Reed Searle, general manager of the Intermountain Power Agency, attacked California policy regarding global warming. He said IPA is "not directly but fully" covered by California regulations that are aimed at halting dependence on coal-fired plants.

Those rules will require California cities to not renew contracts with IPA when they expire in 20 years, he said. And they will not allow the cities to import power from new facilities (presumably like the third unit of IPP) that are dependent on coal. The exception is if carbon sequestration is in place and proven effective and safe, he said.

IPA tracked down the Wall Street guru on sequestration, an expert with a Swiss bank, "who explained that not one dime will be loaned by Wall Street to municipal utilities" for bonding sequestration technology "unless government assumes 100 percent" of any liability.

"California ignored technology," Searle charged. The state identified technologies but did nothing to move them forward.

"Not one of the utilities we dealt with in California ... has any clue how they're going to meet the targets," he said.

"This will be a West Coast initiative," Searle added. "It will not be a Rocky Mountain initiative." The West Coast is opposed to coal power generation of any kind, he said.

IPA delivers 80 percent of its output to Southern California, he added. Until safe and effective carbon sequestration is in effect, people in California can't obtain any new supplies of coal-fired power. "We see that not happening for the next 20 to 30 years," Searle said.

"Adoption by Utah of laws or regulations similar to those in California, to us would be catastrophic," he said.

"California has adopted the worst possible measures we have seen in terms of practicality, likelihood of success, feasibility of implementation."

Searle said that to see Utah join the California initiative "has been a little bit distressing to us."

Any global warming rules should be based on federal regulations, not regional ones, he said. "Frankly, we just can't understand how this issue can be dealt with on a regional basis."

Global warming, in fact, can hardly be controlled on a national basis, he said. "It's clearly an international issue."

IPA is trying to adopt a new coal project, and California is the "most significant" obstacle to it, as contract renewal is outlawed by California law.

"It is not a level playing field," charged Kimball Rasmussen, CEO of Deseret Power, a rural power cooperative in southern Utah. He said the five other states in the compact "don't have a carbon footprint" because they do not produce power based on coal burning.

However, Utah is 90 percent reliant on coal for its electricity.

"It's a strange set of bedfellows," he said.