Jeff Witt [corrected from Mitt], the manager of the Iowa State Power Plant, presented to the Government of the Student Body on Wednesday about a new study the Power Plant has been performing and the plant’s future plans.

The ISU Power Plant is a coal-burning plant that contains five coal burning boilers.

Three boilers run all the time and the fourth one runs occasionally; the fifth one, which is the oldest boiler, is on standby. The plant generates 28,000 tons of ash per year, but the plant’s emissions fall 20 percent below its emission permit limit.

One of the main purposes of the study is to find alternative forms of energy besides coal.

Witt presented five different options to comply with new regulations, which are coming into place. The first option was to keep the four newest boilers in the plant and convert the fifth boiler to a natural gas-burning boiler.

The second one is to keep the two newest coal boilers and have the three oldest boilers switch to natural gas. Currently, option two is the least expensive option with a price tag of $11 million.

The third option is the same as the second option but instead of using natural gas, the three boilers would run on gas. Option four is to build a completely new plant, which would have only gas-burning boilers, and this option is the most expensive of the five with a price tag of $36 million.

The final option is to have a hodge-podge of different boilers: two coal boilers, a biomass boiler, a natural-gas boiler and a gas boiler.

The most plausible option currently, Witt said, is the third option because of its fuel flexibility. Overall, it is a cheaper option and it will work well in the long term, he said.

Depending on which option is chosen, student utility costs will increase 9 percent to 24 percent annually.

When asked why the university doesn’t simply replace the current boilers with new coal boilers, Witt said, “Capital costs for replacing the boilers with new coal boilers is an astronomical cost.

“We need to ask ourselves these questions: ‘How much should we spend on equipment that we have right now,’ ‘How much coal do we want to consume,’ ‘How much fuel price risk are we willing to tolerate,’ and How much tolerance do we have for utility cost increases’ because the cost of the project will impact the students directly?”