Ted Nace says a lot of the slow down in building coal-burning power plants is driven by economics, but also a lot of it’s still being driven by climate concerns. (Photo courtesy of NREL/Warren Gretz)
Many of the plans to build new coal-burning power plants have gone up in smoke. In early 2007, the Department of Energy noted there were 151 coal-fired electric generators on the drawing board. Lester Graham reports since then… nearly a hundred of them have been canceled—or shelved.
Transcript
Many of the plans to build new coal-burning power plants have gone up in smoke. In early 2007, the Department of Energy noted there were 151 coal-fired electric generators on the drawing board. Lester Graham reports since then… nearly a hundred of them have been canceled—or shelved.
There are several reasons. The recession has tightened credit for building coal-fired power plants. Electricity demand has flattened- partly due to the economy—partly to better efficiency in businesses and homes. Lawsuits blocked some of the coal-burning plants. And some states are requiring power companies to compare the costs of burning fossil fuels to using alternatives such as wind because of concerns about climate change.
Ted Nace is with the environmental advocacy group CoalSwarm. He says he thinks this slow down in building coal-burning power plants is permanent…
“It’s a pretty profound shift in the American economy. And a lot of it’s being driven by economics, but also a lot of it’s still being driven by climate concerns.”
Some new coal-burning power plants did go online last year… but in real terms there was just as much new wind power installed.
The new coal ash clean-up project will take four years and cost 268-million dollars. (Photo courtesy of Brian Stansberry)
More than a year ago – when an earthen wall broke at a power plant in Tennessee, 500-million gallons of toxic coal ash and water were spilled. If you compare it to other environmental tragedies – it was 50 times bigger than the Exxon Valdez spill. Half of the coal ash spill’s been cleaned up, but crews are still working to get the rest of it. And as Tanya Ott reports there are concerns about a new plan to deal with the ash:
Transcript
More than a year ago – when an earthen wall broke at a power plant in Tennessee – 500-million gallons of toxic coal ash and water were spilled. If you compare it to other environmental tragedies – it was 50 times bigger than the Exxon Valdez spill. Half of the coal ash spill’s been cleaned up, but crews are still working to get the rest of it. And as Tanya Ott reports there are concerns about a new plan to deal with the ash:
The plan comes from the US Environmental Protection Agency. Clean-up crews would scoop up the ash and put it in the same pit it came from… but the pit’s been reinforced with concrete. What the plan doesn’t call for, though, is a liner to make sure no metals leach into groundwater. Tennessee law and even the EPA’s new proposed coal ash rules require liners.
Craig Zeller is the project manager for the EPA. He says because this pit isn’t new – or expanding – it doesn’t have to comply with the rules. Plus, he says, water testing in the area shows there’s no problem with leaching.
“If, in the future it does show that we need to add a groundwater mediation piece to this, we will!”
Adding a liner after-the-fact could be difficult and expensive. The new clean-up project will take four years and cost 268-million dollars.
According to a recent report, a decade of cleanup measures to reductions in emissions have paid off in cutting levels of deadly particle and ozone pollution. (Photo courtesy of the NREL)
A new report finds some of the cities with the worst air pollution are breathing a little easier. Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
A new report finds some of the cities with the worst air pollution are breathing a little easier. Lester Graham reports.
The American Lung Association’s annual “State of the Air” report uses the latest data from 2006, 2007 and 2008. That’s just before the economy really tanked. Janice Nolan is with the American Lung Association. She says even though factories were still running at full tilt, improvement in air quality was seen across the nation. Particularly in cities the group watches closely.
“We’ve tracked some of the 25 most polluted cities each year to see how they’re faring and in each case we saw significant improvement in most of the cities in those twenty-five.”
Nolan says cleaner diesel fuel and new less polluting trucks… along with some improvements at coal-burning power plants helped. But she says other dirtier coal-burning plants and older diesel trucks continue to pollute the air.
