Coal Power Plants Go Up in Smoke

  • 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.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

Biomass Power’s Footprint (Part 2)

  • The future site of Russell Biomass Power Plant is already used as storage space for chips that are sold to another biomass operation.(Photo courtesy of Shawn Allee)

Biomass power is the new-fangled alternative energy source that uses a pretty old technology: basically, you just burn plants, usually wood, for electrical power.

Many states are looking into biomass power because they have plenty of wood and sometimes wind or solar farms meet resistance from neighbors.

For a while, Massachussetts looked like it would give biomass power a big boost.
Shawn Allee found the state could change its mind:

Transcript

Biomass power is the new-fangled alternative energy source that uses a pretty old technology: basically, you just burn plants, usually wood, for electrical power.

Many states are looking into biomass power because they have plenty of wood and sometimes wind or solar farms meet resistance from neighbors.

For a while, Massachussetts looked like it would give biomass power a big boost.
Shawn Allee found the state could change its mind.

A guy named John Bos gives me a tour of an old lumber mill.

It’s in Western Massachussetts, in a town called Russell.
The mill’s almost in ruins.

“So you can see this … it looks like movie set out of a bad , bad-guy movie.”

“Definitely. Watch your footing there .. ”

This factory used to turn wood into lumber, charcoal and paper.

Bos’ brother and other investors want to give the place a new life … but wood will still play a key role.

“We are walking into the site of what will be Russell Biomass.”

The Russell biomass plant would be a power station that burns wood to generate electricity.

It’d burn through half a million tons of wood each year.

And if you think that’s a lot of trees going up in smoke, Bos says the plant will use mostly waste wood.

“Our wood will come from discarded pallets, stump removal from development. Road side trimming. Every year there’s road-side trimming to keep utility lines clear. There’s a lot of waste wood out there.”

This is controversial talk in Western Massachussetts.

Critics of biomass power don’t trust the idea that local supplies of “waste wood” will hold out since investors are planning five biomass power plants.

Chris Matera is one critic.
Matera shows me what he fears could happen if projects like Russell Biomass come through.

He takes me to forest that surrounds a long, thin reservoir.

The forest filters rainwater and keeps the reservoir clean and clear.
The reservoir happens to supply water to the Boston metro area.
Anyway, Matera shows me there’s logging here.

“We’re looking at big stumps and rutted out muddy areas on a steep slope that actually dr ain into the watershed eventually. It’s not gonna help the water quality. This is a place you’re not even allowed to cross-country ski to protect the watershed. A lot of places you’re not even allowed to hike.”

These trees were NOT cut for biomass power, but Matera fears new biomass plants will use up cheap waste wood …
Then, they’d resort to logging like this to keep producing electricity.
And the water quality in reservoirs, streams and rivers would suffer.

There’s been plenty of heat between biomass proponents and their critics.

One sticking point is whether Massachussetts should subsidize biomass power in the same way it does other renewable power sources, like wind and solar.

The state hired an outside consulting group called Manomet to help it decide.

“We’ve been asked by the state of Massachusetts to answer some basic fundamental questions about woody biomass energy.”

John Hagan is Manomet’s president.
Hagan’s supposed to answer whether there’s enough waste wood or any kind of wood to supply biomass plants planned for Massachussetts.

He says his group’s not entirely finished, but …

“I think if four, fifty megawatt plants went in, they’d almost certainly have to pull wood from beyond the boundaries of the State of Massachusetts.”

Hagan says this doesn’t necessarily mean forests in the state will suffer … his group’s not finished with its report, after all.

But he thinks it’s good Massaschussetts is questioning whether biomass deserves extra financial help.

Hagan says states are subsidizing biomass without thinking through all the effects … not just on local jobs … but also forests, and local air and water pollution.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Is Wood Biomass Just Blowing Smoke? (Part 1)

  • President of Manomet consulting group John Hagan says the bottom line is that biomass can be carbon neutral ... if subsidies and policies are precise.(Photo courtesy of Shawn Allee)

State governments often mandate power companies to buy alternative energy.
They figure it’s worth having everyone buck up and pay extra since these don’t contribute carbon dioxide emissions that change the climate.But what energy sources should make the cut?
Shawn Allee found one is getting lots of scrutiny.

