed on the water side, and the energy density is
  very high, so your equipment is much smaller than
  you do have.
              Process diagram.  So, just a, a quick
  view of what the Allam cycle looks like.
              In the yellow box on the right-hand side
  is what I would call the core power block for the
  Allam cycle.  So, that's your combustor feeding a
  turbine.
              Coming off the turbine, since you're
  using supercritical CO2 to power your turbine,
  coming off your turbine is CO2 still at high
  pressure.  You take the heat out of that CO2 through
  heat exchangers, and then you still have CO2 at high
  pressure that requires very little compression to
  be usable straight into a pipeline.
              So, some of that CO2 is recycled back
  into the system and into the combustor to keep the
  energy, the heat in the system, and some of that CO2
  can be pulled off to be put into a pipeline for
  utilization purposes.
              Now, on the coal design of this
  technology, which we're working on in our
  initiative, you're not burning natural gas in that
  combustor.  You're burning syngas.
              So, to make that syngas, you have to add
  the gray side, or left side of this process
  diagram.  You have to add coal gasification units,
  and then syngas cleanup coming out of that coal
  gasification unit before you feed the combustor.
              So, a lot of work has been done on this
  technology design to date.  We've been working on
  this since 2013.
              So, we've been working on this as a
  consortium for about three years on designing the
  coal side, and addressing the challenges on the
  coal side.  The Eight Rivers Capital Company,
  through one of their subsidiary companies, Net
  Power, has been developing the core power block
  side.
              And, I've got a slide coming up that
  shows a pilot plant that's being constructed today
  in Texas that will prove the power block burning
  natural gas as the fuel for the Allam cycle
  technology.
              It's a bit hard to see in the back,
  maybe, but we're going to shift to economics hear.
  This is estimates of levelized costs of electricity
  from the Allam cycle.
              I'm going to split this chart in two.
  Really, above the red line on the chart there are
  natural-gas-fired technologies.
              Below the line are coal-fired
  technologies.  And, the Allam cycle, in each of
  these instances, is competitive, if not lower, in
  terms of cost, than traditional technologies, and
  lower than traditional technologies without carbon
  capture.
              So, on the, on the gas side, on the top,
  you can see the, the bar that's circled there is an
  Allam cycle fired on natural gas, the Net Power
  design of the pilot plant that's being built today,
  and it's being compared to natural-gas combined
  cycle with and without carbon capture.
              The length of the bar is, is really
  meant to show the difference in cost through
  variabilities of construction of a new plant, as
  well as whether you're achieving value through sale
  of CO2, which would be the bar on the left-hand
  side, or the lowering of costs, or whether you are
  adding cost to your plant because of a carbon tax
  that would be added to an existing plant that
  doesn't have carbon capture.
              So, that would be the extensions of the
  bar on the right.  So, you can see both on the
  natural-gas and on the coal-fired Allam cycle
  facilities, the expectation is that we're going to
  be in the costing range of exist-, of existing
  technologies, and we're going to have fully
  compressed CO2 on the back end of this plant that's
  already captured and available for use for enhanced
  oil recovery or sequestration.
              What do we need to do that?  We need a
  broad vision.
              I think one thing we heard mentioning of
  this morning, but, but probably wasn't brought out
  as clearly, clearly as it needs to be, is we can
  capture all the CO2 that we want out of existing
  power plants, but it doesn't do anyone any good
  unless we have a sink for that CO2; unless we have a
  place to put that CO2.
              In our initiative we're looking for a
  broad solution to that entire picture, which
  develops the capture technology in the Allam cycle,
  while, at the same time, developing the utilization
  of that CO2 in the State of North Dakota for
  enhanced oil recovery and sequestration.
              Now, North Dakota is fortunate enough to
  have both resources.  Huge lignite reserves in
  North Dakota; huge oil reserves in the Bakken
  footprint in western North Dakota really couples
  well for this type of project, for this type of
  demonstration.
              North Dakota is the place to do that, to
  demonstrate this technology.  So, a sustainable
  solution is really our broad solution for both coal
  industry and for additional oil recovery.
              We would do that through demonstrating
  the Allam cycle technology, through the research
  work that we're doing today to address the
  challenges, the pilot plant that's being
  constructed in Texas, and then develop and build a
  commercial generation plant in North Dakota using
  local North Dakota lignite as the fuel.
              We would then transport the CO2 from
  this facility to be used in the Bakken area for
  enhanced oil recovery, and eventually
  sequestration.  And, there's really -- I've got two
  bullets here on that.
              The, the middle bullet, or the second
  bullet on the slide talks about utilizing CO2 for
  enhanced oil recovery in conventional oil fields,
  already being done today, being done across the
  Country in the southern portion of the U.S.
              Just over the border, in Saskatchewan,
  we're using CO2 today that's being generated as a
  means to enhance oil recovery from oil fields.
              The Bakken also has what's called "tight
  oil fields," which is shale oil.  Shale oil has not
  quite yet gotten to the point of being able to
  utilize CO2.
              There needs to be further developments
  of technology and utilization there to be able to
  use CO2 in shale, because the properties react
  differently than in conventional oil fields.  So,
  we are partnered, fortunate to be partnered with
  the Energy and Environmental Research Center, so,
  the research arm of the University of North Dakota
  in Grand Forks.
              They are really the premier expert on
  the Bakken, on Bakken shale, as well as having
  great expertise on carbon capture, and, through the
  PCOR partnership, sequestration opportunities for
  CO2 in the region.
              And, moving on to that in our
  partnership, you've already heard me talk about the
  two ALLETE companies in the upper right-hand
  portion of this slide.  Minnesota Power is the
  utility; BNI Energy is the coal owner and coal
  miner.
              On the top left-hand portion of this
  slide is our industrial partner on this initiative,
  Basin Electric Power Corporation, also located in
  North Dakota.  And, Basin Electric has an operating
  company, Dakota Gasification Company, which is
  probably the longest-standing coal gasification
  plant in the country.
              They've been doing it since the '80s.
  They know about coal gasification.
              They know about gasification of lignite.
  They know all of the challenges.
              Very key partner for us in this
  development.  State of North Dakota has been very
  interested in this.
              You can understand.  They have a big
  lignite resource; they have a big oil resource.
              How do we find a solution for that?  So,
  through their Lignite Energy Council we've gotten
  some research and development assistance there on
  the work that we're doing to date.
              And, the EERC that I already mentioned,
  there in the bottom right-hand corner is the, is
  the arm that is doing that research for us right
  now.  And, the Department of Energy and NETL is
  some flow-through funneled that go comes through
  the EERC, and their, their programs to do this kind
  of work.
              Eight Rivers Capital, of course, is the
  owner of the Allam cycle technology.  So, we have
  the right partners at the table.
              We're in the right location, and we
  really have a great path forward for the success in
  development of this technology.  Strong support for
  preserving the coal option.
              We're all here to preserve the coal
  option.  That's what we're looking for out of this.
              I talked a lot about research and
  development, and what we're doing so far.  When you
  start to look at gasifying coal, whichever form of
  coal you're using, lignite, subbituminous,
  bituminous coal, you've got some constituents in
  that coal that you're going to have to deal with
  when you're talking about pressures of 300 bar and
  temperatures of 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit.
              And, so, you've got materials research
  that's going on at the EERC today.  You've got
  corrosion research.
              You've got gas cleanup research that are
  all a portion of the work that we're doing today.
  Talked a little bit about the pilot plant that's
  being constructed right now the Texas.
              So, that's proving the core power block
  being fueled by natural gas.  Fifty megawatt
  thermal, 25 megawatt electric plant is what the
  design is for that.
              And, further development, both the
  technology side and the demonstration side, through
  this power plant, really creates our path forward
  for continued utilization of coal.  The substantial
  investment already today is $15 million has gone
  into the research that we're doing right now on the
  coal side of the cycle, and the pilot plant in
  Texas has $140 million of investment for the
  construction of that pilot plant.
              So, there's a lot of money in this
  already.  Been working on it for a number of years.
              There's a number of steps to go in our
  pathway towards commercialization of the coal
  system, but we've certainly got a very good base to
  move forward on with this.  Here's a cut slide on
  the pilot plant.
              Just couple things I'll call out on
  this.  It's located in La Port, Texas, which is
  close to Houston.
              Expected to be in operation second
  quarter of 2017.  I was actually there at this
  site.
              The bottom right picture is a
  construction picture from about three weeks ago.
  Myself and several others in the room actually were
  on that tour, took a tour of that site, and they're
  coming along pretty well.
              They've got -- A lot of the major
  equipment has already arrived on site.  They were
  awaiting the turbine to arrive on site sometime
  here early fourth quarter, and they'll be putting
  everything together, commissioning, and doing their
  first fire second quarter of 2017.
