tagged w/ Coal Plants
-
Fury is building over rolling nationwide blackouts triggered by the Obama administration’s deliberate agenda to block the construction of new coal-fired plants, as local energy companies struggle to meet Americans’ power demands amidst some of the coldest weather seen in decades.
- As we reported yesterday, four hospitals in Texas reacted furiously after they were hit with planned outages despite being promised they would be spared even as power to Super Bowl venues remains uninterrupted.
- Thousands in New Mexico have been left without natural gas as Gov. Susana Martinez on Thursday declared a state of emergency. “Due to statewide natural gas shortages, I have ordered all government agencies that do not provide essential services to shut down and all nonessential employees to stay home” on Friday, Martinez said after meeting with public safety personnel in Albuquerque,” reports the Associated Press.
- Borderland residents have been asked to limit their use of natural gas as the Texas Gas Service asks that larger commercial facilities voluntarily close their doors to save supplies.
- People in Tucson have been asked to limit their use of hot water and moderate their thermostat levels to save on energy.
- Shortages of natural gas in San Diego County has forced utility companies to “cut or reduce the gas supplied to some of their largest commercial and industrial customers,” reports North County Times.
- In El Paso, “Hundreds of thousands of electricity customers continue to face periodic blackouts, and nearly 900 gas customers still have no heat,” reports the El Paso Times, with El Paso Electric resorting to using generators in a struggle to meet demand while still having to implement forced outages.
Coal-fired power plants are used to convert coal to synthetic natural gas. The Obama administration’s efforts to block the construction of new clean-burning coal plants has massively exacerbated this week’s outages.
Mexico has now announced that it will suspend supplying power to southern US states, underscoring how America has been left completely dependent and desperate as a result of the Obama administration’s war on the coal industry.
Cold weather is not the primary culprit behind the power outages that have hit many areas of the country this week. The real blame lies with the Obama administration’s deliberate war against the efforts of local power companies to meet America’s energy needs by building new plants, the vast majority of which have been blocked by judges, governors and the EPA over the last four years at the behest of the Obama administration in the name of preventing global warming.
State authorities in Texas have been engaged in a long-running battle with the EPA as the feds attempt to block the construction of new plants by enforcing adherence to new clean air permit regulations that cripple smaller companies’ ability to afford desperately needed new energy centers and plants. Twelve states are mounting a legal challenge against EPA restrictions that threaten to bankrupt the entire industry.
FULL STORY HERE:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/fury-builds-over-blackouts-caused-by-de-industrialization-of-america.htmlFury is building over rolling nationwide blackouts triggered by the Obama... more
-
-
Last Friday, in a move that surprised no one, the World Bank approved a $3.75 billion loan to South Africa for a coal fired power plant that will spew 25 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere per year. In one fell swoop, that's equivalent to adding more than two million SUVs to the world fleet.
Defenders of the plant argued that South Africa, which had rolling blackouts in 2008, desperately needs the new plant to allow continued economic growth and to alleviate poverty. There's a lot going on here to distract an observer from the real issue, including politics — the president of the World Bank is a neoconservative appointed by the Bush administration.
But the larger and more important theme in this sucker-punch to efforts to stop burning coal is that the world's desperately poor — remember, 2 billion people live on less than $2 a day, and 1 billion live on less than a dollar — aren't about to stop using the world's cheapest source of energy just because it will ravage their environment in the long term.
This is the thing that energy analysts get that environmentalists and climate change activists do not:
"It’s hard to win a fight against a cheap BTU," says Gregor Macdonald, an analyst and energy investor.
From 2000 to 2007, China doubled its use of coal, to 1311 million tons of oil equivalent. India has lots of coal. Russia has an unbelievably huge amount. China has plenty. And of course South Africa has lots of coal — which is precisely why energy from a coal fired power plant will cost that country about half what energy from wind farms would.
Here in the U.S., almost half of our electricity still comes from coal. That isn't to say that we won't move away from it in the future, but we're lucky — we are insanely rich compared to the rest of the world.