Transcript

State governments often mandate power companies to buy alternative energy.
They figure it’s worth having everyone buck up and pay extra since these don’t contribute carbon dioxide emissions that change the climate.

But what energy sources should make the cut?

Shawn Allee found one is getting lots of scrutiny.

Bob Cleaves heads up the Biomass Power Association.

He spends a lot of time pitching the idea that electricity made by burning wood is worth government help.
After all, he can’t sell the idea of biomass on price.

Electricity generated from wood had to compete with coal and natural gas and it became very difficult to operate these plants on a profitable basis.

Cleaves says other alternative energy sources are expensive, too, but biomass has extra benefits …
He says try running solar panels at night – biomass power plants run 24-7.

But Cleaves admits he’s got explaining to do when it comes to carbon emissions.

You know, from burning wood.

when you burn something you release CO2 …

For years, Cleaves could follow-up with a simple argument.

He’d just run through the carbon cycle idea you might recall from high school.

You know, you burn trees.
That releases CO2.
Then, as trees re-grow, they absorb that same carbon again …

These are carbons that are recycled into the environment in a closed-loop fashion.

This argument often won out.
Many states give biomass from wood subsidies, since they considered it carbon neutral.

The US House came close to doing the same thing last year.

But lately, biomass’ rep got into trouble.

Well, the carbon issue came up in the fall as a result of an article published in Science magazine.

The title of the article was “Fixing a Critical Climate Accounting Error.”
It challenged the idea that biomass power from wood or anything else is always carbon neutral.

Critics now use the article’s arguments against biomass subsidies.

“This policy is intended to reduce carbon emissions and it’s doing the exact opposite.”

This is Jana Chicoine, an anti-biomass activist from Massachussetts.

She says, sure, trees you cut for power now will grow back and then re-absorb carbon.

But not soon.

“It will create a pulse of carbon emissions that will spike for decades. Policy makers are telling us we are in a carbon crisis and that we have to reduce carbon emissions now.”

So, Chicoine says it makes no sense to subsidize biomass technology.

It’s going to harm public policy on clean energy. Those funds should be going to the truly valuable contributors to the energy problem like wind and solar, conservation and efficiency.

Well, Chicoine and other biomass critics won a temporary victory in Massachusetts.

The state was leaning toward subsidizing biomass power, but it held off a final decision.

It’s waiting for advice from an environmental consulting group called Manomet.

President John Hagan says people expect a simple answer: would a biomass industry in Massachusetts be carbon neutral or not?

“The last thing you want to hear a scientist say is, it’s complicated, but I’m afraid it is in this case.”

The latest research suggests some biomass power operations can be carbon neutral while others won’t be.

The best operations would use tree trimmings or waste wood like sawdust. That keeps more trees in the ground … absorbing carbon.

Biomass power plants prefer to use waste wood anyway, since it’s cheap.
But Hagan says maybe more biomass plants will all chase the same scrap wood.

Prices will rise … and suddenly standing trees start looking cheaper.

It’s like a puzzle, when you push on one piece, eighteen other things move.

Hagan says the bottom line is that biomass can be carbon neutral … if subsidies and policies are precise.
He says policies should work like scalpels.

But often, they’re simple … and work more like big axes.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Using Grass for Electricity

  • 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)

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.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Interview: Coal’s Future

  • 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.

Related Links

Hanukkah’s Green Messages

  • President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama watch as a child lights the Hanukkah candles at a reception in the White House on December 16th, 2009. (Photo by Samantha Appleton, courtesy of the White House)

A lot of people worry that we make
too much waste during the holidays.
But some religious leaders are trying
to change that. Julie Grant reports
on one rabbi who wants people to see
Hanukkah as a holiday about sustainability:

Transcript

A lot of people worry that we make
too much waste during the holidays.
But some religious leaders are trying
to change that. Julie Grant reports
on one rabbi who wants people to see
Hanukkah as a holiday about sustainability:

Jewish people light candles each of the eight nights of Hanukkah – a tradition dates back 2200 hundred years – when the Jews reclaimed the Holy Temple in Jerusalem from the Greeks.

Rabbi Arthur Waskow says they needed oil to light the temple.

“They lit the menorah with just one day’s worth of oil, and, according to the legend, it lasted for eight days, until the new oil was ready.”