              And, what struck me as an engineer, kind
  of the first thing I picked out walking around this
  site is they've got some heat exchangers.  Heat
  exchangers have to handle high temperature, high
  pressure in this particular cycle.
              And, I looked at the nameplate on one of
  the heat exchangers on the site, and it said
  operating pressure 300 bar.  That's, that's pretty
  substantial equipment there, and that is definitely
  transformational technology.
              So, what we've done so far, -- I've
  called all of these out so far in the presentation
  here today.  We've identified and began to address
  the key technology challenges for advancement of
  the coal cycle.
              We've initiated the steps to design the
  pilot testing.  The pilot plant's going in in
  Texas.
              And, how do we scale that up to a
  commercial plant?  And, how do we add the
  gasification to that to use coal as a fuel instead
  of natural gas?
              And, then, of course, we've identified
  our partnership and funding pathways to support our
  full project development.  This type of project, as
  we heard this morning, you don't get to fourth and
  a fifth version of a technology without doing a
  first version and second version.
              So, taking the step to do the first
  version in this case in this technology is a big
  step, and we need partners that are engaged and
  involved in that.  And, we need support.
              And, we have, through the State of North
  Dakota.  We need support, as we have, through the
  Department of Energy, to advance these technologies
  for our industry.
              And, the last slide I have today is, is
  really our path forward.  So, this talks about
  what's involved in our steps and our phases for
  continued development of the Allam cycle on coal.
              So, the first two phases on the
  left-hand side of the arrow were addressing the key
  technology challenges.  So, the work that the EERC
  has been doing for us on materials, properties,
  corrosion, heat exchangers.
              What type of gasifier best fits this
  system?  What is of concern with syngas combustion?
              How does that combustor need to be
  designed to handled syngas at those pressures and
  those temperatures?  That's all work that's being
  done today.
              You couple that with the, the pilot
  plant being fueled by natural gas.  So, that is
  testing the core power cycle.
              You're able to marry those two together
  with all of the challenges of integration to put
  this together into a coal-fired Allam cycle
  facility, and moving forward into a prefeed and a
  feed for commercial deployment.
              And, our end goal is a commercial
  demonstration of this technology by building a
  plant in the State of North Dakota somewhere in the
  2020 to early 2020s timeframe.  And, and, I think
  we're well on track with that on the research side,
  on the demonstration side with the pilot plant
              We're still working with the partnership
  side, and who's involved, and the amount of
  funding, and where that funding is coming from.
  So, certainly support from the industry, support
  from both the State and Federal Government is
  important to us in developing this solution and a
  pathway forward for all of us in the coal industry.
              That's what I had for you today.  I
  thank you for your time, and thank you for the
  opportunity to talk about really what we see as a
  future for our industry.
              (Whereupon, at 11:00 a.m. CT, a response
  was had.)
              MS. GELLICI:  Are there any questions
  for Bill?  If you could kindly make your way up to
  the microphone if you do have any questions.
              I continue to be impressed by the, by
  the fact that it does take a village, and that the
  tremendous efforts that have been undertaken to
  build these partnerships to get this done.  I talk
  a lot about what's going on in North Dakota when
  I'm out on the road talking about this industry,
  and this is certainly just a model for all of us in
  terms of the number of partners and the variety of
  partners that you have engaged on this.
              So, --
              MR. SAWYER:  Thank you.  Appreciate
  that.
              MS. GELLICI:  The -- After proving out
  the core block technology, then you mentioned some
  things that are unique to the coal aspect of this,
  and, and testing those out.  Can you talk a little
  bit about maybe what some of those are in a little
  bit more -- You mentioned a few of them, but --
              MR. SAWYER:  Sure.
              MS. GELLICI:  -- interested in --
              MR. SAWYER:  Sure.
              MS. GELLICI:  -- that challenges --
              MR. SAWYER:  Sure.  Sure.
              MS. GELLICI:  -- for coal.
              MR. SAWYER:  Absolutely, Janet.
              So, some of the work that's being done
  today at the EERC is just around the question that
  you asked:  What are the corrosion worries in this
  cycle with the constituents that are going to be in
  your syngas?
              And, how are those going to act in a
  high-pressure, high-temperature environment?  So,
  the EERC has a huge array of, of test equipment,
  you know, any sized power plant equipment that they
  can use for testing what are the constituents in a
  lignite syngas, and then how are those going to act
  at pressure and temperature.
              So, so, they're addressing some of those
  challenges right now.  And, second big challenge on
  the coal side is really to figure out what's the
  best gas to fire to couple with this Allam cycle
  power block.
              There's a lot of gasifiers out there
  that could work because there, there is some
  availability that is allowed within the Allam cycle
  combustion process.  You might not have to dial it
  in as directly as you do on some other processes.
              So -- But, that's certainly something
  that we're working on with a EERC.  They have a lot
  of expertise in gasification, and, so, working with
  all the different suppliers of gasifiers out there
  to try to figure out what's the best fit, what's
  going to be the best syngas for this cycle.
              And, then, the big one is kind of how
  you couple those together in the syngas combustor.
  How are you going to combust that syngas?
              Can you keep it stabile at pressure and
  temperature?  Can you remove the constituents
  before you combust?
              Can you remove the constituents after
  you combust and produce your electricity?  So,
  those are really the key challenges that we've been
  looking at on the coal side.
              MS. GELLICI:  And, and, and, is this
  just lignite that you're looking at, or are there
  other applications for other types of coal?  I, I
  know, given where you're locating this, makes
  probably most sense on lignite, but --
              MR. SAWYER:  Absolutely.  Yes.  Thanks
  for that question.
              We say that the technology is applicable
  across the coal industry.  Now, whether you use a
  different gasifier for a different coal, that's yet
  to be determined in this development.
              But, certainly we are focused on
  lignite.  And, the applicability, not only across
  the Country, but across the world, is there across
  all coal like lignite or bituminous coal.
              It's just the constituents coming out of
  the gasifier is the same gas quality, where you
  would have to dial in, probably best fits the
  cycle.
              MS. GELLICI:  I think everyone is
  stunned with a big, "Wow," and, so, thank you very
  much for your presentation, Bill.  Thank you.
              (Whereupon, at 11:03 a.m. CT, a response
  was had.)
              MS. GELLICI:  Very exciting.  And, seems
  like it's happening quickly, too.
              So, that's the other good news on that
  front.  So, we'll, we'll invite you back here in a
  couple of years to give us an update on, on where
  you're at.
              So, thank you very much for your efforts
  there.
              We're going to conclude our Industry
  Presentation session this morning with Danny Gray,
  who's the Executive Vice President of Government
  and Environmental Affairs with Charah.  Danny's
  also a new member of the National Coal Council.
              So, we welcome you to, as, I think, your
  first meeting with our group, first or second.
  But, thank you, Danny, for being with us.
              As I mentioned, Danny oversees
  Government and Environmental Affairs for Charah,
  and he's responsible for covering legislative
  affairs, regulatory, and environmental agency
  policy interface, and program implementation for
  the company there.
              He has more than 35 years' experience in
  the electric utilities and coal ash management
  industries, starting out his career with American
  Electric Power.  He's testified before the Senate
  Energy, Environment, and Public Works Committee,
  and in front of various State legislative
  Committees on behalf of the coal ash management and
  beneficial use industry.
              I wanted to thank Danny for kind of
  doubling up on his presentation today.  He's going
  to talk to us about coal ash beneficiation,
  beneficial use.
              But, I've always asked him to talk about
  rare-earth elements as well.
              So, I appreciate your efforts there.
              Would you please join me in welcoming
  Danny Gray.
              Danny.
              (Whereupon, at 11:05 a.m. CT, a response
  was had.)
  BENEFICIAL USES OF COAL AND COAL BYPRODUCTS:  COAL
  ASH AND RARE-EARTH ELEMENTS
              MR. GRAY:  Thanks, Janet.
              Make sure I've got the right direction
  on this.  Okay, I'll make one confession before I
  start.
              I come at this industry from the coal
  ash reuse perspective, which means that I have a
  certain bias.  It's I operate under the premise of
  the tail-wagging-the-dog scenario.
              When I walk into a power plant, members
  of our industry, which many of them are here, we
  look at a power plant's primary purpose is to
  generate good quality ash.  We recognize before the
  day is over, usually we understand what the premise
  is, and we understand the priority.
              However, our job, and our industry's job
  is to take that commodity that comes out of the
  back side of the power plant and make the most
  value of that commodity that we can.  So, when I
  talk today, I want to talk about the commodity
  value of, of ash, the fact that that story goes
  untold many times.
