COAL POWER: For the first time, a court has denied a permit to a new coal-fired power plant because of climate changing pollution.
Image: ISTOCKPHOTO
-
The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
Read More »
A Georgia court this week halted construction of a new 1,200-megawatt coal-fired power plant on the Chattahoochee River, dubbed Longleaf, because backers failed to provide a plan to limit climate change–causing carbon dioxide emissions from it.
"The plant as permitted [by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources] would annually emit large amounts of air pollutants, including eight [million] to nine million tons of carbon dioxide," Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore wrote in her decision. "There was no effort to identify, evaluate or apply available technologies that would control CO2 emissions and the permit contains no CO2 emission limits…. Since CO2 is 'otherwise subject to regulation under the [Clean Air] Act,' a PSD [prevention of significant deterioration] permit cannot issue for Longleaf without CO2 emission limitations."
The decision marks the first time that potential greenhouse gas pollution has been cited as a factor in denying permission to build a new coal-fired power plant; it is also the first that hinges on a Supreme Court ruling issued last year that found the Clean Air Act gives the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the power to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions.
Environmentalists applauded the decision, noting that it is another in a recent string of victories in efforts to prevent and even reverse global warming. In the past such plans have been challenged for their emissions of other pollutants, such as acid rain–causing sulfur dioxide or smog-forming nitrogen oxides. But this time, the judge also considered the impact on climate change, says Bruce Nilles of the Sierra Club, which was among green groups that sued to stop construction of the Longleaf coal plant.
"She looked at the argument that we don't have to consider CO2 and called it 'untenable,'" Nilles says. "There are a whole range of other places where industry is trying to rush to build coal plants," including Indiana, Nevada, South Dakota and Wisconsin, among others.
Dan Riedinger, a spokesman for industry group Edison Electric Institute, says he expects Dynegy—the power company that proposed Longleaf—to appeal the decision. He notes that the industry does not disagree that greenhouse gas emissions should be regulated but believes this court decision was premature, because there currently are no such regulations on the books.
According to Riedinger, the U.S. needs coal-fired generation because alternatives cannot meet the country's energy demands. "Wind is growing phenomenally but still it's 1 percent of the pie and it's an intermittent source.... New nuclear will not be online for a decade at least and that leaves us with coal and natural gas," he says." [Natural gas] pipeline capacity is already being pushed and it's not like new wells are going to come online tomorrow with the concerns about drilling. There just aren't that many options, so coal has to be a big piece of [electricity generation]."
Coal currently provides roughly 50 percent of U.S. electricity, but the ruling is part of a larger trend toward rejecting any new coal-fired generators in the U.S., such as similar plants proposed in Kansas and Texas. Environmentalists have successfully argued that coal-fired power plants should not be constructed without greenhouse gas emission safeguards and that the EPA must regulate such emissions.
"It's part of an ongoing series of cases and challenges that are trying to get at whether the EPA not only has authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions but whether" it is obligated to use that authority, says attorney Kyle Danish, director of the climate change practice at the Washington, D.C., law firm Van Ness Feldman. Environmentalists believe that the agency is obligated to use it, but the Bush administration, which has repeatedly clashed with them, disagrees.
"There is a stark contrast between Superior Court in Georgia versus the backflips EPA has done to avoid doing their job," Nilles says. "Today, wind is cheaper than coal and solar is getting closer. You don't need to build any coal right now."
See what we're tweeting about
27 Comments
Add CommentCarbon Dioxide is NOT a pollutant.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYAHOOOO! Yet ANOTHER reason to celebrate this Fourth of July!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJesse Helms Kicked off, Georgia kills off plans for a coal plant. Yahoooo! This day just gets better and better!
Yeah sure, just like mercury.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAgain another Energy provider takes the short cut to provide cheep power at a high cost. Here in Texas they tried the same thing. By not using new generation coal fired plants these companies only add to the problem. Instead of taking the high road they go for the lowest cost with the greatest amount of pollution. GE currently makes and sells highly efficient and lower emissions plants but the electricity companies would rater pollute so that they can make more money. It is time to put the word PUBLIC UTILITY back in public utilities!!!!!!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisReally, and what oil or utility company do you work for? I guess that the Bush administration paid you to put info like that on a scientific web site!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is a pollutant if it is an undesirable by-product of the process!!