The simple fact of the matter is that on a planet with 7 billion, going on 9 billion people, where nearly a billion people are hungry, economics dictate that development will be fueled by the cheapest thing going, and that's coal.
If we're lucky, we'll get an energy breakthrough that's even cheaper than the black stuff, or enough national mandates taxing carbon or coal that its costs to the environment are reflected in price per ton. But that's a tough sell — maybe even an impossible sell — in the developing world.
As Gregor put it, even if the U.S. were to stop using coal tomorrow, based on current growth trajectories in coal use for the rest of the world, countries outside the U.S. would make up 100 percent of that lost coal usage within 5 years. Given that coal is the enemy of the human race, that's a scary thought.Last Friday, in a move that surprised no one, the World Bank approved a $3.75 billion... more
-
-
A new report from the nonpartisan Environmental Integrity Project found that many of America's coal-fired power plants lack widely available pollution controls for the highly toxic metal mercury, and mercury emissions recently increased at more than half of the country's 50 largest mercury-emitting power plants.A new report from the nonpartisan Environmental Integrity Project found that many of... more
-
-
Why is anyone fighting to save these things again? A detailed report in the New York Times just revealed that hundreds of coal plants across the country are routinely dumping thousands of gallons of waste water into rivers and lakes--rivers and lakes that millions of people get their drinking water from.
So here's why all that dumping is going on, in a nutshell--coal plants, as you well know, are extremely heavy polluters. Some plants pollute so heavily, some even spewing sickly yellow smoke, that little coal waste chunks litter nearby residents' yards and coat their property in a thin film. So when a community gets tired of this--and gets sick of the respiratory illnesses and intermittent acid rain the plant creates as well--sometimes they're able to get the state to insist on stricter pollution regulations.
If they're lucky, as in the case of the super-polluting coal plant in Masontown, Pennsylvania, they're successful, and the coal company installs 'scrubbers' that trap up to 150,000 tons of the pollution and keep it from entering the air. Hooray! Right?
Not so fast. Since the scrubbing process creates waste water from all that pollution, it turns out that the coal companies are simply dumping all of into nearby rivers and lakes, many of which Americans get their drinking water from.
And if you're anything like me, you're first reaction will be something like, "how the hell are they allowed to do that?" The answer is, oftentimes they're not. But they're getting away with it unpunished. You see, there's no federal regulation--at all--that specifically determines how much, if any, waste coal plants can dump into water sources. There are state regulations, and restrictions set by the Clean Water Act, but the Times found that while the plants are receiving notices for violations, nothing is being done about it:
Ninety percent of 313 coal-fired power plants that have violated the Clean Water Act since 2004 were not fined or otherwise sanctioned by federal or state regulators.
It also notes those few plants that have had to pay fines--but they're egregiously low, even for excessive violations:
Hatfield's Ferry has violated the Clean Water Act 33 times since 2006. For those violations, the company paid less than $26,000. During that same period, the plant's parent company earned $1.1 billion.
In other cases, there's no existing framework at all to prevent companies from dumping harmful chemicals. This, for example, is particularly alarming:
only one in 43 power plants and other electric utilities across the nation must limit how much barium they dump into nearby waterways ... Barium, which is commonly found in power plant waste and scrubber wastewater, has been linked to heart problems and diseases in other organs.
The atrocities go on and on. No wonder coal companies are balking at the prospect of limiting their pollution under a climate bill--they're evidently entirely unfamiliar with taking the environment and/or people's health into account at all. So allow me to hark back to my opening question: coal plants pollute the air, give people heart and respiratory problems, contribute to climate change, and now, dump tons of dangerous waste into our drinking water every day. Why is anyone trying to save these things?Why is anyone fighting to save these things again? A detailed report in the New York... more
-
-
Utility companies are racing to find alternative fuels to generate electricity, and one possible new source is also one of the oldest: burning wood.
The James River Power Station in Springfield, Mo., has been working with torrefied wood, which looks like dark sawdust. Torrefaction, also known as biochar, is a process of roasting wood chips in a large furnace, but not to the point of becoming charcoal.
