Developers of the Dry Fork Station coal-fired power plant now under construction near Gillette say they have a backup plan in case they are forced to capture carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions in the future.

Basin Electric Power Cooperative spokesman Daryl Hill said the facility was designed with extra space left open to accommodate carbon-capture equipment when the technology becomes available.

"So we'll be able to plug it in easily," Hill said Thursday.

Conservation groups have vowed to fight the state of Wyoming in court over its issuance of a permit that allows CO2 and methane gas emissions at Dry Fork Station. The groups also contend that the permit is too lenient on sulfur dioxide emissions, which threaten to break the incremental standard in the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation's airshed.

Coal-based utilities across the nation are gearing up with technology and attorneys in an anticipation of the next congressional and presidential administration's implementation of a cap-and-trade climate policy. President-elect Barack Obama has said that polluters would be charged for every unit of greenhouse gas they let into the atmosphere.

Basin Electric has said it had to act quickly to build Dry Fork Station due to rapid increases in power demand in its northeast Wyoming service region, and when it was time to choose a technology, carbon-capture wasn't economically viable.

However, the company entered into an agreement earlier this year with Powerspan Corp., which is developing technology to capture CO2 from coal-fired power plant smokestacks. The Powerspan process uses an ammonia-based solution to capture CO2 from the flue gas of a power plant and releases it in a form that is ready for further compression, transportation and geological storage, according to Basin Electric.

Hill said Powerspan is now conducting a pilot of the technology, and could go forward with a scaled-up demonstration at Basin Electric's Antelope Valley Station power plant in North Dakota. From there, the technology could be applied at Dry Fork Station and other conventional coal-fired power plants throughout the utilities industry.

"It appears to be very promising," Hill said. "The beauty of that system is it's right next to the Great Plains Synfuel plant, where we already capture CO2 and send it to Canada for enhanced oil recovery. So it's very exciting in terms of what we can do to make coal a long-term source for our future."