John Wakeman of SUR Energy says government and utility incentives have lowered the costs of a solar installation for consumers.(Photo courtesy of Mark Brush)
Sources of renewable energy like wind, solar, and hydroelectric are still just tiny players in a world powered by fossil fuels. Most of the power for your light switch comes from burning coal and natural gas. Mark Brush reports the government is trying to change that. There are state and federal programs that will pay you to put solar panels on your house:
Transcript
Sources of renewable energy like wind, solar, and hydroelectric are still just tiny players in a world powered by fossil fuels. Most of the power for your light switch comes from burning coal and natural gas. Mark Brush reports the government is trying to change that. There are state and federal programs that will pay you to put solar panels on your house:
John Wakeman was laid off from his factory job eight years ago. So, for him it was, “well… Now what?” He’d always been interested in solar panels and wind turbines. So he decided to go into business helping homeowners put these things up. It’s been eight years, business was slow at first, but he says these days, business for solar panels is picking up.
“There are a lot of people that have always just dreamed of it. You know, they thought it was really cool, they looked into it in the ‘70s. In the 70’s it cost, you know, ten times as much for the same energy. The costs have really come down.”
But it’s still really expensive for a lot of people. Wakeman says a typical solar job costs around sixteen thousand dollars these days.
But now – you can get help from the government.
There’s a federal tax credit that will pay for 30% of the cost of new solar panels on your house. So you spend sixteen grand – you get $4,800 off your next tax bill. And on top of that, there are a bunch of state and utility operated programs that will help pay for the up-front costs.
In fact, more than half the states in the country are forcing utilities to make more renewable power.
So more utilities are paying people to install things like solar panels, wind turbines, and geothermal heat pumps.
In many places, it costs less to install these things than it ever has.
Wakeman says these incentives have been good for his business.
“I can actually build a business somewhat on that. I can hire some people and get them trained. You know we can go out and sell some systems.”
But some say these subsidies are not a good idea:
“The sunlight may be free, but solar energy is extremely expensive.”
Robert Bryce analyzes the energy business for the Manhattan Institute. It’s a conservative think tank. Bryce says solar power is enjoying big subsidies from the government right now, but it’s not translating into a lot of power going onto the grid:
“Solar energy received 97 times as much in subsidies per megawatt hour produced as natural gas fired electricity; even though the gas-fired electric sector produced 900 times as much electricity as solar. So how much subsidy are we going to have to give them to make them competitive. And I think the answer is going to be… It’s going to have to be a whole, whole lot.”
Bryce agrees – there are some big environmental costs to traditional fossil fuel sources. Costs that are not always paid for. But in the end – he says renewable energy sources like solar just can’t compete with traditional fossil fuels.
But others say the subsidies for renewable power are boosting an industry that is trying to get a start.
Rhone Resch is the president of the Solar Energy Industries Association. He says the subsidies renewables are getting today just make the game fair:
“We’re starting to get the same kinds of support from the federal government that the fossil industry has enjoyed for the last 75 to 100 years. And when you do that, the cost of wind comes down, the cost of solar comes down, the cost of geothermal becomes more cost competitive.”
If you look at the numbers, traditional power sources have always gotten more money from the government. In 2007, the federal government gave out 6.7 billion dollars in subsidies to support electricity production. Most of it went to coal, natural gas, and nuclear.
Today, renewable energy sources, like solar, are getting a little more help. And supporters hope that help doesn’t disappear – like it has in the past – when the political winds change.
Renewable energy groups say they want the federal government to tell power companies that more power has to come from renewable energy.
(Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
Renewable energy groups are
calling on the federal government
to do more to support their
industries. They want the
government to set standards
for where the country gets
its power. Mark Brush reports:
Transcript
Renewable energy groups are
calling on the federal government
to do more to support their
industries. They want the
government to set standards
for where the country gets
its power. Mark Brush reports:
The groups say they want the federal government to tell power companies that more power has to come from renewable energy. Most power companies in the country are basically regulated monopolies.