              It's, sometimes it's not recognized
  because on a relative basis versus the value of the
  power, it, it's not a significant factor.  But, as
  we move forward, the commodity value of the ash is,
  generated by America's power plants is, certainly
  plays a vital role.
              And, if you were any shoes, and you got
  as many phone calls from State Department of
  Highway agency people today wondering where they're
  going to get their ash for the concrete for
  infrastructure projects going forward, you can just
  feel the anxiety, and you know the value of the
  ash.
              So, therefore, it's relevant to talk
  about it.  It's relevant to talk about where it's
  going in the future, where the traditional uses are
  going, and, of course, where the nontraditional
  uses are, which include rare-earth elements from a
  strategic value standpoint.
              Start with a couple of quick references
  here.  It's a lot of print, but the key thing is is
  that for those of us who can remember the '73 oil
  embargo, we remember that out of that oil embargo,
  the lessons that we learned, RCRA started as a
  Regulation and as a law.
              And, the primary purpose s and goals of
  RCRA -- And, you can see it for yourself.  But, one
  of the primary goals was basically to take what we
  recognize in the United States as a tremendous
  resource value that was going into the land fills,
  whether it was plastics, whether it was anything
  else.
              But, the objective of RCRA was to take
  those solid-waste resources, and/or hazardous waste
  resources, and to figure out a way to avoid and
  recover that energy, and put it to good use to
  reduce our reliance on foreign imports and to
  improve our balance-of-trade numbers.
              So, with that as a background, I would
  argue the case that the coal ash utilization
  industry is one of the best examples of a success
  story in that industry.  If you look at the history
  of coal ash management and, and the goals that were
  set out under RCRA, you recognize that it's
  probably the best recycling story in America from a
  volume standpoint.
              And, we all know about aluminum, and the
  successes of aluminum in terms of dollar value.
  But, if you look at the volumes of coal ash that's
  been diverted away from landfills and used in some
  type of beneficial use, it's the best story out
  there in America.
              And, it goes untold many times, but not,
  not necessarily because of our lack of interest in
  it.  It's just that it's downstream of the power
  plant.
              It's on the back side of the power
  plant.  As an industry, we didn't raise the red
  flag and toot our own horn very well, but the story
  that's outs there is a story of success.
              And, I'm going to talk a little bit
  about the data, and I'm going to use the, the 2014
  data that was put out by the American Coal Ash
  Association, which as it turns out to be the most
  recent data.  But, basically we, you know, in 2014
  we generated about 129-, 130 million tons of ash.
              Forty-eight percent of that ash was
  reused in some type of application.  Pretty
  significant volume if you stop to think about it.
              If we look at resources that we actually
  go out and mine in the United States and use, we
  look at sand and gravel as being the largest
  construction material that we actually go out and
  mine for construction purposes.
              But, if we look at the volume ranking of
  that, coal ash falls right in there as the
  number-two volume.  And, CCPs are used as a
  replacement for cement, as a substitute for mined
  gypsum.
              So, the value of that resource is pretty
  significant in terms of the construction materials
  that are mined or used in the American construction
  industry.  It also has a future value as a
  strategic resource value for rare-earth elements.
              And, we'll talk a little bit more about
  that later in the, in the talk.  CCR impacts from
  a, basically what's happening in our industry, as
  we all know, and, and many of you in this room are
  experts on the coal side of it, is that we're
  obviously -- power plants that are, burn coal are
  being impacted by what I would call regulatory
  technology in terms of energy exploration
  innovation reduction.
              If you look at the technology and
  innovation supplied in that, you know, they say a
  typical drill rig is 600 more percent, 600 percent
  more efficient than it was just as few as ten years
  ago.  If you look at the impacts of that on the
  fracking technology, and all of the things that
  happened in the gas industry, obviously we have two
  major drivers in our industries.
              I'm going to talk more about the
  regulatory drivers because I feel that the, the gas
  impacts, the technology improvements that affected
  gas have bought about a quick change.  But, those,
  from, if you're, if you're in a power plant
  industry, those are probably near-term decision
  drivers.
              The long-term drivers are possibly
  regulatory more so than anything else.  So,
  long-term effects on us is that we know that our
  industry has been affected dramatically by all of
  the environmental Rules you see listed here.
              Specifically for us, the CCR Rules and
  LLG Rules have the most impact.  We know that, in
  terms of coal plants, we have the hardest-hit
  plants, basically in 2015, 2016, we, in terms of
  number of plants closings.
              We know that we're expecting about 60
  gigawatts of closure by the end of 2016.  We know,
  based on the tally that we're tracking, that there
  are about 19.6 gigawatts announced for shutdown
  between now and 2025.
              And, we can equate that to, you know,
  mostly compliance-related costs.  And, we also
  evaluate what that means to us as an ash industry.
              So, we know that the resources that we
  have available to us are decreasing.  We also know
  that we, the value of the market demand is going to
  gradually increase, because the uses for fly ash
  are going to continue to grow.
              Use in concrete, if you want to make
  high-quality, long-life-cycle concrete for
  America's structures, bridges, buildings, and
  stuff, if you want a long-life-cycle concrete,
  you're probably going to need fly ash in there as
  one of the ingredients to replace cement.
              So, we know that when you put fly ash
  into concrete, as an example, that not only does it
  increase the life cycle, but it decreases the cost.
  And, that's pretty important to all of us as
  taxpayers, because we pay for the roads and
  infrastructure that we have out there.
              In terms of the capacity reductions,
  just real quickly on this, we know that out of that
  310 gigawatts of current capacity, we're going to
  lose 48 to 60 gigawatts.  That capacity that we're
  losing, I think most of us in this room are aware,
  that's usually the older plants, the smaller than
  200 megawatts plants.
              Average age of them was 54 years.  And,
  most of those plants didn't have SO2 controls.
              So, those of the plants being impacted
  out of that 19.6 gigawatts that are affected today,
  we equate that to roughly eight million tons of
  additional ash losses.  That would be based on
  nameplate capacity drops.
              So, that calculation is driving off the
  capacity factors in, in, in the nameplate size of
  them, but, but that's a negative impact to the ash,
  in addition to the fact that we have, basically,
  capacity factor drops because of what plants are
  being dispatched in favor of gas.
              So, we know there's going to be downward
  pressure on the volume of ash production for the
  next number of years.  If we look at the data for
  the 2014, if you look at the utilization of that
  data, we know that fly ash production was down,
  bottom ash production was down 2013 versus '14.
              FGD production was actually up, and,
  but, yet, the increase, there was an increase of
  actual ash used as a substitute for other products.
  And, that ratio is, is going, we think is going to
  continue.
              Now, we know that, based on the annual
  survey for 2015 data, that, that it's incomplete at
  this point, and not published.  But, we know the
  trends are going to be that the total volume of ash
  is going to be reduced.
              We know that the total number of tons is
  going to be reduced.  We suspect, and I would
  expect that the percentage of ash utilized is going
  to increase.
              There's been gradual improvement in the
  economy from the infrastructure standpoint, whether
  it's construction on the government structures, or
  whether it's commercial/industrial, or residential.
  And, that's basically the three brackets that we
  break down the usage criteria.
              The one thing that's kind of interesting
  is that some people say, well, ash usage goes up
  when the economy's up; it goes down when the
  economy's bad.  But, one of the things that's a
  crucial issue for our industry is ash utilization
  trends to, it tends to go down in usages when
  there's not clarity in the regulatory climate.
              So, if you look at from the period of
  time of 2008 till now, specifically during that
  period of time that we had where there was a lot
  of, lot of lack of clarity because they didn't know
  whether ash was going to be regulated under
  Subtitle C as a hazardous material or either under
  Subtitle D as, as nonhazardous, that lack of
  clarity caused a negative influence on the ash
  utilization industry.
              If you look at the trend backwards, what
  we find is that even in economic downturns ash
  utilization goes up.  Now, what's the obvious thing
  there?
              If you're a concrete producer and you
  use ash to make your concrete, manufacture your
  concrete at a less price, one of the things that
  happens when your, when the economy goes down, you
  have to tighten your belt, what do you do?
              You look for cost savings you can do.
  So, typically, the number of tons of fly ash used
  in concrete, as an example, will increase during
  economic downturns because they tend to use more of
  the less-expensive products because everybody has
  to tighten their belts and focus more on it, and
  they use more of the less-expensive products.
              So, we know from history that during
  economic downturns ash utilization usually goes up.
  We knew, we know when there's a regulatory
  uncertainly, that ash utilization tends to get
  negative impact because people have anxiety over
  using the product.
              So, so, I want to talk a little about
  those things that coal ash is being used for,
  because those of us in this room who have been
  around coal-fired power plants are probably very
  familiar with this.
