The EPA is set to issue proposed rules for reducing greenhouse gases. The rules are likely to affect new coal burning power plants.
The Obama administration has indicated it
would prefer Congress pass climate change
legislation. But Lester Graham reports soon
the Environmental Protection Agency is
expected to issue its own proposal for
reducing greenhouse gas emissions:
Transcript
The Obama administration has indicated it
would prefer Congress pass climate change
legislation. But Lester Graham reports soon
the Environmental Protection Agency is
expected to issue its own proposal for
reducing greenhouse gas emissions:
This week EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson told a Congressional hearing only the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases would have to get pollution permits at first.
Joe Koncelik is an environmental lawyer with the firm Frantz-Ward in Cleveland. He says even then not every big power plant and steel mill will have to get a permit:
“That’s triggered only if you are building a new plant or you make what’s considered a significant change to an existing plant.”
And if they’re required to get a permit it’s not clear what they’ll have to do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Eric Schaeffer is a former EPA official and now heads up the Environmental Integrity Project.
“The standard is: best available technology. And I haven’t seen EPA’s definition of that yet.”
More than likely, the biggest emitters will reduce greenhouse gas emissions through using fossil fuels more efficiently or mixing in bio-fuels until ways are developed to capture emissions and store them underground.
Healthy Reef Systems May Be a Thing of The Past(Photo courtesy of Mikael Häggström)
Some scientists think we might be headed for a mass extinction event
in the oceans. When carbon dioxide gets released into the atmosphere,
a lot of that CO2 soaks into the oceans. That makes the water more
acidic. When the pH gets too low, it dissolves the skeletons of
animals like coral and mussels. Ann Dornfeld reports:
Transcript
** The story as originally broadcast incorrectly referred to the publication as “Natural Geoscience.” It should be “Nature Geoscience.”
Some scientists think we might be headed for a mass extinction event
in the oceans. When carbon dioxide gets released into the atmosphere,
a lot of that CO2 soaks into the oceans. That makes the water more
acidic. It can dissolve the skeletons of
animals like coral and mussels. Ann Dornfeld reports:
Fifty-five million years ago, a mass extinction happened when the
oceans became too acidic.
Richard Feely is a chemical oceanographer for the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration. He says that today’s ocean acidification
is happening too quickly for many species to adjust.
“Over the last 200 years we’ve seen a 30-percent increase in acidity
of the oceans, and about six percent of that increase of acidity of
the oceans has been in the last 15 years.”
Researchers at the University of Bristol in England ran simulations of
the acidification processes 55 million years ago and today. They found
that acidification is happening ten times faster these days than it
did before the prehistoric mass extinction.
That could mean that if we don’t slow our release of CO2 into the
atmosphere, life in our oceans could crash within a century or two.
The study is published in the journal of Nature Geoscience.
Engineering Professor Rich Axelbaum studies his "oxy-coal combustor," a device he hopes could someday trap CO2 in coal-fired power plants. (Photo by Matt Sepic)
The device has not yet been adapted to an industrial scale, and researchers are not whether the CO2 it would capture could be stored underground indefinitely. (Photo by Matt Sepic)
The combustor burns the coal with pure oxygen, rather than in the air. (Photo by Matt Sepic)
Coal has a reputation as a sooty, dirty fuel. More recently, environmentalists and the coal industry alike have become just as worried about the carbon dioxide released when coal is burned. In the third part of our series on the future of coal, Matt Sepic has this look at the science behind so-called “clean coal”:
Transcript
Coal has a reputation as a sooty, dirty fuel. More recently, environmentalists and the coal industry alike have become just as worried about the carbon dioxide released when coal is burned. In the third part of our series on the future of coal, Matt Sepic has this look at the science behind so-called “clean coal”:
As far as most leaders of the coal industry are concerned, the debate about global warming is over. It exists, carbon dioxide contributes to it, and it’s a crisis. But as they’re quick to point out, nearly half the nation’s electricity comes from coal. It’s domestic. It’s relatively cheap. And there’s a lot of it.
