Tag: carbon

Coal: Dirty Past, Hazy Future (Part 3)

  • 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)

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.

For The Environment Report, I’m Matt Sepic.

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Coal: Dirty Past, Hazy Future (Part 4)

  • Four Corners Power Plant is one of the dirtiest in the country, based on its emissions of nitrogen oxide, carbon dioxide and mercury. Under a cap-and-trade system, plants like this would have to cut pollution or buy carbon permits. (Photo by Daniel Kraker)

President Obama wants the U.S. to reduce the greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide that contribute to global warming. Congress is considering a carbon cap-and-trade program. Lester Graham reports on what that will mean to coal-burning industries and your power bill:

Transcript

President Obama wants the U.S. to reduce the greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide that contribute to global warming. Congress is considering a carbon cap-and-trade program. Lester Graham reports on what that will mean to coal-burning industries and your power bill:

For all the talk about carbon cap-and-trade, few people really understand what it is. And no one really knows what it will end up costing you on your electric bill – at least not yet.

The President wants carbon dioxide polluters such as coal-burning power plants to cut how much carbon dioxide they spew from the smokestacks.

So, the government is now designing a plan to cap the total amount of carbon dioxide pollution nation-wide. Once that amount is set, each polluter is allotted a limited amount of allowances to release carbon dioxide. Go over that allowance and the polluter has to pay per ton of CO2 released. Don’t use all of the allowances, and a company is free to trade them -–for a price—to others who need the allowances.

Over time that nation-wide cap will keep get lower, making carbon pollution more and more expensive.

How much of that cost ends up on your electricity bill is the big question.

There are some wildly different predictions. Some lobby groups indicate cap-and-trade could nearly double electric rates. But politics really plays into many of those predictions.

We went to analysts at Point Carbon. It’s a respected world-wide carbon market consultant. Veronique Bugnion says Point Carbon made some estimates based on President Obama’s carbon cap-and-trade plan in his proposed budget.

“Now, in terms of the U.S. average, what we calculated is that it would represent a roughly seven% increase over current electricity rates.”

That’s the average.

But, if your power company uses mostly coal instead of hydro-power or nuclear or wind or solar, Bugnion says it could cost more.

“At the extreme, in the regions that are essentially entirely coal dependent, the impact would be closer to anywhere between ten and 15-percent.”

President Obama says says a carbon cap-and-trade scheme can be designed so that it smooths out the effect on consumers who live in a coal-dependent area.

“The way it’s structured has to take into account regional differences. It has to protect consumers from huge spikes in electricity prices. So, there are a lot of technical issues that are going to have to be sorted through.”

And Congress is just beginning to sort through them. But coal and power companies as well as big oil and industries that use a lot of energy are lobbying hard to kill carbon cap-and-trade or make sure doesn’t cost them, or their shareholders, more than they want.

That leaves most of us wondering what reducing the greenhouse gases will end up costing us after Congress gets finished.

Sandy Kline runs a small house-cleaning business called “More Grime than Time” out of her home in suburban Detroit. Because of the economy she’s lost some business lately. Times are a little tighter.

She says she’s concerned about climate change, but she’s worried what the President’s carbon cap-and-trade plan might do to her power bill and her family budget.

“What he’s proposing sounds like a good idea –big picture– as far as the greenhouse emissions and that, but, you know, on an individual basis it can really hurt people like me.”

She wonders if consumer pressure isn’t enough to get those power companies using coal-burning plants to change. But, that could take decades. Climate scientists say we don’t have that kind of time. We have to do something to reduce greenhouse gases now.

So, experts say you should get ready. Since we don’t know exactly what cap-and-trade will do to electricity rates, it might be a good idea to reduce your power usage. Take advantage of the current tax incentives to get more energy efficient appliances and tighten up your home.

They say, even if rates do go up because of carbon cap-and-trade, if you’re using less power, it could be you won’t see a much of a difference when you get your electric bill.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Coal: Dirty Past, Hazy Future (Part 5)

  • 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.