A few years ago, Rabbi Waskow realized this is an environmental message for people today.

“This could be seen as the conservation of oil.”

So Waskow wants people to see Hanukkah as a time to conserve natural resources in their own lives – and in public policy.

He’s encouraging people to drive less,
to support biking, railways and walking paths, and
to rest more, so we emit less carbon.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Slash-And-Burn in Indonesia

  • Indonesia's peat forests are home to Sumatran tigers, Asian elephants and orangutans. (Photo by Ann Dornfeld)

Officials from every country in the
world have gathered in Copenhagen
this week to build the
framework for a global climate treaty.
One of the goals is to slow the
destruction of forests in developing
countries. Those forests process and
store massive amounts of carbon dioxide.
Ann Dornfeld reports:

Transcript

Officials from every country in the
world have gathered in Copenhagen
this week to build the
framework for a global climate treaty.
One of the goals is to slow the
destruction of forests in developing
countries. Those forests process and
store massive amounts of carbon dioxide.
Ann Dornfeld reports:

Preserving forests will be a huge debate in Copenhagen. Poor countries want wealthier countries to compensate them for not cutting the forests for lumber and to convert it to farmland. To find out why that might be important, you have to visit a place like this peat forest on the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

(sound of the forest)

Forests like this one are home to orangutans, Sumatran tigers and Asian elephants. But these forests may be more important for what lies beneath their marshy floors. The peat is composed of thousands of years’ worth of organic material. Indonesia’s peat forests are storage units for much of the world’s carbon. And they’re being destroyed at an alarming rate.

Not far down the road, Greenpeace Indonesia campaigner Bustar Maitar looks out on a charred landscape. You’d never know a forest stood here just a few months ago.

“Is the no more ecosystem here. No more forest here.”

Only a few burnt tree trunks are standing. Sour smoke curls up from the blackened ground. Maitar says this fire has been burning for a month.

“Fire is coming from not from in the top of the ground, but the haze is coming from inside. It means it’s the underground fire, especially in peatland. And underground fire is very difficult to handle.”

Indonesia’s peat forests are rapidly being logged, drained and burned in order to clear the land for tree farms and palm oil plantations.

The peat can be dozens of feet deep. When it’s burned, the carbon it’s been storing is released as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. All of that burning peat has made Indonesia the world’s third largest emitter of CO2.

Until recently, industrialized nations topped the list of greenhouse gas emitters. Now the United States shares that shortlist with developing nations like China, India and Brazil. As these countries industrialize, demand for timber and open space has stripped many of their forests bare. But leaders of developing countries insist their nations should be allowed to do what it takes to build their economies – even if that leads to climate change.

Paul Winn works on forest and climate issues for Greenpeace. He says the only alternative is for wealthy countries to pay developing countries to slow their emissions.

“If the industrialized world is serious about climate change, it’s essential. It just has to be.”

Winn says wealthy countries have pledged 45 billion dollars so far to help poor countries reduce emissions. But he says that’s just a start.

“If you compare that to what the industrialized world spent on protecting its banks and its financial institutions during the financial crisis, it’s a pittance. And it’s far more essential that they do it now. Because these forests are threatened, and the emissions that go up into the atmosphere are going to come back and bite the industrialized world if they don’t fund its protection.”

Some of the funding plans on the table at Copenhagen would still involve drastic changes to the world’s forest ecosystems. The UN’s current plan would give pulp and paper corporations in Indonesia carbon credits to convert peat forests into acacia plantations.

Winn says that’s the opposite of what needs to happen. Greenpeace and other environmental groups want industrialized countries to fund a moratorium on logging.

One complicating factor is the rampant corruption in many developing countries.

“It is a concern. And I would imagine that’s why many of the industrialized countries haven’t committed to funding.”

Winn says a thorough verification process would ensure that if countries allowed logging, they’d have to repay donor nations.

Winn is in Copenhagen to promote forest protection in the developing world. He says he doesn’t expect anything major to come out of this conference – but hopefully it will lay some groundwork.

For The Environment Report, I’m Ann Dornfeld.