Steve Leer is the CEO of Arch Coal. Leer says unless Americans want that power to get really expensive, coal will have to remain part of the equation. But he says something has to be done about all that carbon dioxide.
If we don’t solve that CO2 question, the backlash of high cost electricity becomes an issue for all of us.
Arch Coal is the nation’s second largest coal producer. It’s paying for research into carbon capture and storage. The idea is to divert CO2 from smokestacks, compress it, and then pump it underground.
Engineering professor Rich Axelbaum is studying this with money from Steve Leer’s company. In his lab at Washington University in St. Louis, Axelbaum and two students are tweaking a device they call an oxy-coal combustor.
RA: “It’s a relatively small scale, quite a small scale for industrial, but it’s a relatively large scale for a university.”
MS: “It looks like a few beer kegs stacked end to end and welded together.”
RA: “Right, right.”
Axelbaum can burn coal inside this furnace along with a variety of combustion gases. He’s trying to figure out exactly how much oxygen to inject to yield pure carbon dioxide.
“We can capture the CO2 from a combustion process, by instead of the burning the coal in air, you’re burning it in oxygen, so the stream coming out of the exhaust is CO2.
Axelbaum says there’s no sense in filling valuable underground storage space with CO2 mixed with other gases if a power plant is built that can grab nearly pure carbon dioxide and store it.
He says energy companies already pump CO2 underground to extract crude oil, so some of the technology already exists. But environmentalists say the next step – which is crucial for any so-called clean coal power plant to work– is far from proven.
“No one knows in the industry whether in fact they can sequester carbon permanently.”
David Orr teaches Environmental Science at Oberlin College in Ohio. He says storing CO2 underground is easier said than done. And nobody knows if rock formations in different parts of the country can hold the huge amounts of carbon dioxide America’s power plants produce without it eventually leaking out.
Orr says because the goal is to reduce global warming, politicians would be better off funding research into other energy alternatives.
The metric here is how much carbon do we eliminate per dollar spent on research and deployment of technology?
Orr says the 3.4 billion dollars set aside for clean coal research in the federal stimulus bill would be better spent studying wind and solar power, modernizing the nation’s electrical grid, and finding ways to improve energy efficiency.
But the United States still has more than a century’s worth of coal reserves. And with plenty of money going into both research and advertising, talk of carbon capture and storage is certain to continue, even if it remains just that.
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.
Artist's concept of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory. The satellite crashed into the ocean on Tuesday, February 24th, 2009.
(Photo courtesy NASA Jet Propulsion Library)
(NOTE: THE SATELLITE FEATURED IN THIS STORY CRASHED INTO THE OCEAN ON TUESDAY, FEB. 24TH)
Drive your car. Mow your lawn. Heat your house. It all puts climate changing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But not all of the carbon dioxide stays up there. Vincent Duffy reports scientists at NASA hope a new satellite will help them solve the mystery of where some of that CO2 goes:
Transcript
(NOTE: THE CARBON SATELLITE CRASHED INTO THE OCEAN ON TUESDAY, FEB. 24TH)
Drive your car. Mow your lawn. Heat your house. It all puts climate changing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But not all of the carbon dioxide stays up there. Vincent Duffy reports scientists at NASA hope a new satellite will help them solve the mystery of where some of that CO2 goes:
People worried about climate change pay a lot of attention to carbon dioxide.
It’s one of the chief causes of climate change. And people put a lot of carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere, almost 8 billion tons a year.
That has former Vice President Al Gore worried. Here he is testifying before
Congress last month –
“Our home, earth, is in danger. What is at risk of being destroyed is not the
planet itself of course, but the conditions that have made it hospitable for
human beings.”
If we are in danger, then scientists need a good handle on what happens to
all that carbon dioxide.
About half of the CO2 created by humans is absorbed back into the earth by
what scientists call ‘carbon sinks.’ Scientists know half of the absorbed
carbon dioxide goes into the oceans, and the other half is sucked up by
plants. But scientists don’t know which plants are absorbing the most carbon
dioxide, and how the CO2 travels there.
The scientists at NASA hope a new satellite, called the Orbiting Carbon
Observatory, will help them answer those questions.
