A legal challenge has been filed against a decision affecting Yukon Energy's proposal for a new generating facility powered by natural gas.

Longtime Whitehorse resident Skeeter Wright filed the documents Wednesday in Yukon Supreme Court.

He's asking for a judicial review of the recent decision by the Yukon Utilities Board not to admit information graphs offered up by two interested parties earlier this spring during the board's public hearing into Yukon Energy's proposal.

Wright argues the evidence was important because it provided a different view of the economics behind the project with regard to forecasts for the future price of natural gas.

The primary job of the utilities board is to examine proposals to see what impact they will have on the ratepayers, he explained in an interview Wednesday afternoon.

He said the evidence the board refused to consider goes right to the heart of the economics, and provides a contrary view to the price forecasting put forward by Yukon Energy.

"The Yukon Utilities Board is there to consider the effect of rates on the consumers of electricity,” Wright said. "In my opinion, there was a serious flaw in their consideration of how they were looking into the rate structure.

"My concern is they made a mistake, and that mistake is going to affect the electrical consumer.”

Wright is asking the supreme court to void the board's public hearing and subsequent recommendation that the project be permitted to proceed.

With the board's approval, Yukon Energy now has the authority to pass on to ratepayers the $42-million cost of the project.

A meeting of the parties and the judge is scheduled for July 2 to discuss how the matter should proceed.

Noted in Wright's petition to the court is the section of the transcript from day two of the hearings when the board ruled against permitting information graphs advanced by the Yukon Conservation Society and John Maissan of Leading Edge Projects.

The board ruled the joint intervenors were not familiar with the graphs, and only learned of them when their lawyer brought them to their attention.

Introducing them into the hearing at that point would not be fair to the parties participating, the board ruled.

Named in the notice of the court petition were all the intervenors who participated in the hearing process, and some private citizens who've been actively involved in a campaign opposing the new facility.

Yukon Energy is planning its power plant next to Robert Service Way powered by natural gas trucked up in a liquefied state from the Lower Mainland of B.C.

The Crown corporation maintains it needs to replace two of its largest and older diesel generators used to provide backup generation on the system. It wants to have the facility operational by the end of the year.

Yukon Energy insists that going with natural gas instead of new diesel generators would save millions in fuel costs and result in cleaner exhaust emissions.

On Tuesday, the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board issued its final recommendation that the Yukon government approve the project.

The government has 60 days to issue its decision document.

Some have suggested the conversion to natural gas is nothing more than an end run by the Yukon Party government to bring the gas industry – and hydraulic fracturing – to the Yukon.

Yukon Energy's project economics have been challenged from day one by many who argue that once North America establishes itself as an exporter of natural gas and becomes part of the international market, the price advantage over diesel will disappear.

The Crown corporation, on the other hand, assured the utilities board that all the evidence it has shows that natural gas will have a competitive pricing advantage over diesel for decades to come.

In separate public meetings to discuss the project proposal, both the utilities board and the assessment board heard staunch opposition to the LNG facility.

Many argue natural gas is much harder on the atmosphere than diesel, when considering the full life-cycle from the well to the burner because of the amount of methane gas that escapes in the process. Methane gas, it's said, packs a much harder punch than CO2.

Using the $42-million investment by ratepayers to advance renewable energy options would be a much wiser use of the money, many have argued.