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Cap and Trade Program Hits a Snag

A regional carbon cap-and-trade program was supposed to be a model for the nation. Lester Graham reports now environmentalists are hoping it doesn’t set a bad example for the federal government:

Transcript

A regional carbon cap-and-trade program was supposed to be a model for the nation. Lester Graham reports now environmentalists are hoping it doesn’t set a bad example for the federal government:

Ten northeastern states have been working for years on an agreement to reduce the emissions that cause global warming.

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative limits the amount of carbon dioxide power plants will be allowed to emit and puts a price on carbon allowances.

But, the Governor of New York, David Paterson, is changing the rules for his state.

The New York power generators complained existing contracts don’t include all the costs of the allowances. So, Governor Paterson plans to give those power generators some free allowances. That puts the other nine states’ power companies at a disadvantage.

Luis Martinez is with the environmental group the Natural Resources Defence Council.

“You know, I’m wishing, I’m hoping that he changes his mind once he realizes how important this is not only for the people of New York, but as a precedent for federal policy-making.”

Martinez hopes the other governors in the Northeast don’t follow Paterson’s example.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Jobs Versus Environment Debate

Congress will soon debate a carbon-cap-and-trade program. Lester Graham reports that debate will renew arguments about jobs versus the environment:

Transcript

Congress will soon debate a carbon-cap-and-trade program. Lester Graham reports that debate will renew arguments about jobs versus the environment:

This is an old argument with a new twist.

It goes like this. The economy is a mess. We need jobs. So right now we should worry less about the environment and more about jobs.

Putting a price on carbon emissions will gradually make fossil fuels like coal more expensive to burn.

That will cost big corporations that use a lot of energy. Opponents of cap-and-trade say it’s a job-killer.

But at the same time, carbon-cap-and-trade will make solar and wind more attractive. And that could create green collar jobs.

Environmental activists such as the Environmental Defense Fund’s Tony Kreindler say that won’t stop the critics.

“You’re always going to have defenders of the status quo claiming that it’s going to be economic ruin.”

But, a growing number of business leaders see carbon-cap-and-trade as a way to invest in an energy future that pollutes less and makes the U.S. more energy independent.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Nasa Launches Carbon Satellite

  • 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.

For The Environment Report I’m Vincent Duffy.

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Mountaintop Mining (Part One)

  • In his last days, President Bush changed rules that made it easier to blow off the tops of mountains to mine for coal. (Photo by Sandra Sleight-Brennan)

One of the last things the Bush administration did was change a rule to allow coal mining companies to dump debris into streams. That means one mining company will be able to remove one of the last mountaintops in a West Virginia county. Sandra Sleight-Brennan reports:

Transcript

One of the last things the Bush administration did was change a rule to allow coal mining companies to dump debris into streams. That means one mining company will be able to remove one of the last mountaintops in a West Virginia county. Sandra Sleight-Brennan reports:

Gary Anderson takes me out on his back porch and all you can see is Coal River Mountain. Even on a cold, gray winter day, it’s beautiful.

“All of that mountain range of there, that is Coal River Mountain– that mountain runs for about 3 miles up there.”

When he retired, Gary and his wife Barbara moved from Connecticut back to her family home in Colcord, West Virginia.

“That’s basically what brought us back. Is the mountains and the beauty. We grew up here and we came back to spend the rest of our days here. We thought were coming back to what we remember– the beautiful mountains. And really they just started doing the mountaintop removal over here in the past couple years.”

Other mountains in the area– Cherry Pond Mountinan and Kayford Mountain have been flattened so energy companies could get to the coal inside them.
Over one million acres in West Virginia, Virginia, and Kentucky have already been leveled to mine the thin vein of coal.

The mining companies dynamite the tops off to get to the coal underneath.

“Once in awhile you’ll see a big puff of dust go up in the air like a bomb has been dropped and in awhile it will settle down and then it will happen again the next day.”

Mountains are shorted and flattened–- often by 100’s of feet to get to a 14-inch seam of coal. What the dynamite loosens is dumped in the valleys. Thousands of miles of streams have been covered over and nature destroyed.

It’s pretty simple. They put dynamite in the mountain and blow it up.

