Area residents flying to and from home may wonder about the fate of the gleaming solar farm at Kansas City International Airport promised a year ago by Kansas City officials and Evergy.

The short answer is that attorneys for the city and the consortium Evergy assembled to build the project are still working on the details.

Both sides are mum about what has hung up talks to erect 35 megawatts of solar generating panels on 136 acres in the project’s first phase. It could evolve into a huge 500-megawatt facility on 3,100 acres, according to the city’s vision of the project.

“It is a more complicated process than anyone would have thought,” said one City Hall source connected to the talks.

Flatland reported in September 2023 that Kansas City officials had struck an agreement with the Evergy-led consortium.

Meanwhile, Evergy recently announced plans to build two new 705-megawatt natural gas generation plants in Kansas to help meet its power needs starting in 2029 and serve customers for four decades.

It has been some time since Evergy built such sizable generation plants.

The two most recent generation units of that size that went online to serve Evergy customers were Emporia Energy Center, a 650-megawatt natural gas plant, in 2009, and Iatan 2, a 900-megawatt coal unit, in 2010. The Emporia plant is in Emporia, Kansas, and Iatan is in Weston, Missouri.

Natural gas burning facilities emit climate-changing carbon dioxide and are considered a bridge resource until newer non-carbon emitting generation and energy storage can serve electric demand. Natural gas power plants emit less carbon than coal power plants, which the Midwest has long relied on and are on their way out.

Environmentalists oppose new or old fossil-fueled generation of any kind saying we are running out of time to address climate change.

Last year’s wildfires in Canada, exacerbated by a warming climate, produced more carbon emissions than fossil fuel burning by the three largest national emitters — China, the United States, and India, according to a report in the journal Nature.

Evergy said that the gas power plant projects are unrelated to its solar plans at KCI.

“Each plant – from type to site to construction – is a different process with its own timeline,” said Gina Penzig, Evergy spokeswoman.

A Lot of Moving Parts

Evergy must serve a variety of masters, including the Southwest Power Pool, a regional transmission organization, as well as federal and state regulators in Kansas and Missouri.

At a time of rising power demand due to economic growth and new technologies, regional power planners are increasing power reserve requirements for utilities like Evergy so that the power does not go out when we are struck by more frequent, disruptive, weather events.

The saga of solar power at KCI has been intriguing since City Manager Brian Platt first announced plans to develop solar at KCI in October 2022.

“We think it’s the largest airport solar array and municipally-owned solar array,” Platt told Flatland at the time in an exclusive interview. “We have to be big and bold and aggressive with our solutions,” he added.

The goal was to make Kansas City more appealing to tech and information-service industries and their young employees looking for new cities in which to locate.

The city was then vying with many other cities to host some of the games of the FIFA World Cup in 2026, considered a global public relations coup and huge tourism draw. FIFA considered candidate sites’ commitment to sustainability. Platt’s dream of planting solar fields at KCI could only help with the soccer drive.

One year ago, FIFA announced Kansas City as one of 16 cities to host games.

Evergy and the city have made no other announcements about the KCI solar plans since that time.

Increasing Demand

Evergy has a variety of new developments to contend with.

The company, long known as Kansas City Power & Light, has long relied on engineers and accountants to figure out the best energy infrastructure needed to keep the lights on at the lowest cost to consumers while keeping their stockholders happy.

Investments in utilities for ages were considered safe bets for “widows and orphans” because they were low-risk and paid high dividends. State regulators allow the monopoly utility to earn a profit on those sizable investments.

Challenging Times

Times are now more challenging for utilities.

Consumers are beginning to find electric vehicles more appealing, as are businesses and industries operating large fleets. That drives up electricity demand, which has been flat or slow growing for decades.

Major corporations are beginning to flock to the region and its affordable, pleasant lifestyle.

Panasonic is building what it touts as t he world’s largest EV battery plant , a $4 billion facility to open next year in DeSoto, Kansas. In March, Google announced it would build a $1 billion data facility at the Hunt Midwest Business Center in the Northland.

Data centers are sprouting all over America, driven by the promise of artificial intelligence applications. Such data centers could suck up 9% of all the nation’s electricity by 2030. That is why Google and others are so focused on electricity.

Of Google’s Kansas City project, Data Centre Dynamics said, “Power for the facility will be provided via a power purchase agreement with Evergy, Ranger Power, and DESRI to add 400MW of carbon-free energy capacity from the Missouri-based Beavertail Solar farm which is built on a former coal community.”

Panasonic and Google Go Green

Both Panasonic and Google want their installations served by green, sustainably generated electricity. Panasonic officials have said they are aware that Southwest Power Pool reserve requirements prompted Evergy to cancel the planned retirement of fossil-fuel powered generation near Lawrence.

But the company said it wants to be served by clean energy in DeSoto; it wants its plants to be zero-carbon emission by 2030.

Amanda Peterson Corio, the global head of Google data center energy, told the U.S. Department of Energy Grid Talk podcast that the company wants green energy to power its facilities every minute they are operating. Toward that end, it engineered a “clean transition tariff” in Nevada in conjunction with the local utility, NV Energy, to provide funding for the construction of new geothermal power resources to meet Google’s needs.

The beauty of this special tariff is the added cost of the green energy is borne by the corporate client that wants the sustainable power.

Evergy is planning to step up its deployment of solar power by adding 1,350 megawatts of the clean resource through 2030. The company plans to be net zero carbon emissions by 2045.

Potential Reasons for Slow Progress

Evergy has consistently declined interview requests to discuss all aspects of the KCI solar project. However, one longtime utility executive, who asked not to be named, offered his thoughts on why Evergy might not be rushing to jumpstart the KCI solar project.

“Utilities are dragging their feet on solar development because it causes variability in their operations,” he said, like when the sun does not shine.

Evergy may have decided to pursue Kansas City’s request for proposals for the KCI project because it did not want to see another developer invade their service territory as a major generator of electricity, he said.

Additionally, there is the question of the profitability of solar generation compared to the utility’s existing fleet of generators.

“With solar, I don’t think they get the same return,” he said.

Evergy said it has informed the Missouri Public Service Commission that it plans to put two solar projects amounting to 165 megawatts of energy in service by the summer of 2027.

As for the profits or rate of return Evergy might capture on solar versus other forms of generation, PSC spokesman Forrest Gossett said, “The commission typically does not order specific rates of return based on the source of generation.”

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly Weighs In

To help spur the development of more clean energy in Missouri, Google is expected to seek a clean transition tariff in the state like it has in Nevada and North Carolina, where it is working with Duke Energy, according to industry sources.

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly said that Evergy’s two new natural gas plants are needed.

“Kansas is experiencing record economic growth,” she said.

In a recent interview with Flatland to discuss the Panasonic project, she said clean energy is part of the state’s economic development appeal.

“Wind initially developed, now solar,” she said. “I do see us continuing down that path very aggressively as our citizens and businesses demand. I see it growing leaps and bounds.”

Whopping Price Tag

Google has put a price tag on what it will take: $2.5 trillion must be spent globally in the balance of the decade to fight climate change.

Doug Cannon, NV Energy president, told Grid Talk that smart utilities can use the input of the Googles of the world to pivot to a more modern business strategy.

“We see our customers today being very interested in a different type of product than a utility has historically offered,” he said. “If we were going to stay relevant in the business and we were going to be a value-add energy provider for our customers we had to change our way of business.”

Martin Rosenberg is a Kansas City journalist and host of the Grid Talk podcast on the future of energy.