Some consider burning torrefied wood a cleaner energy alternative to burning coal — which scientists say is responsible for more than one-third of the world's carbon dioxide emissions.
Coal and wood both give off carbon dioxide when burned, but the trees originally got their carbon from the atmosphere as they grew, so burning wood doesn't put new carbon dioxide into the air.
Torrefaction has been gaining momentum in Europe, and now American companies are experimenting with the process.Utility companies are racing to find alternative fuels to generate electricity, and... more
-
-
In the early morning of Oct. 8, 2007, a small group of British Greenpeace activists slipped inside a hulking smokestack that towers more than 600 feet above a coal-fired power plant in Kent, England. While other activists cut electricity on the plant's grounds, they prepared to climb the interior of the structure to its top, rappel down its outside, and paint in block letters a demand that Prime Minister Gordon Brown put an end to plants like the Kingsnorth facility, which releases nearly 20,000 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each day.
The activists, most of them in their 30s and 40s, expected the climb to the top of the smokestack would take less than three hours. Instead, scaling a narrow metal ladder inside took nine. "It was the most physically exhausting thing I have ever done," 35-year-old Ben Stewart said later. "It was like climbing through a huge radiator -- the hottest, dirtiest place you could imagine."
In the end, the fatigued, soot-covered climbers were only able to paint the word "Gordon" on the chimney before, facing dizzying heights, police helicopters, and a high court injunction, they were compelled to abandon the attempt and submit to arrest. They could hardly have known then that their botched attempt at signage would help transform British debate about fossil-fuel power plants -- and that it would send tremors through an emerging global movement determined to use direct action to combat the depredations of climate change.
The case took on historic weight only after the Kingsnorth Six went to court, where they presented to a jury what is known in the United States as a "necessity" defense. This defense applies to situations in which a person violates a law to prevent a greater, imminent harm from occurring: for example, when someone breaks down a door to put out a fire in a burning building.
In the Kingsnorth case, world-renowned climate scientist James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, flew to England to testify. According to the Guardian, he presented evidence that the Kingsnorth plant alone could be expected to cause sufficient global warming to prompt "the extinction of 400 species over its lifetime." Citing a British government study showing that each ton of released carbon dioxide incurs $85 in future climate-change costs, the activists contended that shutting the plant down for the day had prevented $1.6 million in damages -- a far greater harm to society than any rendered by their paint -- and that their transgressions should therefore be excused.In the early morning of Oct. 8, 2007, a small group of British Greenpeace activists... more
-
-
The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday released a list of 44 coal-fired power plant waste sites in 10 states with a high hazard potential, including 12 sites in North Carolina, seven in Kentucky and a large storage pond in Pennsylvania.
The list is the result of an investigation that the EPA ordered after the failure of a Tennessee Valley Authority coal ash pond in Kingston, Tenn., flooded more than 300 acres of land in December. After the spill, the EPA required electric utilities that store coal ash in surface impoundments to respond to mandatory questionnaires about their sites.
The EPA initially refused to disclose the location of the high-hazard sites to the public, saying it would share the information only with members of Congress and their staffs. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, pressed the agency to release the list, saying the public had a right to know.
Coal combustion waste stored for many years in impoundment sites at power plants contains toxins such as arsenic, selenium, cadmium and chromium. Even so, national regulations for coal ash are less strict than those for household trash. The EPA is working on new regulations for coal ash waste that are expected by the end of the year.
The next step is for the EPA to review the information it has gathered about the coal-ash sites and call for cleanup and repairs as needed, the agency said in a news release.
The EPA said the high-hazard rating at the 44 sites didn't mean that they were structurally weak, but rather that a failure would probably kill people nearby.
"The presence of liquid coal ash impoundments near our homes, schools and business could pose a serious risk to life and property in the event of an impoundment rupture," said EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson in a statement. "By compiling a list of these facilities, EPA will be better able to identify and reduce potential risks by working with states and local emergency responders."The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday released a list of 44 coal-fired power... more
-
-
“Senator McCain’s choice for a running mate is beyond belief. By choosing Sarah Palin, McCain has clearly made a decision to continue the Bush legacy of destructive environmental policies.