David Crisp heads up the project. He says measuring carbon dioxide levels
from the ground doesn’t provide enough information to know where the
CO2 actually ends up.
“But from space we can actually make much more detailed measurements,
make a snapshot of the carbon dioxide distribution in the atmosphere. That
will give us much more information about where the carbon dioxide is and
from that we can infer where the sources are and where the sinks are.”
Right now it’s a bit of a blur. Anna Michalak is a professor at the University
of Michigan and part of the NASA team. She says to track what’s going on
with all the CO2 on the earth is like trying to figure out how cream went into
a cup of coffee.
“If I give you a cup of coffee, and I pour cream into the cup of coffee, and I
ask you what’s going to happen when I start stirring, it’s pretty easy to
predict that you’ll have a creamy cup of coffee. But what we do instead is
someone hands us a creamy cup of coffee and asks us, ‘Did we pour the
cream in on the left side or the right side, and did we pour the cream in five
minutes ago or ten minutes ago?’ And you can imagine that’s a much more
difficult question.”
Michalak says the satellite observatory will help answer that difficult
question, and help us understand how plants may react to carbon dioxide in
the future, as the earth’s climate changes. She says right now plants seem to
be absorbing more CO2 than ever before.
“And we have no guarantee that this is going to continue in the future. And
so you can imagine that something that has such a high value, there is an
interest in us knowing how predictable and how reliable this service is to us.
Because the cost for us to replicate anything resembling that is just
astronomical.”
The satellite will also answer other questions about climate change. Things
like which countries emit the most CO2.
Jiaguo Qi studies climate change at Michigan State University. He says the
satellite may show that people concerned about the cost of reducing green
house gasses may unfairly blame the United States and other developed
nations.
“Media report that North America is primarily responsible for global
warming. But we don’t know how much carbon dioxide other countries are
emitting, because we donít have good measure. This one will tell us who is
emitting and how much they are emitting instead of just blaming us.”
And the data from the Orbiting Carbon Observatory might show that it’s not
just the forests and jungles that help keep climate change at bay. It might
also be forests and farmland in the United States, and your lawn, and even
golf courses.
The research team collects several samples from each stop along the route to measure the chemical composition of the ocean water. (Photo by Ann Dornfeld)
It’s called Milking the Cow – the team drops bottles to the ocean floor to take samples... then they retrieve the bottles and pour the contents into lab bottles. (Photo by Ann Dornfeld)
We hear a lot about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But half of all man-made CO2 is stored in the world’s oceans. When CO2 mixes with water, it increases the oceans’ acidity. As Ann Dornfeld reports, that acidification is moving closer toward the oceans’ fragile coastal areas:
Transcript
We hear a lot about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But half of all man-made CO2 is stored in the world’s oceans. When CO2 mixes with water, it increases the oceans’ acidity. As Ann Dornfeld reports, that acidification is moving closer toward the oceans’ fragile coastal areas:
If you’ve ever wondered why sparkling water tastes tangy, instead of just bubbly – it’s because of carbonic acid. That’s what’s produced when carbon dioxide is added to water. Some of the CO2 in the world’s oceans is natural, from things like decaying algae. But the oceans also soak up CO2 produced by cars and factories. Once CO2 is absorbed into the ocean, it sinks to the coldest, deepest water for long-term storage.
Chemical oceanographers at Oregon State University are monitoring the chemical composition of the Pacific Ocean to see where the carbon is being stored. On a research vessel several miles off the coast, they lower a series of bottles down to the ocean floor on a winch.
(sound of winches)
Scientists have expected that upwellings would eventually bring some of that CO2 to the coastal zones that are home to a huge array of marine life. They thought it would take a century or more. But a recent study, published in the journal Science, found acidic water fewer than 20 miles off the Pacific Coast.
Grad student Rachel Holzer says that’s alarming.
“The ocean is normally at a very stable pH. It is a buffered system, which means it is not very easy for the pH to change. But recently there’s been evidence that ocean acidification is happening, meaning that the pH is dropping. And that can be very harmful to biological life of all different types.”