Denise Bode is the president of the American Wind Energy Association. She used to work as a public utility regulator. Bode says it’s up to the government to ask one question when they regulate these monopolies.
“What’s in the public interest? And, you know, often times as a state public utility commissioner I would make the determination as to what kind of power generation that we would authorize our utilities to do and what was in the public interest.”
Bode says it is in the public interest to get more power from cleaner, renewable sources.
Some big utilities oppose having one federal standard – and there are a lot reasons why they oppose it – but one of them is that states are already handling it. There are 30 states that have some kind of renewable targets in place.
John Caveny operates
a farm in central Illinois. He was
one of the state's first cultivators
of miscanthus gigantus, a type of
grass that can be burned for heat or
electicity generation. Caveny predicts
biomass will start small but if properly
managed and marketed, could become
utility scale.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
Eric Rund is another Illinois farmer
who's growing miscanthus. Here, he stands
next to a demonstration stand which, in
late summer, has grown to more than ten feet.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
A bale of miscanthus transported
from an Illinois farm to the annual Farm
Progress Show in Decatur, Illinois.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
BHS Energy, a family-run Pennsylvanian
company, has developed a machine that presses
energy grasses such as miscanthus into manageable
hunks. "Densification" makes energy grasses
easier to store and transport.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
A combination of energy grasses
emerge from the BHS equipment.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
Adam Reggie of BHS Energy says biomass
could be a good source of energy for farms and
perhaps rural schools or businesses, but expanding
biomass to utility-scale power generation will
be difficult without government regulations or mandates.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
Energy experts are thinking through
how to replace coal that’s burned
in American power stations. One
alternative is to burn plants,
because they can produce fewer
greenhouse gas emissions. This
is called biomass power. In the
Midwest, there’s talk of growing
millions of acres of grass for biomass.
Shawn Allee looks at whether
the region’s up to the challenge:
Transcript
Energy experts are thinking through
how to replace coal that’s burned
in American power stations. One
alternative is to burn plants,
because they can produce fewer
greenhouse gas emissions. This
is called biomass power. In the
Midwest, there’s talk of growing
millions of acres of grass for biomass.
Shawn Allee looks at whether
the region’s up to the challenge:
One Midwest farmer who grows biomass crops is John Caveny of Illinois. Caveny shows me some gigantic grass called miscanthus.
Caveny: ”You can get an idea of how big it is. It’d be eleven or twelve feet tall right now. and it’s still not done growing.”
Allee: ”It’s pretty sturdy stuff.”
(rustle)
Caveny: ”That’s the thing about it.”
(rustle)
Caveny says you can burn miscanthus and other energy grasses to make electricity. The idea’s to replace coal, which spews carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.
”Unlike wind energy or solar that just dispalce fossil carbon use, these plants here, displace fossil carbon use, but in addition they take CO2 out of the air and store it in the soils.”
Energy experts say that’s true, at least for a while. But they say to do much good, lots of utilities need to burn energy grasses. Caveny would love that, but there’s a problem.
Caveny: ”There’s this whole concept of the valley of death.”
Allee: ”I haven’t heard this term. Valley of death?”
Caveny: ”Valley of death is you’ve got a user here and a producer here and you gotta get ’em to match up.”
This valley is a gap between supply and demand for energy grass. It exists because utilities won’t invest in biomass electrical equipment until farmers prove they can grow enough grass. Caveny says farmers will start small.
”You might want to heat a shopping mall or a small strip mall or something like that.”
Caveny says those kinds of projects will make utilities confident in the grass market – and then they’d cross that valley of death. They’ll invest, they’ll buy energy grass and they’ll power suburbs and cities with biomass. That’s his prediction, though.
At a Midwestern farm expo, I find people who say this valley of death is too wide.
Bryan Reggie is showing off equipment that squishes energy grass into briquettes.
Reggie: ”It’s roughly the size of a golf ball, but a cylinder in shape.”
Allee: ”Like a hockey puck almost.”
