[Davros]

We are awaiting final approval from the IPP board, but expect to be putting in a GT at the plant that I work at next year - or more correctly, an independant power producer will install one. We sell them the land within the plant boundaries, supply a gas offtake and condensate - they supply us back steam (thus avoiding the need for an additional boiler upgrade) and there is bound to be some form of electrical contract (because we will at the start we will be lowering steam generation on existing capacity and dropping the power generation through our existing TA's).

One of the stumbling blocks till now have been the emissions levels - particularly of NOx and SO2, and the article makes a perfectly valid point that emissions control has advanced considerably - particularly in the last 10 years. We would not be able to go down this path without strict emissions controls, and the retrofitting of existing GT's with say a CTO to meet tighter environmental guidelines has been shown to not be prohibitively expensive to business (we went through that "pain" at our sister refinery 50 km down the road last year).

It is an age old problem with the EPA - things that were licensed and permitted 30 years ago would not get a license or be permitted today. Does that make the old operators at fault because the new regulations could potentially put them out of business - should retrofitting be mandatory? Does it make the regulators at fault because there is new scientific data (I can see my good friend MagiK jumping up and down at the start of this statement, but not all of the stuff that is thrown up by the enviro scientists can be dismissed with a wave of the hand Ray) and community pressure to tighten emissions limits.

Inevitably it falls to a case by case basis TL because existing operators (at least in my country) have licenses with the EPA regarding acceptable limits for acceptable years of operation. In some cases the nasties are straightforward enough to make blanket rules covering all existing operators and it is a matter of conform or go out of business. In many cases it cannot be expressed that simply, and existing businsses will operate on a case by case basis with negotiation with the EPA.