              But, if you look at the CCP value, the
  combustion value of, of what the coal ash is, it
  averaged six- to $14 billion a year, in, in terms
  of value.  We -- In a construction, new-home
  construction cost is, roughly three percent of the
  home cost is savings attributable to CCP uses,
  using it in concrete, using it in wallboard, gypsum
  use in wallboard, various uses.
              So, if you look at the materials that
  fly ash and gypsum replace, you know, typically
  cement is, is produced and sold at roughly 80- to
  $110 a ton, depending on the economic cycle, where
  we're at in the economic cycle.  Fly ash is
  typically 20- to $90, depending -- I get it.
              It's location, location, location.  If
  you're in California, you're going to pay for a lot
  of ash.
              We've got a mandate to use fly ash in
  California.  But, you don't generate a lot of fly
  ash in California; none at, at, at utility-based
  power plants; just some industrial plants out
  there.
              But, but, that's the value of it.  So,
  you can see the, the economic advantage of using
  the fly ash in your Redi-Mix products or users of
  fly ash.
              If you look at gypsum, synthetic gypsum
  is created by the power plants.  It's value is
  roughly $5 to $35 a ton.
              Forty to 50 percent of the wallboard
  produced in the United States is currently using
  synthetic gypsum.  So, it's a significant use, and
  it's a significant savings to home builders, office
  complexes, whatever.
              Those materials have value, and that's a
  resource value that I would argue sometimes gets
  less attention other than people that's working
  specifically in the industry.  But, in terms of the
  policy decisions as we go forward, I would
  encourage all of us to think about the resource
  value of that, because it, it affects every
  taxpayer, every, every person in America.
              In terms of fly -ash utilization,
  itself, you can see this trend.  And, I'm not going
  to belabor the point, but you can see that the tons
  drop, but the percentages go up in the terms of
  utilization.
              We would expect that total tons of fly
  ash will continue to drop in 2015 and 2016, based
  on coal burns.  But, I'd also expect that the
  utilization rate for 2015 and 2016, as a percentage
  of what's produced, is going to continue to rise,
  because the demand in the marketplace is still
  there, and the value that that resource brings to
  concrete in terms of life cycle extension, in terms
  of quality, easy to pump concrete.
              When you have fly ash in it, if you're
  pumping to elevated floors, like high-rise
  construction, the value of that fly ash as a
  lubricant in order to be able to pump it to the
  higher levels is, is significant to concrete
  producers.
              In terms of bottom ash, the value of
  bottom ash used in various products, you know,
  anti-skid materials to replace salt so you don't
  have as much rust on bridges, salt, salt, chloride
  penetration into the interior of the concrete
  preserves bridges, gives them a longer life cycle.
              Lightweight aggregates is a typical use.
  So, all of these products, when you, when you look
  at the value of what they're replacing, it
  basically replaces having to produce those
  resource, it's a recycle material for all practical
  purposes.
              So, it avoids not only the mining of it,
  but it avoids all of the CO2 generation, as an
  example, that you would create in mining the clay
  in order to make, you know, running through the
  cement plant to manufacture cement.
              In terms of fly ash, for every ton of
  fly ash that's used, it, it avoids about a ton of
  CO2 emissions coming from the cement plant.  So,
  it's, it has a resource value from that
  perspective.
              As we touched on, the wallboard industry
  uses about 50 percent of the production of -- 50
  percent of the production of wallboard in the
  United States uses synthetic gypsum.  That cost to
  them is relatively insignificant, $1 to $10 range.
              In the cement manufacturing, we use
  gypsum as a, as a set control agent.  You grind
  about five-percent gypsum with the cement in order
  the make clinker in order to make finished-product
  cement.
              And, its value to that application is
  relatively inexpensive, but, yet, felt in terms of
  the total cost of cement, and how want reduces
  total cost going to the customer.
              In the agricultural industry, which is
  kind of interesting, because it's, it's growing at
  a pretty reasonable pace, we've known ever since we
  started putting scrubbers on power plants that the
  volume of sulfur emissions was being reduced; one
  of the best success stories out there.
              Now, what we know today is that when you
  look at the gypsum, and you look at that sulfur
  that used to be emissions and came back to the
  earth in the form of acid rain, that sulfur
  actually had value back to the farmer because he
  was getting sulfur nutrients for free.
              Sulfur, from a plant nutrition
  standpoints, is the fourth most important nutrient
  that the plant needs.  As an example, corn or
  soybeans take up about 16 to 18 pounds of sulfur
  per life cycle on corn and, and, and soybeans.
              It's just, it, it's coincidental that
  the volume of sulfur that's been reduced because of
  cleaning up the air is about 16 to 18 units of
  sulfur per acre.  And, what, what we find is that
  in the gypsum that's produced, high-quality gypsum
  that's produced in, in a power plant, it has about
  16 to 18 percent sulfur and about 21 to 22 percent
  calcium.
              So, one of the things that this is an
  area of, of beneficial use that's gaining ground is
  obviously the, the sulfur that's, or, the gypsum
  that's being produced in a power plant is, is a
  higher pri-, a higher purity than what you would
  typically get if you were mining gypsum.
              So, the value of that gypsum for all of
  the applications is significantly better because
  it's a better-quality gypsum.  If you look at the
  gypsum, you see the percent used in recent years as
  a function of total tons reduced has levelized, but
  actually the cost of total tons produced is going
  up at a dramatic pace, and so actually the total
  tons of gypsum that is used.
              So, so, on a, on a success story
  standpoint, that was the one portion between 2013
  and '14 of the CCP generation that grew in volume.
  But, the utilization of it grew faster.
              In terms of projections for the resource
  going forward, this is a study that looked at the
  95, ninety-fifth percentile projections on
  historical production, and it also looked at going
  forward, what can we expect?
              Now, what we know is that coal is
  probably going to remain a significant portion of
  the fuel mix.  Maybe you know estimates out there
  at 30 percent.
              It may come in slightly less than that.
  But, but, we know that the announced closing
  equates to five million to eight million tons, plus
  or minus, in, in ash tons right now.  So, what we
  would anticipate that as an industry our industry
  is going to do, our combined industry is going to
  do is we're going to have to go back into the ponds
  and/or landfills, and we're going to have to
  reclaim ash as we go forward.
              And, that's going to require us to
  beneficiate that ash, because generally, as the,
  the Regulations on coal ash have increased since
  the '70s, you know, our industry was formed by
  Regulation when we first started collecting fly ash
  and precipitators.
              But, for each Regulation that came after
  that, the quality of the ash was degraded.  Low-NOx
  burners caused more burned carbon and unburned
  carbon to be in the ash, which is detrimental to
  the uses that we use ash for.
              So, we know, and we've been on this
  pathway of using beneficiation add-on equipment to
  the back side of power plants in order to enhance
  the value of that ash, and that trend is going to
  continue.  We're going to, as the production in
  certain regions of the United States, the
  production drops off and regional markets are not
  met, we're going to go back into the ponds and
  landfills to mine that ash.
              So, from a policy standpoint, one of the
  things that, that I think that's important to us as
  policymakers, is to figure out a way that we can go
  back into these landfill, because there's a strong
  prohibition -- not necessarily prohibition, but
  it's a hurdle that we have to get beyond, because
  once a utility closes a landfill, there's going to
  be a tremendous disincentive to allow anybody to
  reopen it during the post-closure period.
              Now, we can address that issue from a
  policy standpoint, and that's the kind of things we
  need to be thinking about going forward.
              In terms of future uses of coal
  combustion byproducts, we'll always have the
  traditional uses.  We may be taking it out of a
  landfill or pond, and supplementing what the daily
  production is in certain markets, and we'll have
  those construction applications.
              But, the one thing that, that's, that's
  kind of exciting on the horizon is of, and
  potential us of, in terms of rare-earth elements.
  What we know about the rare-earth elements as, as,
  as we move towards green energy and green
  technologies, the demands for rare-earth elements
  is increasing for things like heavy magnets, for
  improved motors, the windmills.
              The wind turbine motors actually demand
  quite a bit of, of rare-earth elements.  Catalytic
  converters.
              All of the new technology depends on
  these exotic metals.  So, we know that, that we,
  as, as a strategic perspective, we have to look at
  the coal ash, which just so happens to be enriched
  with these rare-earth elements.
              China supplies about 80-plus percentage
  of the world's supply of rare-earth elements.  We
  went through a period in 2010, where China
  basically cut back and said, "Look, we're going to
  cut back all of the exports, and we're going to
  prohibit exports to Japan."
              So, we saw, between 2010 and 2012, an
  extreme volatility in pricing.  Auto manufacturers
  were caught flat-footed.