Corrosive water can dissolve the calcium carbonate shells of barnacles, mussels, oysters and clams. Coral reefs are also calcium carbonate. So are a lot of planktonic species, including terrapods. Those make up about half of the diet of young salmon.
Burke Hales co-authored the latest study. He’s an Associate Professor of Chemical Oceanography at Oregon State.
“The question is how are these organisms going to respond, you know? Do their shells dissolve, do they just not grow as quickly? If their shells are negatively impacted, are the organisms themselves negatively impacted? And if the organisms are negatively impacted, how does that cascade through the food web?”
Hales says stopping ocean acidification would be extremely difficult, if not impossible.
“There are people who have talked about going out in the ocean and spraying sodium carbonate pellets into the water, which would dissolve and neutralize some of the carbonic acid. Sort of like when you take a Tums, that’s the active ingredient in Tums is calcium carbonate. That’s one idea that’s been proposed. It’s really, really speculative that that would work.”
What’s more, Hales says the process of hauling all of that ocean antacid out to sea and dispersing it could produce as much CO2 as it would neutralize.
“It is depressing. We wish things weren’t this way and moving sort of irreversibly towards worse conditions. But we also know that the oceans do have a lot of ability to adapt. And what we don’t know yet is exactly how this is gonna play out.”
One thing scientists do know is that the acidification has just begun. The corrosive water they found right off the Pacific Coast was from carbon dioxide released about 50 years ago. And over the last half century, CO2 production has only increased.
Corn-processing giant Archer Daniels Midland creates excess carbon dioxide while brewing ethanol and other alcohols from corn. The company is donating carbon dioxide from a plant in Decatur, Illinois. Scientists will bury the CO2 deep underground and test whether the local rock can hold it there indefinitely. If it can, the government may encourage coal-fired power plants and other carbon sources to sequester their carbon underground. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
One of the cheapest, easiest ways to make
electricity in America is to burn coal, but there’s
this little problem of global warming. The coal power
industry is a major offender because burning coal
gives off carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas.
It’s enough to make you think – should we burn coal at all?
Shawn Allee reports some scientists hope to prove
we can put coal emissions out of sight, out of mind:
Transcript
One of the cheapest, easiest ways to make electricity in America is to burn coal. But there’s this little problem of global warming. The coal power industry is a major offender… because burning coal gives off carbon dioxide – the main greenhouse gas. It’s enough to make you think – should we burn coal at all? Shawn Allee reports some scientists hope to prove we can put coal emissions out of sight, out of mind:
A big part of our global warming problem starts right in coal country. Recently, I recorded this coal train leaving a coal mine, destined for some power plants.
(sound of coal train)
It was a long train … and across the country, hundreds like it run constantly. The coal power industry generates half our electricity. And that’s responsible for nearly forty percent of the carbon dioxide, or CO2, we chuck into the atmosphere.
Well, wouldn’t it be great if we could reverse some of this? So, when we pull coal out of the Earth and then burn it … we could just send some of the carbon dioxide gas underground?
That’s getting tested by scientists.
I found one.
ALLEE: “What’s your name, sir?”
FINLEY: “Robert Finley. I’m the director for the center for energy and earth resources at Illinois State Geologic Survey.”
Finley wants to take carbon dioxide and bury it deep under the town of Decatur, Illinois.
He says the rock has to be just right.
One layer needs to absorb the carbon dioxide, while other rock has to keep it put.
“In order for the CO2 to remain in the subsurface, to not leak back in the atmosphere, we have to have an excellent seal.”
Finley calls this geological carbon sequestration, and he says it’s worked … in small tests. His experiment and six others across the country are much larger. Finley says the technology is promising, but needs testing.
“Decatur involves two years of characterizing the site and drilling wells before we even inject CO2. Three years of CO2 injection, then two more years of study of the site. So, that in total is a seven year effort.”
Again, he’s gotta make sure the carbon dioxide stays underground … and that it won’t hurt water or other underground resources. But while Finley experiments, coal plants continue to dump CO2 into the atmosphere. That’s got some environmental groups a little impatient.
“The best way to avoid emissions from burning coal is to not burn it in the first place.”