Reggie: ”Yeah.”
Reggie makes biomass equipment for farmers who want cheap heat, and these grass hockey pucks work.
Allee: ”What, you burn these?”
Reggie: ”Yeah, you burn these in biomass boilers.”
Allee: ”You’d want to heat a farm house or something?”
Reggie: ”Yeah, maybe a green house or larger space.”
Reggie says energy grass could be great for farms, but big-city electric utilities will not cross that “financial valley of death” Caveny talked about. They’d need too much biomass.
”When you get bigger scale, you have to start trucking in all your fuel from long distance. Biomass transportation costs are high, so you want to transport as little as possible. That’s a good reason to keep it small and keep everything local.”
After Reggie’s equipment demonstration, I bump into Steve Flick. He’s with Show Me Energy, a Missouri co-op. Flick is a kind of biomass celebrity because he actually got a coal-fired power plant to test-burn his energy grass. That test worked, but so far no utility has volunteered to give up coal. Flick predicts groups of Midwestern farmers will build tiny power plants.
Flick: ”We think these models would be every fifty to sixty miles apart and the producers that owned those organizations would benefit.”
Allee: ”You wouldn’t necessarily be lighting up St. Louis or lighting up Chicago, right?”
Flick: ”Presently, we’re not trying to settle all the world’s problems, just our little piece of it right now.”
Flick says forget that financial valley of death idea – only energy pundits dream of powering a metropolis with biomass, at least while coal is so cheap.
He says biomass can power a good chunk of rural America, and for now that’s good enough.
A coal mine in West Virginia.
(Photo by Erika Celeste)
The coal industry wants us to
believe in the idea of ‘clean coal.’
But burning coal emits a lot of
carbon dioxide, the greenhouse
gas contributing to climate change.
The coal-burning electric power
industry is just now testing technology
to capture CO2 and to permanently
store it. The second round of tests
is happening at American Electric
Power’s Mountaineer Power Plant
in New Haven, West Virginia. Hank
Courtright is monitoring those tests.
He’s with the non-profit Electric Power
Research Institute. Lester Graham
talked with him and asked how the
tests are going:
Transcript
The coal industry wants us to
believe in the idea of ‘clean coal.’
But burning coal emits a lot of
carbon dioxide, the greenhouse
gas contributing to climate change.
The coal-burning electric power
industry is just now testing technology
to capture CO2 and to permanently
store it. The second round of tests
is happening at American Electric
Power’s Mountaineer Power Plant
in New Haven, West Virginia. Hank
Courtright is monitoring those tests.
He’s with the non-profit Electric Power
Research Institute. Lester Graham
talked with him and asked how the
tests are going:
Hank Courtright: We think it has great progress, it’s really the second step of a multi-step process that we’re doing. We had just concluded a project up in Wisconsin on a smaller scale, the same type of technology, and it was very successful. It capture 90-plus percent of the CO2 that passed through it and saw some great promises as far as reducing the cost of doing it. The idea here is that we’re scaling it up ten times larger at the mountaineer plant and so far the early results seem very good and we’ll continue to test that over a year plus to see how it does produce.
Lester Graham: I understand it takes a lot more energy to run this extra CO2 capture equipment, as much as 30% more coal has to be burned to generate the same amount of electricity, what’s being called a parasitic load. What’s this going to mean for our power bills?
Hank: Well, what we’re trying to Lester is that the parasitic load gets down into the, let’s say, the 10 to 15% range. If you get to that level, it means that the electricity out of a coal plant might be about 25% higher than it is. But right now coal is basically the cheapest form of producing electricity, so it still ends as being an economical option even if you might be increasing the cost of that coal plant by about 25%.
Lester: If they can accomplish that with this experiment, how long will it take to get this technology built into the bulk of coal burning power plants?
Hank: Well, you’re going to be working over this for several decades, really. If this plant at Mountaineer works well, our thinking is around 2020 you’re going to be able to have most new coal power plants use the carbon capture and storage. And you might be able to retrofit about 20%, 25% of the existing plants in the United States with this type of technology.