              I mean, wide, wide swings in these
  metals.  And, what's happened is that, obviously,
  higher prices usually pushes innovation.
              And, that's happened.  And, the Honda
  example was recently announced that they were, had,
  had made magnets with, without rare-earth elements
  that were ten percent cheaper and eight percent
  lighter.
              So, so, what we need to do, and we, I
  think we recognize this as a Country, is that we're
  going to need rare-earth elements.  That trend of
  growth is going to continue.
              So, we must figure out a way to, to find
  those sources that are not subject to political
  volatilities around the world.  And, it just so
  happens that coal ash happens to be one of the
  potential options as we move forward.
              And, if you look at this chart, this is
  some of the, some of the uses that the rare-earth
  elements is, is, is used for.  I've highlighted
  the, the couple of them that's used in auto
  industry and the, and the motor to make electric
  cars or, you know, the high-technology
  applications.
              But, if we look at what's being done to
  meet this strategic risk right now, DOE has issued,
  in December of 2015, they issued, announced that
  they had ten projects that they were funding under
  a joint funding basis.  And, I'm going to flip to
  that slide.
              Of those ten projects, six were bench
  scaled.  Four were pilot projects.
              And, and, the goal is to advance up to
  four projects out of that selection.  I've included
  this chart.
              It's too much data to look at, but I've
  included this chart so you can have them later on
  to look at.  These are the DOE-funded projects.
              Most of them are in the 800- to $1.2
  million funding range.  That research is going on
  now.
              There's a few things that come out of
  some of the announcements.  As an example, Duke
  University has, has released some of the data early
  on, analogy data in terms of characterizing the
  deposits.
              Basically, the policy, these projects,
  we looked at all the coal sector deposits.  We
  looked at ash.
              We've looked at coal.  It looks at the
  other byproducts that come out of the, the mining
  and/or the ash production side.
              So, what we know is that within the ash
  itself, the concentration of the rare-earth
  elements is two times to four times the, the normal
  al deposit out there in, in crustal deposits.  And,
  it's about 60 percent of the commercial level that
  we are seeing in some of the commercial mines
  today.
              So, so, we're talking at a commercial
  mine, typically they look for 1,000-milligrams-per-
  kilogram concentration, and what we know is the
  coal, some of these coal mines have been coming out
  with close to 600 milligrams per kilogram.
              So, so, the ash, with a few steps
  forward, which, hopefully new research projects is
  going to lead us to, with a few steps forward they
  will become an economical and viable resource in
  order for us to, to go after the rare-earth
  elements, and, obviously, address not only the new
  technology needs, but the strategic value of them
  in terms of the political risk.
              So, the access to coal ash reserves in
  ponds and landfills is important not only for the
  traditional uses, but these future uses.  So, as I
  said earlier, the Policies and the Regulations that
  we need now need to address, okay, what's the
  pathway to get access to these, because there are
  some impediments.
              Once a landfill is closed, or a pond is
  closed, there's going to be some strong impediments
  to, to opening that back up from the utility
  standpoint.  Questions like:  Who's going to take
  responsibility and liability for that, for that
  material?
              How do, from a regulatory standpoint, if
  you go back in and mine a landfill, what do you do
  with the residue that's left over once you process
  the ash?  Who's going to recycle?
              Those kinds of questions, we need some
  good Policy, good pathways built into the
  Regulations, and those ought to be the objectives
  for us over the coming years.
              Summary:  So, so, basically what I would
  argue is that, you know, coal ash is going to
  continue to be impacted by cheap natural gas
  affecting capacity factors, and it's going to be
  affected by regulatory impacts with all of the new
  Regs.  And, those are going to impact shutdown
  decisionmaking.
              That, that's going to continue.  We're
  going to see a downward trends over the 2016, 2015,
  and possibly 2017, before we get to levelization.
              The good thing is most of the plants
  that are going to survive, coal-fired power plants,
  are going to be the ones that produce the highest
  volumes, because the larger plants have retrofitted
  with scrubbers and have spent the money and moved
  forward.
              So, on our industry, we feel, we view it
  as a resource, and, and we, we have to continue to
  meet the demand, because that demand is going to
  continue.  So, so, from our perspective, you know,
  we're looking at new technologies to beneficiate
  the ash.
              We're looking at taking ash that's
  already started today, you know, taking ash out of
  ash ponds as part of the cleanup approvals, take
  the ash out, run it through beneficiation, get that
  ash back into fly ash, into a condition that it can
  be used in concrete.  And that's happening today.
              That type of investment is going to
  continue on our side of the business.  We're going
  to be on the back side of the power plant still
  thinking the primary reason to run the power
  plant's to make good ash.
              We also are smart enough to realize that
  we're going to have to keep spending money in our
  industry to beneficiate the ash on the back side of
  the power plant, and make that resource available,
  because highway departments are sitting on the edge
  of their seat right now wondering where they're
  going to get ash.
              And, they know they need it.  They know
  that it's backed into the concrete, and in order to
  make high-quality concrete, they're going to need
  fly arc going forward.
              The number of wallboard plants that are
  sitting on the edge of their chair right now around
  the United States is significant because of the
  fact that, as the capacity factors have affected
  them, they don't have gypsum every day from the
  adjacent power plant.
              And, and, most of those wallboard plants
  built in the last ten years, they were built
  adjacent to power plants specifically to have
  access to that gypsum, and they rely on it.  And,
  they all, you know, during extended periods of time
  when those plants are not operating, producing the
  volumes that they need to make the wallboard.
              So, we know, as an industry going
  forward, we're going to have to apply technology
  solutions.  We're going to have to apply investment
  on the back side of the power plant in order to
  keep that ash as a valuable resource as part of the
  fuel mix.
              And, you know, we'll, we'll have daily
  production of ash going forward, at least during my
  career, and -- But, we will have to be mining the
  ash out of some of the impoundments.  We know that
  there's more than a billion tons of ash out there
  setting in reserves.
              Some of it is going to be too difficult
  to extract and reuse it.  You know, if it's been
  mixed with FGD sulfite-type products it's going to
  be extremely difficult to ever reclaim that ash and
  mine it out an put it into use.
              But, there are sites that have fly ash
  or bottom ash that's reusable, and we're going to
  be doing that as we move forward.  So, -- And, of
  course, we don't know today what the, the options
  are going to be for, for the rare-earth elements,
  but we're pretty excited about what that brings
  because it, the things that that bring in terms of
  more resource value also opens up opportunities
  that you're going back in the landfills.
              And, hopefully, the byproducts that
  would come out of the reclamation processes, the,
  the, chemical and mechanical processes that are
  going after the rare-earth elements will leave us
  with a product that we can try to use for the other
  traditional uses, also.
              And, I think that's it.
              (Whereupon, at 11:35 a.m. CT, a response
  was had.)
              MS. GELLICI:  Okay.  And, if we have
  questions, if you'll just kindly make your way over
  to the microphone.
              As folks are getting up, what kind of
  companies are likely to be engaged on the
  rare-earth element processes?  Is that folks like
  Charah and Headwaters who are on the ash side?
              Are there others that you're seeing are
  starting to engage in this process?  And, I guess
  I -- Is it just ash that we're looking to pull the
  rare-earth elements out of, or is there a, a
  process ahead of time to, to extract it?
              MR. GRAY:  Well, the process is, is
  going to, to be extremely complex.  We, we know
  that.
              Cooperations like Headwaters, our good
  friends here, and ourselves, we're, we're obviously
  keeping our finger on the pulse of it.  We, we want
  to be a player in that type of activity.
              I think we all do.  There's also money
  coming into -- You know, there's been investment
  money, private equity money that's, that's been
  placed on some production plants that saw the real
  quick rise in price.
              And, there's some investment moneys out
  there right now that's, that's going after
  production plants to look at some of the deposits
  where we think we might have materials out in
  California and some other places.
              So, there are natural deposits that have
  enriched concentrations of the rare-earth elements.
  So, that -- But, but, one of the things that the
  ash, I think, has the advantage from our
  perspective is that there's millions of tons of it.
              We know where the deposits are.  If it,
  if it's two to four times better quality than, then
  the process is just a matter of -- And, it's
  already ground into a fine powder, which is the
  first couple of steps that you -- If you were going
  to go mine a, an aggregate or a rock deposit, you
  would have to crush it, grind it, and bring it down
  into a powder.
              And, that's an expensive piece of it on
  the front end.  But, these are going to be
  multi-multi-step processes.
              They're going to be complex.  So, the
  technology -- We know it's going to be difficult to
  get it out.
              That's a given.  And, it's going be,
  it's going to be a fairly significant number of
  steps that are both chemical as well as mechanical
  and magnetic.
