President Barack Obama says carbon pollution limits need to be set on U.S. power plants in order to curb global warming. In a speech Tuesday at Georgetown University, Obama announced measures he intends to take to limit emissions from power plants. This will almost certainly raise costs for Missouri utilities that rely on coal, and those costs will almost certainly be passed on to consumers.

Katie McDonald is the Director of Communications for Kansas City Power and Light. McDonald says the utility is already “ahead of the game” when it comes to reducing carbon emissions, and they plan to continue on that path.

“The details of the plan and the specific rules have not been released, ” McDonald said.  “We are going to continue to evaluate them as they are known, but we are committed to taking additional action toward a more sustainable, balanced, energy portfolio for our region.”

The utility has already invested billions in clean coal technology.

“We have already reduced emissions by more than 65% when you compare today to 2004 levels,” McDonald said.  “We’ve invested billions of dollars in equipment and clean-coal technology at our our coal fleet.  And state-of-the-art equipment has been placed on many of our units and we continue to move forward.  So we feel we are ahead of the game.”

Iatan-2, the new plant is actually one of the cleanest coal plants in the country.”

McDonald said the utility is hoping to strike a balance between technology, energy efficiency and cost.

“We want to make sure we can continue to deliver cost-effective electricity to our customers.  We’ve made major investments with renewable energy. ”

She says about 10% of KCP&L’s energy comes today from renewable sources.  She adds the state is urging them to raise that amount to 20% over the next several years.

“We have wind and hydro, but we’re looking in the future at wind, hydro, solar, and landfill gas like we have in our agreement in St Joe.”

She says the utility has also invested in energy efficiency, because they believe reducing demand is the best way to improve our environment, by actually getting our customers to use less energy.”

(The Associated Press contributed to this report)