Joe Lovett is the Executive Director of the Appalachian Center on the Economy and the Environment. He’s been fighting mountaintop removal for the past 10 years.

It’s like a layer cake. The mountain is like a layer cake and that coal is the icing. The dirt and rock in between is the cake. There is a lot more dirt and rock and mining waste than there is coal. And when they blow up the mountain the dirt and rock swell. So they have even a bigger problem because they have more material than they know what to do with. So, as they blow the mountain up they need to find something to do with the dirt and rock and they dump it into the streams and the valleys.

Dumping into streams was stopped. The Surface Mining Act’s Stream Buffer rule protected the streams. But the new Bush administration rule changes that.

Joe Lovett says that Coal River Mountain fair game for Massey Energy to blow the top off and fill the valleys.

“We have always believed that the rule prevented these fills, that and I guess so did the coal industry and the Office of Surface Mining because this has been the main thing that the coal industry has wanted from the Bush administration for a long time is that change in this rule.”

Lovett says its not good for the environment and it’s not good for the local economy.

“We are taking mountains that could support sustainable timber jobs for generations and, in a few short years, destroying them forever and mining them in such a way that those forests will never come back.”

The mining industry argues that we need this inexpensive energy source in order to be energy independent. But, says Lovett and other environmentalists, if valley fills were outlawed tomorrow the cost of coal for our electric rates would only go up by pennies.

I’ll also talk to an official of the mining industry about why this type of mining needs to continue. The fact it provides American energy and jobs and that West Virginia’s economy depends upon it.

Back at Gary Anderson’s home, he wonders how it came to this.

Who gave them the right to blow the tops of mountains off to get the coal? I mean, that’s what gets me. Where, back in time, did they get the permission to come in and just below the mountains up? It’s really unbelievable. You can’t go back and reconstruct a mountain that’s been here for hundreds of millions of years. Once they’re gone, they’re gone.”

But, the mining companies now have the legal right to level the top of Coal River Mountain and fill up the valleys and streams above Anderson’s home.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sandra Sleight-Brennan.

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States Band Together on New Gasoline Standard

  • The partnering states want to reduce the amount greenhouse gases coming from car tailpipes. (Photo by Ben VonWaggoner)

Eleven Northeastern states are working together to create a new fuel standard that will mean lower greenhouse gases.
Julie Grant reports that means, when you fill up your car in those states, the gas won’t be quite as bad for the environment:

Transcript

Eleven Northeastern states are working together to create a new fuel standard that will mean lower greenhouse gases.
Julie Grant reports that means, when you fill up your car in those states, the gas won’t be quite as bad for the environment:

The partnering states want to reduce the amount greenhouse gases coming from car tailpipes.

Ian Bowles is Secretary of Energy with the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection.

He says the states would prefer that the federal government take the lead on this issue, but they’re doing what they can to limit carbon emissions from cars and trucks as soon as possible.

“If everyone waits and sits on their hands until there’s a global agreement, it’s going to take a long time to get anything done.”

Bowles expects the eleven-state agreement to spur investment into new types of ethanol and biofuels. And he says that will mean new jobs in science, engineering, and at fuel refineries.

“We’ll be creating a much bigger market for biofuels. Jobs will get created and greenhouse gasses will be cut.”

The states expect to have a legally binding agreement on the low carbon fuel standard by the end of the year.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Climate Statement From the Future Prez


President-elect Barack Obama says
America will open a new chapter in dealing
with climate change. Lester Graham reports
the Senator confirmed he will work toward
the plan he outlined during the presidential
campaign:

Transcript

President-elect Barack Obama says
America will open a new chapter in dealing
with climate change. Lester Graham reports
the Senator confirmed he will work toward
the plan he outlined during the presidential
campaign:

In a surprise video statement that opened the Governors’ Global Climate Summit in Los
Angeles, Obama said there’ll be no more denial or delay. As soon as he’s president,
America will help lead toward global cooperation on climate change, starting with a
federal carbon cap-and-trade program and making investments in clean energy.

Bill Kovacs with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce likes the investments idea, but
cautions restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions could hurt business.