"Carbon Dioxide is NOT a pollutant. "
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWater is NOT a pollutant either and is necessary for life. Yet, too much of it and you DROWN.
As much as I hate to admit it, I would say that CAAA of 1990 does not provide a very good basis for regulating CO2. While CO2 is obviously a pollutant under the common meanng of the word, and global warming is a fact to all but the delusional; that does not mean that there was any legal basis for stretching the CAA to mean something that it was never meant to. The avenue of attack has to be getting Congress to get off of their collective methane producers and to do the job that they must do.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot in our life time will anyone in government move off their methane producing butts! Case in point here in Texas it took a great deal of public out-cry to stop the Governor from fast tracking older style coal fired plants from being built. Did our Legislature put a stop to what he was doing, NO WAY they are in the pockets of the same industry that has pushed our electricity rates through the roof by deregulating the industry. We go limited choice and they got a healthy profit! Most of the Legislature did not even know what they were voting on nor did they know how little protection we had as consumers. So, if want changed it will have to be done at the ballot box. VOTE THEM ALL OUT UNTIL THEY START DOING THE PEOPLES BUSINESS!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCongratulations to the Georgia judiciary for halting this plan from moving forward. There are plenty of less-polluting alternatives, and it is time to start exploring the use of these alternatives.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSmooth move. Stop new power generation and then complain about the high price and brownouts later. One thing we need to do is a balance of power generation. Disallowing the use of one our most common power sources coal is a bad long term solution.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs for the throw out the bums comment i agree. Kick them ALL out of office both parties!
As Will Rogers stated "Babies and politicians should be changed often and for the same reasons"
I would agree that we need to balance power generation sources but we must use the most advanced types that produces the least impact to our environment. If we do not start now the rate of lung illness, allergy, and birth defects will only increase. Just how bad are we willing to allow it to get before we say enough is enough? Oil and gas along with the energy producing industries have been polluting for decades how much dioxin, PCB's and industrial poisons do we allow in our ground water? How much waste to well allow refineries to pump into streams? How much is too much?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTell me about it FollowFacts.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThese guys (Including SA) have forgotten their second grade science class where they all learned about carbon dioxide and plants and the amazing symbiosis between plant and animal life.
Carbon dioxide is a nutrient for the most of the life on the planet.
Carbon dioxide is a trace gas in the atmosphere. Hell, there's more neon in our atmosphere than carbon dioxide.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDioxin is harmless to humans, though it makes great rat poisons. Some idiot who also thought dioxin was this horrible toxin tried to poison the Ukrainian president with it a few years back. Gave him this supposedly huge lethal dose. All he got was a really, really bad case of acne for a few weeks.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBecause Dioxin is harmless to humans.
I know that one is not suppose to respond to spammer, and/or the completely insane, yet the pain and suffering that Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has undergone, multiple operations, dialysis, detoxification; the mind staggers. While it may have taken a particularly stupid soviet operative, their version of our neocons, to choose a carcinogen over an accute poison; to attempt compare his suffering to a case of acne makes about as much sense as pretending that global warming is not occuring. Sometimes, I really wonder if these denialist have a soul at all, the ability to comprehend good and evil. By their actions the seem to betray all that which the Chrisian tradition holds to be the tenants of morality. There seems to be this large percentage of the population that has no problem with waggering human extinction against personal comfort. I want my own child to have a decent world, with places of green and sweet rain. How can anyone sell my childs future so cheaply?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTell the Bald Eagle that Dioxin is not a poison! Yes carbon dioxide is a pollutant because it is an undesirable by-product of burning carbon. Yes plants do turn it into oxygen and it was not second grade unless your in third grade at this point and have never heard of ACID RAIN! Excess of any emissions that we humans produce will and has caused a great deal of harm to the environment. Plus if we keep cutting down trees and reduce our green areas to pavement or cover them with cement your going to breathing carbon dioxide because that is all that will be left to breath. Remember we are leaving this planet for our children if you need a reminder of what polluted air does to people take a look at the air in Beijing do you want to run in that mess?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe fact is, the dose of Dioxin he received should have killed thousands. Dioxin is not a deadly toxin to humans.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSave the apocalyptic scenarios of doom and gloom for the uneducated. Let me tell you what kind of world your child will grow up in if the environmentalist movement has its way.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's called East Germany in 1980. You children will live in misery and squalor while the ruling class drive around in cadillacs, telling them they must sacrifice for the good of the planet.