Related Links

Interview: Doctors Call for Cleaner Coal

  • Dr. Alan Lockwood is a Professor of Neurology and Nuclear Medicine, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY (Photo courtesy of the Physicians for Social Responsibility)

A group of doctors, Physicians for
Social Responsibility, has issued a
new report called “Coal’s Assault On
Human Health.” It explains the
health impacts of burning coal, but
it goes beyond that. Lester Graham
caught up with the principle author
of the report – Dr. Alan Lockwood.
Lockwood is a professor of neurology
and nuclear medicine at the University
of Buffalo. He says their report also
looked at the possible health effects
of climate change:

Transcript

A group of doctors, Physicians for
Social Responsibility, has issued a
new report called “Coal’s Assault On
Human Health.” It explains the
health impacts of burning coal, but
it goes beyond that. Lester Graham
caught up with the principle author
of the report – Dr. Alan Lockwood.
Lockwood is a professor of neurology
and nuclear medicine at the University
of Buffalo. He says their report also
looked at the possible health effects
of climate change:

Dr. Alan Lockwood: Well, first of all, it would change the temperature. So, more people would have heat-related illnesses. Insect vectors that carry malaria and dengue will increase their distribution. The possibility of reduced crop yields and, secondarily, is starvation. And then, of course, there’ll be the increase in sea level, which will inundate many countries that have low-lying areas – such as Bangladesh and some other countries in the Pacific – will be totally under water. So, all of those things add up to making this an important element of the coal story.

Lester Graham: It’s often noted that the public health costs of power from burning coal is never really calculated into the overall cost of the energy – this report tackles that. And you use that to justify some of the recommendations – including no new coal-burning power plants, cutting other pollutants from existing plants. Realistically, do you think anyone is really going to go for that?

Dr. Lockwood: Well, unless you set the bar at the appropriate level, you’re never going to achieve the outcome that would be optimum. So, our position is that this is the target we’d like to see, and then we will work with people and do our educational mission in order to get as close to that target as is possible.

Graham: How do you expect this will affect the debate over the climate change bill in the Senate?

Dr. Lockwood: Physicians, according to polling information, have very high credibility. So we are a different voice that brings this argument to the floor. And, hopefully we’ll be a component of the legislative process and the input of information that comes to legislators as they grapple with tough decisions.

Graham: You’re talking about further reducing some of the pollutants caused by coal. But the EPA, in all of the government’s wisdom, has decided, ‘well, we are at a level where these exposures are safe to the public.’ Why do you dispute that?

Dr. Lockwood: No one has been able to demonstrate a level below which these pollutants are really completely safe. So, the general consensus is, that the lower they are, the less likely they are to effect health in an adverse manner – producing things like attacks of asthma, myocardial infarcts, strokes, things of that nature.

Graham: There’s a huge campaign going on right now by the coal industry touting the benefits of clean coal. I wonder if you think there is the possibility of clean coal, now or in the future, or if we have to find alternatives to coal altogether.

Dr. Lockwood: Well, we advocate alternatives to coal. The coal industry, first of all, is extremely well-financed. They’re working very hard to convince people that it’s possible to use coal in a manner that’s clean and doesn’t pollute the environment. But that’s a concept that’s more in the future – if it ever proves to be practical.

Graham: Sounds like you’re a clean coal skeptic.

Dr. Lockwood: I’m from Missouri.

Graham: The Show Me State!

Dr. Lockwood: Well, I’m a clinical neurologist and I’m a scientist. So I want to see proof and data rather than ‘pie in the sky’ claims.

Graham: Dr. Alan Lockwood is the principal author of the just released report ‘Coal’s Assault On Human Health’ from the Physicians For Social Responsibility. Thanks very much for talking time to talk with us.

Dr. Lockwood: Thank you for having me.

Related Links

Your Power Bill in the Future

  • The Energy Information Administration says power bills could also fluctuate based on whether we develop cheap low-carbon coal technology. (Photo source: Frank C. Muller at Wikimedia Commons)

The price we pay for power in the
future will depend on the kind of
power plants we invest in. That’s
according to a report that examines
proposed climate change regulations.
Shawn Allee has more:

Transcript

The price we pay for power in the
future will depend on the kind of
power plants we invest in. That’s
according to a report that examines
proposed climate change regulations.
Shawn Allee has more:

The Energy Information Administration is the federal government’s crystal ball when it comes to energy policy.

The EIA looked at the House version of a big climate change bill. The Senate takes it up next month.