Lester: If all of these methods fizzle, we can’t capture carbon economically, or at the other end, we can’t find a way to sequester this carbon underground, or whatever type of method they can come up with, what’s next?
Hank: Well, that causes some difficulties because right here in the United States coal is used to produce about half our electricity. And if it doesn’t work on coal, it’s also the issue that it won’t work on any other fossil fuels such as natural gas, which produces about 20% of our electricity. So you’re into a difficult situation that if you’d wanted to significantly reduce the CO2 emissions to improve the climate change issue, then you’d have to be looking at a combination of probably nuclear power and a very large roll out of renewable energy. Both of those would have to take the lion share of electricity production. But our hope is that we can get this working because it is not only here in the US that you need it on fossil fuels of coal and gas, but also in places like China, Russia, India, Australia, country’s that very large reserves of coal and hope to use those natural resources.
Lester Graham at the coal mine Shay #1 in Macoupin County, Illinois. He's interviewing the mine general manager Roger Dennison.
(Photo courtesy of Phil Ganet)
The coal industry is hopeful
an old technology will help
them clean up an increasingly
unpopular fuel. Lester Graham
reports, without it, coal faces
an uncertain future:
Transcript
The coal industry is hopeful
an old technology will help
them clean up an increasingly
unpopular fuel. Lester Graham
reports, without it, coal faces
an uncertain future:
[Editor’s Note: The script for this story will be posted shortly.]
A company is using waste from
coal-burning power plants to
make bricks. The firm hopes
to reduce the amount of coal
ash sent to landfills, and,
at the same time, cut the amount
of energy used to make bricks.
Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
A company is using waste from
coal-burning power plants to
make bricks. The firm hopes
to reduce the amount of coal
ash sent to landfills, and,
at the same time, cut the amount
of energy used to make bricks.
Chuck Quirmbach reports:
The company, Calstar, says it wants to open several U.S. plants which would use fly ash in making bricks for construction and paving. The California firm says its method uses far less energy that traditional clay bricks that have to be heated at high temperatures.
Luke Pustejovsky is a Calstar executive. He insists the quality of fly ash brick meets industry standards.
“We spent 18 months and millions of dollars on durability testing with our own labs, with outside third party labs, and this is a brick that’s built to last.”
But a trade group, the Brick Industry Association, is cool to fly ash brick. The group says the product has not yet met the test of time. The group is concerned any problems that come up could discourage customers from using brick.
Burning fossil fuels such as
oil and coal creates carbon
dioxide. CO2 contributes
to climate change. Samara Freemark reports
some scientists say we could
capture the emissions from
smokestacks and put in in the
ground – and they think they’ve
found a good place:
Transcript
Burning fossil fuels such as
oil and coal creates carbon
dioxide. CO2 contributes
to climate change. Samara Freemark reports
some scientists say we could
capture the emissions from
smokestacks and put in in the
ground – and they think they’ve
found a good place:
It’s called carbon capture: collecting CO2 from smokestacks, liquefying it, and piping it underground for permanent storage.
A big question is exactly where to bury the carbon dioxide so it doesn’t escape.
A new study from Rutgers University says one good place might be the underwater lava formations that run all along the eastern seaboard.
Dennis Kent is one of the study’s authors. He says the formations are full of basins that could double as CO2 reservoirs. And they’re conveniently close to population centers.
“You have to get it from the power plant to wherever the reservoir is. So having it closer would be an advantage. Take the Co2 down the road somewhere and lock it away.”
The study measured the capacity of one basin off the coast of New Jersey. It found the basin could hold a gigaton of carbon dioxide- or, the amount of gas a coal-burning power plant produces in four decades.
Ted Nace says a lot of the slow down in building coal-burning power plants is driven by economics, but also a lot of it’s still being driven by climate concerns. (Photo courtesy of NREL/Warren Gretz)