              And, it varies by project.
              MR. NARULA:  My name is Arun Narula,
  independent consultant.  And, I found your
  presentation, especially the rare-earth element
  part, I never thought of that, that was a resource
  available in the fly ash which have been left in
  the past.
              The question I have is that there are
  three claims we heard today.  One is the, because
  of the increase use of renewable, the impact of
  cycling on the coal-fired assets.
              Second we heard is that, also, the use
  of what I was thinking was that as the units cycle,
  and as the units get more and more off-putting, the
  NOx removal, to use that, which means your unburned
  carbon, are going to increase.
              So, some of the impacts of cycling or
  others, have they impacted you in the sense of
  unburned carbon which would make the use of fly ash
  unacceptable?
              MR. GRAY:  Sure.  Sure.
              We feel the impacts both of two things.
  Number one, if the unit's cycling, that means less
  ash, which means if you, if you have a market
  that's built around the reliability of a, of a
  base-loaded plant, in the past, if they could
  expect 1,000 ton of fly ash per day that's being
  produced, and you have that market, and all of a
  sudden when we're cycling -- Some of these plants
  are cycling down 50 percent at night.
              Some of them are doing more than that.
  But, but, we feel the volume impacts immediately.
              The, the quality of the ash is very,
  very dependent on the amount of unburned carbon,
  but it's also dependent on the amount of injected
  carbon, like activated carbon, which, which, for
  us, is about ten times to hundred times worse in
  terms of its impact on the potential use of the ash
  in concrete.
              So, what's coming out of our in-, all of
  our industries in these ash utilization sites is
  we're developing processes to mitigate the carbon
  impact.  Some -- It, it, it goes from one of the
  spectrum of chemical additives in order to mitigate
  its air demand in concrete, all the way to the
  other end of the spectrum where we're either
  burning the carbon out, or we're separating it
  electrostatically, which is, you know, mechanical
  processing plants that are downstream of the power
  plant.
              We have electrostatic separation process
  in North Carolina, as an example, where we process
  ash that's got an eight-percent carbon content, and
  we take it down to two-percent carbon content.
  And, that's typical, you know.
              So, so, our industry has been dealing
  with that issue ever since we started putting
  low-NOx burners on it.  Early on there was
  sufficient supply of, of coal, of good quality fly
  ash that when a plant went offline from a quality
  standpoint, the way we view it, because it had high
  carbon, as long as there was another plant that was
  regionally located, you know, so that the ash could
  travel to the, to the end users from another plant,
  we just switched plants and took more ash from
  another plant.
              But, today we're in that perspective
  where, with the reduction in number of plants, and
  all of the other environmental-related impacts
  that's caused the ash quality to degrade, we're
  into that predict-, situation now, as we move
  forward in almost every regional market, we're
  going to be deploying more and more beneficiation
  technology, whether it's burning it out or
  electrostatically separating it, or, or treating it
  with a chemical additive in order to deal with the
  carbon's impact on end-user concrete, for example.
              MR. NARULA:  So, in the same way we
  heard it presented in the Business Council how
  they're using coal, so, as they go through the
  process of, of, of suboptimization, or less
  optimization, and also pushing the unburned carbon,
  so, does it impact that, or does it not?
              MR. GRAY:  Yeah.  Every plant has got
  its own nuances that cause, and how they respond
  to, to blends of fuel, whether it's one fuel or
  not.
              And, then, the ash that's generated,
  whether it's an Illinois Basin or an Avco or a
  lignite coal, it's got unique characteristics,
  itself, that lends itself, under, under the ASTM
  Rules that govern our uses.  We have both a Class F
  and a Class C Standard, basically.
              And, most of the Class C ash comes out
  of PRB coals.  And, they have -- Both of them have,
  both of them can be used in the concrete, but they
  have unique characteristics that the Redi-Mix
  producer has to deal with
              So, when we see coal blending, we
  monitor very closely what the impacts are on not
  only the carbon, the unburned carbon, whether the
  boiler, whether, whether that fuel mix is working
  well inside of the boiler, but we're also having to
  deal with the changes in the mix design, because it
  does affect the mix design we have to deal with.
              So, so, in our industry we're managing
  kind of like a middle man, managing both the end
  use and the generation side of it.  But, you know,
  that, that's the, the dynamics that we've been
  dealing with, you know, for decades now, ever since
  they started putting on low-NOx burners.
              And, and, as plants age, generally the
  carbon content, unburned carbon burns up, which, in
  the past, we would have just let that ash go
  offline and go to disposal, and we would go focus
  on a transition plant that was as producing the
  higher quality.
              But, we don't have that luxury going
  forward.  The demand is increasing.
              The, the source, source and supply is
  decreasing.  So, we've got to go into ponds, we've
  got to go into landfills and mine it out.
              And, we'll be doing that for the next
  three or four decades, I thank.
              MS. WALTON:  Hi.  My name's Kathy
  Walton.
              I'm with the Basic Energy Group.  I
  thought your presentation was outstanding.
              I've got one question.  You point out
  that 80 percent of the REs come from China, and in
  2010, that the dynamics of that changed a bit.
              And, nobody was more affected than the
  American vanadiums and Molycorps.  And, if we think
  the coal industry looked ugly, certainly that one
  looked worse.
              MR. GRAY:  Yeah.
              MS. WALTON:  Now, with those companies
  having shut down potential production both in
  Colorado, parts of California, and what have you,
  now you're telling me that the coal indus-, or the,
  the power generation industry cannot only do what
  China does at a lower cost than what we would do it
  in primary production, but we can actually do it
  for free?
              MR. GRAY:  Oh, no, I'm not saying that.
              MS. WALTON:  Okay.
              MR. GRAY:  And, I'm not saying it's
  going to be at lower cost.
              MS. WALTON:  Okay.
              MR. GRAY:  I'm saying what we know today
  is that coal ash is, has enriched concentrations of
  the rare-earth elements.  We know that, versus most
  of the mine sites.
              We know that in some cases, for certain
  rare-earth elements, the enrichment is up to 60
  percent of what the commercial mines are in China,
  for example, which are some of the good deposits.
              MS. WALTON:  Yeah.
              MR. GRAY:  So, what we know is that fly
  ash is a (sic) option going forward, or, or coal
  ash is an option, as well as coal, itself, in some
  of cases.
              We know that the concentration of
  rare-earth elements in the Appalachian coal-based
  coal supplies is higher, but it's more difficult to
  get it out.  It's less concentration in the PRB,
  but it's easier to get it into solution, under
  solution.
              So, so, today I would say that we do not
  -- I'm not representing that the process is going
  to be cheaper than what it's done in China.  I
  think that we will develop processes that will be
  as cheap or less.
              I mean, that's the objective of a lot of
  the R&D work that DOE is cofunding right now is,
  and we are, you know, we're all excited about where
  it's going to lead to.  And, of course, there's,
  there's people that's willing to put money on the
  line.
              And, like I said, the people that's
  invested in the plants in Col-, in, in California
  and some of the other locations, you know, they
  were the early people to jump on that band wagon.
              And, the volatility in the price caught
  a lot of them by surprise, quite frankly, because
  what happens is it, is the price went up four and
  five times higher.  It drug in more investment for
  American base plants which could have operated
  probably at the higher elevated pricing, but
  immediately the end users, people like Honda,
  people like the American auto industry, they
  started looking to see:
              "What's my next-best alternative?
  Because, if I'm going to be paying four and five
  times more, you know, I'm, I'm going, if I've got a
  gun held to my head looking for pricing, I'm going
  to be looking for other opportunities."
              All of those things working together
  drove the pricing.  And, what we're seeing right
  now on the front end of this developmental curve,
  it's like any industry curve where you're talking
  about a new product.
              You see price volatility on the front
  end.  But, that's -- You know, as, as we move
  through the cycle, I think the evolution of what
  the technology's going to bring here in terms of
  its value in the ash, I mean, we, we have our
  fingers crossed.
              We know that we're starting with an
  enriched product.  It's already ground.
              It's a powder.  So, in terms of the
  extraction process, we're a couple steps closer to
  where we want to be.
              I don't know whether it's going to be
  cheaper.  We don't have the results of that yet.
              We've got our fingers crossed.
              MS. WALTON:  One other question to
  follow up on that.  How much of the U.S. supply
  could you generate from what you already have
  without primary mine production if your costs end
  up being cheaper?
              And, secondly, is there any way that the
  coal companies would ever benefit from that?
              MR. GRAY:  Coal companies certainly
  could -- Well, if you, if you say I'm going to --
  If I find enriched deposits in the coal, which is
  where it started anyway, probably, to get into the
  ash, the coal companies could benefit in that
  situation.
