Protestors are lobbying for aging coal plants to be shut down--they are some of the nation's dirtiest plants (Photo by Arnold Paul, Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
Carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming are driving power companies to a decision. They can move away from burning coal altogether or they can work on technology to eliminate their CO2 emissions someday. While they’re making that decision, some of the nation’s oldest, dirtiest coal-burning power plants still run. In the final part of our series on the future of coal, Shawn Allee looks at why they billow dangerous air pollution– stuff most people think we cleaned up long ago:
Transcript
Carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming are driving power companies to a decision. They can move away from burning coal altogether or they can work on technology to eliminate their CO2 emissions someday. While they’re making that decision, some of the nation’s oldest, dirtiest coal-burning power plants still run. In the final part of our series on the future of coal, Shawn Allee looks at why they billow dangerous air pollution– stuff most people think we cleaned up long ago:
I’ve seen plenty of environmental protests.
“Clean up the coal power plants. Save lives, save our city. Show your support – sign the petition!”
But this one has me intrigued.
It’s not because of what the protestors want. They want to shut down two coal-burning power plants in Chicago. I’d heard that before, and I’d heard their statistics too – like how each year, air pollution from these kinds of power plants causes 17,000 Americans to die early from smog and other hazards.
Now, what strikes me is that these teenagers are singing Bob Dylan.
“Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend a hand. For the time’s they are a changing.”
Their parents – or maybe grandparents – could have sung this.
But, however old the song is, the power plants they’re trying to shut down? They’re even older and they’re still allowed to create more pollution than newer plants.
Brian Urbaszewski has one answer to why so little’s changed. He’s with the Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago.
“People ask, ‘well, why is it taking so long to clean up the power plants?’ Well, it’s expensive to clean up an old power plant and the people who own them don’t particularly want to spend the money to do that.”
This isn’t the way it was supposed to work. Urbasewski says when Congress enacted the Clean Air Act in 1970, it gave old power plants a pass.
“The basics are that old power plants were not expected to have to meet the same standards as new power plants.”
But there was a catch. The old power plants wouldn’t have to clean up – if they kept the same equipment and didn’t pollute any more than before.
Urbaszewksi says the industry treated this like a loophole.
“A lot of these plants had major parts replaced and they were restored almost to original working order. The companies didn’t add those pollution controls.”
The federal government, industry, and environmentalists are stuck in court over which improvements at old, coal-burning power plants should trigger new pollution controls.
President George W. Bush sided with industry on this so-called new source review issue.
But now, President Obama might reverse that and the industry’s worried.
In terms of new source review, we remain in limbo.
Dan Riedinger handles public relations for the Edison Electric Institute. It represents private power companies.
“Still, you know, decades later, we still don’t have the type of written guidance we need, about what types of changes we can make at power plants.”
An overhaul of “new source review” is coming at a bad time for Riedinger’s industry. The government’s clamping down even harder on soot and the pollutants that cause smog. And they’re new rules to protect fish and other animals from mercury emissions.
But future carbon caps are a wild card. Congress might make power plants slash carbon dioxide emissions.
Riedinger says burning coal could become expensive – and the smallest, oldest power plants might not make the cut.
“We may be required to retire some coal plants prematurely and to replace them with natural gas. A natural gas produces half as much CO2 as does a coal plant.”
If the power industry shifts away from coal and toward other fuels for the sake of carbon, we might also get some of the quickest cutbacks in air pollution in decades at the same time – a kind of clean-air two-fer.
The times, maybe they are a-changin’.
For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.