This is Ron Burke, the Midwest Director for The Union of Concerned Scientists.
“We can meet most of our energy needs by substantially increasing the use of energy efficiency and renewable energy.”
Allee: “But when you listen to Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain, it seems that both of these candidates seem to want to make it work, when Mr. Finley and others doing work on the ground say I won’t even have my data until 2014.”
Burke: “It’s clear that a lot of elected officials share this aspirational goal to commercially develop so-called clean-coal technology. But right now we can’t depend on it. We shouldn’t be developing plans to mitigate greenhouse gases assuming that technology’s going to be available.”
Geologist Robert Finley says we cannot rely on carbon sequestration exclusively.
Even if CO2 can stay underground forever, there’s no guarantee we can afford to send it there.
“One could argue we should have been doing this five years ago or earlier, but we can’t go forward and simply drill a well next year and move forward without these kinds of studies, because that would be reckless in my view.”
Finley doesn’t apologize for the pace of science.
He says he’s confident it can answer questions about carbon sequestration…. he just hopes it’s in time to make a difference for the global warming problem.
The EPA is looking into storing CO2 emissions underground (Photo by Lester Graham)
The US Environmental Protection
Agency is looking at ways to make sure
carbon dioxide can be stored underground.
The agency is proposing rules that would
keep CO2 from seeping out of the ground or
cause problems for ground water. Chuck
Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
The US Environmental Protection
Agency is looking at ways to make sure
carbon dioxide can be stored underground.
The agency is proposing rules that would
keep CO2 from seeping out of the ground or
cause problems for ground water. Chuck
Quirmbach reports:
Some coal-fired power plants are looking into storing their carbon dioxide emissions
underground.
If the system works, it’d be a way to slow down climate change.
But EPA water administrator Ben Grumbles says injecting large volumes of CO2
to underground storage wells is a concern. So, he says the proposed rule calls for
extensive testing and monitoring.
“So that the CO2 doesn’t migrate. If it did, it could also push other fluids, like
salts, into that underground source of drinking water.”
Grumbles says if there was contamination, companies could be ordered to stop
injecting the gas. He says the rule also aims to make sure the CO2 doesn’t seep
from the ground into the air.
The EPA will take comments on its proposed rule until mid-November.
Researchers have found that the Pacific Ocean is becoming increasingly acidic as a result of CO2 emissions (Photo by A. Kalvaitis, courtesy of NOAA)
The Pacific Ocean is becoming more acidic.
The corrosive water could start dissolving shells
and coral. The problem is largely caused by carbon
dioxide emitted by cars and power plants. As Ann
Dornfeld reports, researchers say the problem is
happening faster than they expected:
Transcript
The Pacific Ocean is becoming more acidic.
The corrosive water could start dissolving shells
and coral. The problem is largely caused by carbon
dioxide emitted by cars and power plants. As Ann
Dornfeld reports, researchers say the problem is
happening faster than they expected:
Scientists have known for a long time that the world’s oceans are becoming corrosive
from so much man-made CO2. Carbon dioxide dissolves into the ocean, and forms
carbonic acid.
The corrosive water is concentrated in deep, cold parts of the ocean. Scientists had
predicted it would approach the vulnerable coastal zones in about a century. So they
were alarmed to find the acidity just a few miles off the California coast.
Burke Hales is a chemical oceanographer. He says this corrosive water could break
down the calcium carbonate in coral and shells.
“So we’re talking about things like barnacles and oysters and mussels and
clams. And some planktonic organisms form calcium carbonate shells, as well.”
Researchers say the acidification approaching the coasts is from CO2 that was emitted
50 years ago. That means we’re just at the start of increasingly acidic oceans.
City Water Light and Power of Springfield, Illinois compromised with environmentalists to build a cleaner power plant and supplement supplies with wind energy rather than fight through the permitting process. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Because it's plentiful and domestic, much of the U.S. electricity will be generated by coal-burning power plants. This coal mine supplies the fossil fuel to a power plant just 20 miles away. (Photo by Lester Graham)
There are around 100 coal-burning power plants
on the drawing boards. Many of them won’t be built.