              But, until the final, until the, the,
  the, the value proposition matures so that we know
  what the final levelized price is going to be on
  some of these rare-earth elements, it's hard to
  say.  It's hard to say what that value is going to
  be to the coal company, or even companies like us.
              We're in a wait-and-see mode because we
  want to see the research, because these are
  big-ticket investments, especially for a company
  like us.  And, those investments are going to, to
  look for long-term stability in terms of pricing,
  as well as supply.  So, --.
              MS. WALTON:  Thank you.
              MS. GELLICI:  Thank you, Danny.
              (Whereupon, at 11:48 a.m. CT, a response
  was had.)
              MR. GELLICI:  Please join me in thanking
  all of our presenters this morning.  I think we had
  an excellent panel of folks that demonstrated some
  future value-added opportunities for coal, and I
  think we did a, a wonderful job.
              And, it was, it was kind of uplifting,
  which is unusual at coal conferences these days.
  So, please join me in thanking these gentlemen.
              (Whereupon, at 11:49 a.m. CT, a response
  was had.)
              MS. GELLICI:  And, I'll invite the
  gentlemen to, to join the audience as we move into
  our coal business, Council Business portion.  So,
  please feel free to rejoin the group out there.
  NATIONAL COAL COUNCIL BUSINESS REPORTS:
              MS. GELLICI:  I've had a number of folks
  who are asking me -- Dr. Mollot mentioned a couple
  of documents in his presentation this morning.  I'm
  going to post those, posting the links to those,
  along with his presentation.
              There is -- Those are up on the DOE web
  site if you're wanting to get those before early
  next week, but I will certainly post them.
              Also, as we're getting settled and
  getting into the Business portion of our program, I
  wanted to take a moment to thank Hiranthie
  Stanford, who is NCC's Director of Meetings and
  Membership.  She's done a great job.
              We're a staff of two, and this is a lot
  of work for one person.  So, I appreciate your
  thanking her.
              She also --
              (Whereupon, at 11:50 a.m., a response
  was had.)
              MS. GELLICI:  Yes, please.  Hiranthie
  also celebrated a birthday a few days ago.
              She celebrated it by working on all the
  details for this meeting, unfortunately.  So, so,
  please be sure to wish her a happy birthday as you
  exit today.
              So, the final portion of our program
  will focus briefly on a few business reports.  I'd
  like to begin by introducing NCC's Finance
  Committee Chair and Vice-Chair Greg Workman.
              Greg is going to provide us with an
  update on NCC's financial status.
              Greg.
  FINANCE COMMITTEE UPDATE
              MR. WORKMAN:  Thank you, Janet.
              As, as always, I'd like to start, I'd
  like to acknowledge and thank the members of our
  NCC Finance Committee, Wanda Burget, Carole
  Plowfield, Dan Roling, Kathy Walton.  The Council
  appreciates your help in helping us get our way
  through the financial.
              We've been on a, a three-way mission to
  right our financial ship, and, and trying to do so
  in, in the midst of turbulent seas and raging
  storms that you heard a lot about this morning.
  And, certainly good to have some optimism and some
  positive thinking that we heard about this morning.
              So, while trying times of our industry
  have imposed additional financial challenges for
  the Council, we have made significant strides in
  managing our resources.  As a reminder, NCC does
  not receive any federal funding or financial
  support from the Department of Energy.
              Our operations are funded solely by our
  membership dues and, and sponsorship support.  I'd
  also like to point out that our dues are voluntary
  and more than 20 percent of our, our members
  continue to elect not to pay their dues or are
  unable to do so.
              These factors obviously pose additional
  financial burdens on our group.  On the revenue
  side of the ledger we do anticipate a shortfall in
  our dues receipts for the year from renewing
  members.
              Volatility and downturn of the industry
  has resulted in higher limits of retirements and
  resignations.  On the positive side, however, we
  anticipate somewhat exceeding revenue projections
  from new revenue appointments pending DOE's
  approval of new member candidates.
              In fact, our membership recruitment
  efforts have been exceptional this year.  Assuming
  current, currently pending candidates are appointed
  by the DOE, we'll welcome 56 new members this year.
              I'd like to acknowledge those members
  who are in attendance today.  So, stop for a
  second.
              If you have been appointed to the NCC,
  or are currently a candidate for appointment in, in
  2016, I'd like you to stand.
              (Whereupon, at 11:53 a.m. CT, a response
  was had.)
              MR. WORKMAN:  So, welcome.  Welcome.
              It's a terrific group.  We value the
  input you bring.
              The, the enthusiasm in this room is just
  tremendous, and so we've been really pleased about
  that.  Welcoming these new, new members would not
  have been possible without support of our Council's
  Nominating Committee.
              We'd like to ask the following folks to
  stand, be acknowledged for their recruitment
  efforts.  So, please hold your applause until all
  have risen.
              Bill Hoback, Ram Narula, Massood
  Ramezan, Dr. Yang.  Others that are not with us
  today should also be acknowledged, including Lisa
  Bradley, Holly Krutka, Sharon Sjostrom, and Jerry
  Oliver.
              Sorry, Jerry Oliver.  Jerry, my
  apologies.
              Thank you guys so much for your help.
              We anticipate with our growing numbers
  of, of new members we'll be able to increase our
  total income dues next year.  We continue to
  struggle with meeting our sponsorships port goals
  in light of industry challenges, but I'm pleased
  that we have reached our sponsorship goals for this
  meeting.
              And, thank our, Sponsors.  And, please
  take a look at the board on your way out to thank
  those folks who, who've helped sponsor this meeting
  today.
              To meet this year's revenue shortfall we
  have been closely monitoring our expenses, and
  anticipate spending less than we budgeted for,
  hosting our fall meeting outside of D.C.,
  restricting Jan's travel budget.
              Lots, lots of items where we've reduced
  costs have all helped us to achieve considerable
  savings this year.  So, immediately following this
  meeting we'll begin budgeting for 2017.
              Next week you'll be receiving an e-mail
  from NCC office staff asking you to resubmit,
  recommit to supporting NCC in 2017.  We would
  appreciate a prompt response to that e-mail so we,
  we can effectively budget for next year's
  activities, which, which would include preparing to
  familiarize the new Administration with NCC's
  priority recommendations in support of the coal
  industry.
              So, I'd be happy to address specific
  questions regarding our financial status following
  today's meeting.  Feel free to contact me by phone,
  e-mail.
              Janet has all my contact information.
  In your packet you'll find all of those NCC members
  who have contributed financially to the Council
  this year, along with those -- There's a list of
  those who provided any kind of support.
              On behalf of the NCC leadership, I'd
  like to thank you those of you who have paid your
  dues, sponsored an NCC meeting, participated in our
  Chairs Advisory Council, or participated in one of
  our many committee opportunities.
              A big thank you, as well, to those of
  you who have contributed with the in-kind support.
              So, Janet, that concludes my, my
  Financial Report.
              MS. GELLICI:  Thank you.  Thank you,
  Greg.
              And, I wanted to thank Greg for all of
  his help and, and efforts.
              And, look forward to working you as you,
  continue working with you as you take over as Chair
  of the Council here.  So, thank you very much.
  COAL POLICY COMMITTEE REPORT
              MS. GELLICI:  Deck Slone is the Chair of
  our Coal Policy Committee.  I am not Deck Slone.
              Deck had a few things going on today.
  About an hour ago Arch Coal announced that is
  emerging from Bankruptcy, so he had a few things to
  do in the office, obviously.
              So, I gave him a hall pass today.  So, I
  did want to, to talk a little bit about the Coal
  Policy, and, and some of the activities, and to
  thank and applaud this group for the tremendous
  accomplishments that have been achieved in the last
  three years.
              I was mentioning to you're Executive
  Committee that Secretary Moniz and I started the
  same month in 2013.  I decided not to take the job,
  and so he got it.
              And, so, that's fine.  I just wanted to
  work with you guys.
              But, really, as I think back to, to
  2013, and, and the three-year, the years
  intervening here, we've done a tremendous job, I, I
  think, for the, for the Secretary.  And, as this
  Administration is coming to a close, maybe I'll
  highlight a couple of things.
              We have done four Reports for the
  Secretary in three years' time, which I think is a
  tremendous accomplishment.  We have really tried to
  up our game in terms of being responsive to the
  Secretary, and, and I think, in turn, he has been
  responsive to us, and has really, you know, engaged
  more with our organization than, than I've seen in
  past Administrations.
              So, we're very pleased with that.
  You'll recall that we did our Fossil Forward Study
  in January of 2015, and the primary recommendation
  out of that report was that, on the need for Policy
  parity.