Forecast director John Conti says new regulations could cost each household between $12 and $227 more each year within a decade.

Conti says there’s a range because it’s not exactly clear how much it’ll cost to switch to low-carbon power sources, like nuclear.

“For most technologies, you have a good idea of how much they’re going to cost. Of course, we haven’t built a nuclear plant in twenty or so years and, as a result, there’re varying cost estimates and people can debate, I think, for a large extent, until that first plant is indeed built.”

Conti says power bills could also fluctuate based on whether we develop cheap low-carbon coal technology.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Sending a City’s Garbage Up in Flames

  • Michigan Waste Energy Chief Engineer Brad Laesser checks the cameras and emissions data at Detroit's incinerator. (Photo by Sarah Hulett)

Back in the 1980s and 90s,
dozens of communities across
the US built incinerators to
get rid of their trash. Many
of them financed the massive
furnaces with bonds they’re just
now paying off. And now that
those debts are off their books,
some cities are re-thinking whether
burning trash makes environmental
and economic sense. Sarah Hulett reports:

Transcript

Back in the 1980s and 90s,
dozens of communities across
the US built incinerators to
get rid of their trash. Many
of them financed the massive
furnaces with bonds they’re just
now paying off. And now that
those debts are off their books,
some cities are re-thinking whether
burning trash makes environmental
and economic sense. Sarah Hulett reports:

About 300 garbage trucks dump their loads each day at the nation’s biggest
municipal incinerator.

“You see the conveyor house going across, that’s conveying the fuel to the
boilers.”

That’s Brad Laesser. He’s the chief engineer at the Michigan Waste Energy
facility in Detroit.

The “fuel” he’s talking about is shredded-up trash.

And he says that’s the beauty of facilities like this. They produce electricity.

“So right now we’re putting out about 50 megawatts. But we can go to
here.”

Laesser points to 70 on the output gauge. That’s enough electricity to power
about half the homes in Detroit. And the leftover steam is used to heat and
cool more than 200 buildings downtown.

Sounds great, right?

Well, Brad Van Guilder of the Ecology Center says not so much.

“Be wary of people coming and talking to you about large, expensive magic
machines that are going to dispose of your waste for you.”

Van Guilder says municipal waste incinerators are major contributors to
smog, and spew dangerous pollutants like dioxin, lead and mercury.

And he says huge furnaces like Detroit’s make it nearly impossible to get
viable recycling efforts off the ground.

“Think about what’s in the trash that you throw out every day. One of the
most important components is paper and plastic.”

Both can be recycled. But Detroit has not had a curbside recycling program
for the past 20 years. That’s because the contract with the incinerator
required that all trash picked up at the curb be used to keep the furnaces
burning.

That changed this summer, though – when the contract expired. Now about
30,000 households are part of a curbside recycling pilot project. And there
are drop-off sites where people can take their recyclables.

(sound of recycling center)

Matthew Naimi heads an organization that runs several drop-off sites, and –
maybe surprisingly – he’s okay with the incinerator. Naimi says he sees
trash disposal and recycling as two separate industries.

“I realized that if we shut the incinerator down before we got a good
established recycling program running, we’d be burying our recyclables
instead of burning them.”

And officials with Covanta – which runs the Detroit incinerator – agree that
recycling and incineration can work together.

Paul Gilman is the chief sustainability officer for Covanta. He says landfills
are the problem – not recycling.

“Landfills and energy-from-waste facilities, that’s where the competition is.
It isn’t at the upper step of recycling.”

He says cheap landfill space makes the economics of incineration difficult.

But he’s hoping that could change with the passage of a climate change bill
in Washington. Gilman says in Europe and Asia, trash incinerators like
Detroit’s don’t get treated the same way as power plants fueled with coal or
natural gas.

“So in Asia, under the Kyoto protocols, a facility like this actually generates
what are called greenhouse gas credits. They’re reducing greenhouse gasses
by the act of processing solid waste and keeping it from going to a landfill.”

Where trash produces methane – a potent greenhouse gas.

But the people who want the incinerator shut down say they don’t believe
burning trash is the greener way to go. They want the city to landfill its
waste while it builds an aggressive recycling program.

So far, they’re not getting what they want from city leaders.

The board that oversees how Detroit handles its trash recently voted to go
with incineration for at least the next year.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sarah Hulett.

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