In some cases environmental groups will fight to
make sure they don’t get built. But, Lester
Graham reports, one coal-burning power plant is
being built with the blessings of the
environmentalists nearby:
Transcript
There are around 100 coal-burning power plants on the drawing boards. Many of
them won’t be built. In some cases environmental groups will fight to make sure
they don’t get built. But, Lester Graham reports, one coal-burning power plant is
being built with the blessings of the environmentalists nearby:
Usually, when a utility wants to build a new coal-burning power plant, the fight is on. The
utility is challenged by environmental groups every step of the permitting process.
Then, more times than not, the utility and the environmentalists take the fight to the
courts. It means years of delays and millions of dollars of legal bills, but that didn’t
happen here.
Construction workers are erecting the superstructure of a new 500-million dollar
coal-burning power plant. This power plant is scheduled to go online in two years.
When it’s complete, it’ll use the latest technology to reduce the nastiest pollutants
from its smokestack: sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxides and mercury. And this power
plant is much more efficient.
Jay Bartlett is the chief utilities engineer with City Water Light and Power in
Springfield, Illinois. He says compared to the utility’s older power plants next door,
the new plant will burn about 20% less coal to produce the same amount of
electricity.
“It takes about 1.4 pounds of coal to make a kilowatt of electricity from that plant
over there. This plant will be in the .85 range.”
And that will mean electricity bills for ratepayers won’t have to go up. It also means
the net amount of greenhouse gases is reduced. That makes environmentalists
smile.
And that’s no accident. Jay Bartlett says after being contacted by the local Sierra Club,
the power company and the environmentalists decided to talk:
“It was our goal when we sat down with the Sierra Club, saying, ‘You know we can
fight this out and it will cost both sides lots and lots of money, but will anything good
come out of this in the end?’ And we both decided that something better could come
out of spending those dollars. And what that was investing in wind, investing in
better pollution control, products for this plant to make it as clean as it can possibly be
and move forward. ”
No one really thought this would happen. Not the utility, not the regulators, and not
the environmentalists.
(Sound of coffee shop)
At a downtown coffee shop, Will Reynolds still seems a little surprised. He’s with the
local Sierra Club chapter that worked with Springfield’s City Water Light and Power:
“Yeah, at the start of this I thought there was no chance for any kind of agreement or
compromise. But by the end of it, we had an agreement that reduced the CO2 to
Kyoto Treaty levels, we had a utility that was able to build a power plant to have a
stable, efficient power supply — which was what they were looking for as a small
municipal utility — and in the end, I think it was a win-win for everybody.”
What the two sides agreed to is this: the best off-the-shelf equipment to control
pollution better than the law requires, and to offset the CO2 produced by the plant,
the utility signed an agreement with an Iowa wind-power company to provide part of
Springfield’s electricity:
“Springfield is a small, pretty conservative town that just took a huge step forward
and showed what can be done realistically to reduce our global warming emissions.
And we were able to do it and still provide for our power, still have affordable, reliable
power for the entire city. So, if Springfield can do it, then other cities can do it.”
The state regulating agency, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency,
applauded the efforts. Illinois is a coal-producing state and has been encouraging
power companies to clean up their plants so that coal can still be used without as many
of the pollution worries. IEPA Director Doug Scott says the Springfield utility’s efforts
will be a model for other power companies:
“I mean, all of the things that they did and the things that they worked out with Sierra
Club, the extra reductions that they’re getting over and above what they would have
had to have done in a normal permitting sense. I mean, that they were looking at
trying to be good stewards of the environment as well as being responsive to their
ratepayers as well.”
And Scott says that’s key. Because it’s plentiful and domestic, coal is not going
away. Scott says this can work for not just municipal electric utilities, but private
power companies can keep shareholders happy, keep ratepayers happy and keep
the skies clearer by updating power plants to work more efficiently, seriously reduce
the emissions from coal, and do what they can to offset greenhouse gas emissions
until technology is found that can clean up CO2.
For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.
The EPA is set to issue proposed rules for reducing greenhouse gases. The rules are likely to affect new coal burning power plants.