              And, we heard directly from the
  Secretary in response to that.  And, -- Within a
  few months.  -- and said, "Okay, what do you mean
  by that, and give me some specifics.  And, and, oh,
  by the way, can you get that done by November?"
              So, you know, over a 50- or 60-day
  period, we actually put a report together called
  "Leveling the Playing Field, Policy Parity," that
  was released in the November of 2015, with some
  very specific recommendations on policies and
  financial incentives, which we had the opportunity
  to actually visit with the Secretary on and discuss
  in January of this year.
              I think a lot of that resulted in the
  Secretary's participating in our spring meeting,
  which was the first time he had been able to join
  us.  And, we were very grateful for that.
              And, then, most recently we completed
  our CO2 Building Blocks report, again something very
  timely and something very much of interest to the
  Secretary.  I think you'll notice, you may have
  noticed that there's been a $6.7 million
  opportunity, funding opportunity DOE announced
  recently for CO2 utilization projects.
              This has been something that they've
  been fast-tracking, working on since last fall to
  try and identify some of these opportunities.  So,
  I think our report was extremely timely.
              We approved that report at the end of
  Augusta.  A lot of that, that report is up on our
  web site now.
              We're still in the process of getting
  out and talking to people about the findings and
  recommendations from that report, but I'd highlight
  a couple.
              I think what we're continuing to see,
  and what we're seeing more, is, is that there
  really is a consensus building around the need for
  carbon capture and storage.  And, I think Dr.
  Mollot talked about that this morning.
              And, and, I think National Coal Council,
  having done, since the Year 2010, Report for the
  Secretary on carbon management issues is an expert,
  and, and certainly he has extensive expertise in
  this area.
              And, and, I think that that's something
  that we can continue to feel very proud of.  And,
  we've got quite a, a policy, a portfolio, excuse
  me, of resources that we've built up, and still
  tremendous information.
              But, but, I do see that there is a
  consensus that's being undertaken to, to kind of,
  among industry and the environmental community and
  Government, that CO2 reduction goals are not going
  to be met by renewable energy sources alone, and
  that we do need to move forward with some of these
  new technologies, and certainly CCS.
              So, our report, the CO2 Building Blocks,
  continues to identify CO2-enhanced oil recovery as a
  principal recommendation, the primary opportunity,
  the biggest bang for the buck that we can put in
  place to, to actually address the CO2 issue.
              And, that is not being at all submissive
  of some of these other opportunities.  You know,
  we've looked at geological and nongeological
  opportunities in the CO2 building block report, and
  we feel it's important to continue to pursue the
  nongeological CO2 markets as a longer-term
  opportunity.
              And, we've gone into quite a bit of
  detail on those opportunities in the report that we
  have, again, up on our web site.
              So, so, thank you all.  And, you know,
  again, I think it's a tremendous work effort on the
  part of this group now as we start looking toward a
  new Administration.
              I will tell you that we will not be
  idle.  Well not be sitting around twiddling our
  thumbs, waiting for the next request from whatever
  Secretary we are going to have in place.
              So, we are in the process of preparing
  some review of our most recent studies.  We will
  attempt to, to prepare some materials to present to
  the new Administration that can summarize some of
  the findings and recommendations from our recent
  reports, and, and hopefully prioritize some of them
  so we'll have an opportunity to speak with the, the
  new folks that are coming in.
              And, we're also looking for suggestions
  on topics that we might address.  And, we would
  like to kind of present those when we meet with the
  new Administration.
              So, Greg referenced an e-mail that was
  going out next week asking about your commitment to
  the NCC going forward in 2017.  We'll also be
  soliciting your input with that e-mail on any
  future topics that you think might be important.
              So, I'm going to plant that seed with
  you all.  If you could start thinking about that
  and just give some thought to what kind of topics
  would be most important to your mind that we
  discuss with the incoming Administration.
              So, so, that's what we're doing with the
  Coal Policy Committee.
  COMMUNICATIONS COMMITTEE REPORT
              MS. GELLICI:  Lisa Bradley,
  unfortunately she's Chair of our Communications
  Committee and is unable to join us for personal
  reasons.  And, just on her behalf, I, I will note
  that we hosted a meeting of the NCC Communications
  Committee yesterday afternoon.
              We had 20 or so people involved in that,
  and we discussed efforts to promote the findings
  and recommendations from our most recent report.
  We're reaching out to various stakeholders through
  briefings.
              We're trying to schedule a briefing with
  DOE to, to kind of get into a little bit more depth
  with them on some of our findings and
  recommendation.
              We have participated in some
  Congressional Hearings in which some of these
  results were, were, were presented.  So, so, we're
  continuing that effort.
              I imagine that would extend over a good
  six-month period, as with all of our studies.  So,
  so, we're not, no longer just completing our
  studies and handing them over and, and concluding
  our work.
              We're really looking at this as once we
  complete the report, that's when our work begins,
  and that we need to get this information out, and
  work with DOE in terms of having to try and
  implement some of the recommendations that we're
  putting forward.
              So, we are going to be asking for your
  help on some of that rollout activity, as well as,
  you know, social media efforts.  I'm going kicking
  and screaming into the night on this one, but, you
  know, I think it is important.
              It's, it's an effective way to
  communicate with various stakeholder groups.  So,
  please do like us on Facebook.
              I've been trying to post some things on
  Facebook, and it goes somehow to Twitter accounts,
  which I have no idea how all of that is done, you
  know.  So, if you can retweet, retweet some of the
  things that we send out to some of your stakeholder
  groups.
              Really, you're, the most vital role that
  you can play for us is in amplifying what we are
  doing in this group.  And, that is up to you.
              And, I do ask for your support.  And, I
  will be on the phone with some of you individually
  to ask for that support and that help.
              So, I think that's it for in terms of
  the Communications Report.
  GOVERNANCE ISSUES REPORT
              MS. GELLICI:  I don't have any other
  governance issues to discuss at this time.
              So, I'm going to go into the, the final
  issues here closing out our FACA meeting.  But, in
  compliance with FACA requirements for this meeting
  I'd like to note that the meeting is duly
  authorized and publicized, and is open to the
  public.
              The public is invited to submit comments
  to the Department of Energy, or, if any individual
  wishes to speak at this time, they may do so.
              Does any member of the public in
  attendance wish to speak at this time?
              (Whereupon, at 12:06 p.m. CT, no
  response was had.)
              MS. GELLICI:  With that I'd like to take
  a moment to thank our meeting sponsors, most
  especially the Salt Creek Energy and Mike Durham
  for sponsorship.
              And, Mike, while I'm at it I'd like to
  thank you very much for your leadership as Chair of
  this organization over the, the past year.  It's
  been a very exciting and, and challenging year at
  times, and we greatly appreciate your leadership
  and guidance.
              Please join me in thanking Mike.
              (Whereupon, at 12:06 p.m. CT, a response
  was had.)
              MS. GELLICI:  Tri-State Generation and
  Transmission, Mike Sorensen, thank you for your
  sponsorship.
              For Joy Global, Skip Stevens I believe
  is here.
              We Energies, again, Tom and your crew
  for all of your support.
              Arch Coal, Clark Harrison.
              CH2M -- No Hill.  I got that right,
  eventually.
              So, Charah, Danny Gray, thank you.
              And, Greg, with Dominion Energy, Greg
  Workman.
              And, Rafic Minkara, with Headwaters,
  thank you for your support.
              Is there any other business?
              (Whereupon, at 12:07 p.m. CT, a response
  was had.)
              MS. GELLICI:  Oh, yeah.  Thank you.
  Please, yes.
              Is there any other business to bring
  before the Council at this time?
              (Whereupon, at 12:07 p.m. CT, no
  response was had.)
              MS. GELLICI:  Seeing none, I will say
  that we stand adjourned.  And, thank you again for
  attending.  Thank you very much.
              (Whereupon, at 12:07 p.m. CT, the above
  meeting was adjourned.)
                       I certify the foregoing to be a
                      true transcript from my notes.
                           E-signature:  D. I. Bunn
                                CSR  CP  RPR
                     CERTIFICATION
              I, D. I. Bunn, a Registered
  Professional Reporter, Certified Conference
  Reporter, and Notary Public, do hereby certify that
  the foregoing testimony was duly taken and reduced
  to writing before me at the place and time therein
  mentioned.  I further certify that I am neither
  related to any of the parties by blood or marriage,
  nor do I have any interest in the outcome of the
  above matter.
              In witness whereof, I have hereunto set
  my hand and affixed my official seal, at Lusk,

  
  Wyoming, USA, this 10th day of October, 2016.
  
                         E-signature:  D. I. Bunn
  
                                Notary Public
  
  My Commission expires January 5, 2020.