If you want to see evil face to face, look at the environmentalist movement. The death of millions of children can be laid directly at their feet (DDT).
Acid rain is another environmentalist lie. Notice no one is talking about it much anymore.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy? Because it doesn't exist. It turns out all that happened was that our measurements go more accurate.
I remember the predictions. The entire northeast corridor and all of southeastern Canada would be nothing but stands of dead trees in 20 years.
It didn't happen. Another environmentalist prediction that was false, but got you to surrender a little more of your freedom.
We passed Acid Rain legislation, we did a cap and trade program for SO2. Law and Regulation required a large percentage of U.S. and Canadian sources to install scrubbers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHello frgough ,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Acid rain is another environmentalist lie."
Evidence? You know as in a peer reviewed journal article that demonstrates that the basics of Chemistry are false.
So can you tell us what is wrong with the following?
H2O (l) + CO2 (g) � H2CO3 (aq)
Your Noble Prize awaits you. Also note we have not even begun to discuss SO2 chemical interactions.
Hello frgough,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Carbon dioxide is a trace gas in the atmosphere. Hell, thefre's more neon in our atmosphere than carbon dioxide."
Since Nitrogen, Oxygen and NEON are all transparent to the relevant spectrum of the sun perhaps you could explain why Earth does not have the same temperature variations as the moon?
Remember, that H20 freezes at 0 degrees C and the higher you go the colder it gets. You did learn something about the Water Cycle in school?
BTW, Neon is at 15 ppm while CO2 is 387 ppm in the atmosphere.
Source:
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761578914/Neon.html#s2
Hint look at the interrogative.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIsn't anything in excess a pollutant? I think the point of excess CO2 is that it has the real potential to radically alter our environment, you know the one that is very habitable for us Humans? And where is the mention of solar energy as an alternative? Hmm conveniently left out?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswhat you say has meritbut the body of the enviromentalist movement isn't made up of wealthy politicians and deceptive aristocrats, rather the body is made up of scientists, average people, activists, and fanaticals. They can be faulty on some issues but I do not believe that they [the body of the enviromentalist movement] are malevolent. Besides the politician echo the calls of the movement.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow on God's green earth is this company going to submit a detailed plan for carbon dioxide impact on the freaking planet from their operation. You Green guys have been smoking too much "Saliva", on your trips through never never land.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat company would be providing affordable power to the consumer for decades to come. The price would be affordable for local industries to keep producing, and keep hiring locals to work at the plant. But nooooo. Some stinking moron environmentalist has to put a twist into the mix and screw up the whole project, on what? How this plant may disrupt the planets CO2 levels. Give me a break!
You're loosing industries by the handfuls and you give these so called environmentalists a platform to extinguish another affordable power plant. I'm sorry, but if the plant is using the latest technology for coal handling, combined with emissions reduction equipment you are miles ahead.
I'd rather believe through detailed plans what equipment was used in the plant, what precautions that plant has for emissions, and the training programs to ensure the plant is being operated by "qualified Power Engineers".
All this hullabaloo about Climate Change again, lying and cheating the public on distortions and fabricated evidence. Then you combine overly devote liberals in government who don't spend time sifting through the malarky from the environmentalists and big projects like this that benefit society gets lost.
So, your local energy prices will skyrocket, your home heating bills will skyrocket as well, and you will most likely loose more local industries, and this is called liberal progressive energy programs.
me I call it bullcrap...
AGWs should remember that the 'Environmentalists' include the major part of the World's scientists. As for coal firms, they still produce enough NOx to pollute the stratosphere, where they transform methane into water vapour. Water vapour is a GHG which heats up the upper atmosphere, producing as yet undetermined effects on the Climate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs CO2 scrubbers are not yet connected to underground storage reservoirs, the coal firms could always invest in pyrolysis technology. This technique turns biomass into hydrogen and charcoal, the biomass thus sequestering atmospheric CO2. Such offset technology needs to be implemented on an industrial scale. See www.eprida.com for a description.