“You need to be very sensitive, especially in a stressed-out economy that you could end
up imposing very huge costs on virtually everybody who participates in the economy.”

President-elect Obama said in the video statement he’ll work with business.

“Any company that’s willing to invest in clean energy will have an ally in Washington.”

Environmentalists applauded the statement. It’s the first on climate change since
Barack Obama won the presidency.

For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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Big Nuke Company Seeks Co2 Cuts

  • The Exelon nuclear power plant in Braidwood, Illinois (Photo by Lester Graham)

US corporations are struggling
with a new issue: reducing their carbon
footprint. They’re anticipating federal
requirements to reduce carbon outputs to
limit climate change. They’re moving now
so they won’t be at a competitive disadvantage.
One industry would seem to have an edge:
nuclear power. Nuclear doesn’t emit greenhouse
gases such as carbon dioxide. But Shawn Allee reports the nation’s biggest nuclear
power company might not be able to take advantage
of this obvious option:

Transcript

US corporations are struggling
with a new issue: reducing their carbon
footprint. They’re anticipating federal
requirements to reduce carbon outputs to
limit climate change. They’re moving now
so they won’t be at a competitive disadvantage.
One industry would seem to have an edge:
nuclear power. Nuclear doesn’t emit greenhouse
gases such as carbon dioxide. But Shawn Allee reports the nation’s biggest nuclear
power company might not be able to take advantage
of this obvious option:

Recently I dropped in on a corporate meet-and-greet in Chicago.

I waded through through computerized presentations, and loads of free pastry and coffee,
and heard executives from Pepsi, IBM, and Staples talk about cutting their carbon
emissions.

The company most eager to talk was Exelon.

“We’re a very large power generator, we are also a very large utility company and
given our size, we have a special responsibility to help address the implications of
climate change.”

Ruth Ann Gillis is an executive Vice President at Exelon.

The company’s prepping for the day when the government makes them pay when they
put carbon into the atmosphere.

Gillis says Exelon is starting early, and plans to cut carbon emissions by fifteen million
tons a year by 2020.

“The reduction, the offset, the displacement of fifteen million tons is the equivalent
of taking three million cars a year off our roads and highways. And for nothing
more, everyone should be hopeful we are indeed successful, because it will make a
difference.”

To make that difference, Exelon will promote efficiency, cut the coal used in some of its
power stations, and slash its own energy use in buildings and vehicles.

I head to one of Exelon’s power plants to learn another way Exelon might cut its carbon
output.

Plant Manager Brian Hanson says the idea is to squeeze more power out of existing
nuclear power stations.

Brian Hanson: “One of our strategies of our 2020 Carbon iniative is to increase
power in some of our reactors, to take advantage of some of the flexibility built into
the power plants.”

Shawn Allee: “When you say flexibility what do you mean by that?”

Hanson: “They were built with extra pumps and systems that would let us operate
at higher power.”

Allee: “Do you need somebody’s permission to do that?”

Hanson: “As part of our license to operate the facility we’re only allowed to operate
at a certain power level, but to go above that we have to submit a formal
engineering study to the nuclear regulatory commission.”

But why upgrade? Why squeeze more power out of old plants? Why not build new
nuclear power plants, too?

Well, Exelon would like to. But it’s not easy.

Tom O’Neil is Vice President of New Plant Development at Exelon.

He says Exelon wants a new nuclear power plant in Texas.

But no one’s licensed a nuke plant for a dozen years and it’s common for projects to get
canceled.

So Exelon’s got some blanks to fill in.

“How much will it cost, can we finance it, what’s the political support, what do we
think the regulatory environment will look like. Those are all factors that generate
risk. Can we mitigate the risk and move forward with what would be a very
expensive construction project with some confidence that we can get it done, on time
and be profitable at the end.”

If the company pulls that off, it would make more electricity, but emit almost no new
carbon.

And its overall carbon footprint would shrink. Helping reduce emissions that cause
global warming.

But, even Exelon – the country’s biggest nuclear power company – might not be able to
turn to its core business to save the world.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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