“Sarah Palin, whose husband works for BP (formerly British Petroleum), has repeatedly put special interests first when it comes to the environment. In her scant two years as governor, she has lobbied aggressively to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, pushed for more drilling off of Alaska’s coasts, and put special interests above science. Ms. Palin has made it clear through her actions that she is unwilling to do even as much as the Bush administration to address the impacts of global warming. Her most recent effort has been to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove the polar bear from the endangered species list, putting Big Oil before sound science. As unbelievable as this may sound, this actually puts her to the right of the Bush administration.
“This is Senator McCain’s first significant choice in building his executive team and it’s a bad one. It has to raise serious doubts in the minds of voters about John McCain’s commitment to conservation, to addressing the impacts of global warming and to ensuring our country ends its dependency on oil.”
“Senator McCain’s choice for a running mate is beyond belief. By choosing... more
-
-
Beneath the gargantuan grey boiler towers of Schwarze Pumpe power station which pierce the skies of northern Germany, a Lilliputian puzzle of metal boxes and shining canisters is about to mark a moment of industrial history.
This mini power plant is a pilot project for carbon capture and storage (CCS) - the first coal-fired plant in the world ready to capture and store its own CO2 emissions.
Next week the pilot - an oxyfuel boiler - will be formally commissioned.
A cloud of pure oxygen will be breathed into the boiler. The flame will be lit. Then a cloud of powdered lignite will be injected.
The outcome will be heat, water vapour, impurities, nine tonnes of CO2 an hour… and a landmark in clean technology.
Because the CO2 will then be separated, squashed to one 500th of its original volume and squeezed into a cylinder ready to be transported to a gas field and forced 1,000m below the surface into porous rock where it should stay until long after mankind has stopped worrying about climate change.
This is the technology once lavishly described by the former UK Chief Scientist Sir David King as "the only hope for mankind"; and the plant operators, Vattenfall, have worked furiously for two years to get the pilot running.
"We are very proud - we think this is the future for coal," says Vattenfall's Hubertus Altmann.
They funded the 70m-euro project themselves because they wanted to lead a technology they believe solves the conundrum of providing energy security through plentiful coal supplies whilst avoiding the CO2 emissions officially blamed for climate change. ACCESS ALL AREAS
In video: Inside the CCS plant
Green-carpeted marquees are currently being furnished for the guests who will swell the applause at the grand inauguration. But big questions hang over this technology overall, particularly over where the CO2 will be stored and who will pay the high costs of building and running the CCS plants.
The EU wants to see 10-12 full-scale power plants demonstrating CO2 capture within the next few years, but although a number of other firms will soon join the race with pilot projects, no full-scale CCS coal plant has yet been commissioned.
The British government has promised a decision in October on how it will fund a full-scale CCS in the UK. It hopes to avoid landing the taxpayer with the bill, but questions over CCS funding in Europe are as yet unresolved by the European Commission and the European Parliament.
*** click the link for the continuation of the story****
Beneath the gargantuan grey boiler towers of Schwarze Pumpe power station which... more
-
-
Obama and McCain both say global warming a problem, but are their proposals enough to make a difference?
The Democratic and Republican presidential hopefuls put forward their respective energy and environmental platforms last week, addressing offshore drilling, coal, nuclear energy and fuel efficiency. Both John McCain and Barack Obama have said that Global warming is a problem and would make it a top priority. But would they go as far as NASA's Dr. James Hansen says is necessary before reaching what he calls the tipping point? The Real News spoke with Ben Wikler of Avaaz.org and Professor Catherine Gautier about the promises and shortfalls of the candidates' plans.
Ben Wikler is a campaign director for Avaaz.org, a global version of MoveOn.org, where he oversees efforts on climate change, global health, and other issues. Previously, he worked as press secretary for Congressman Sherrod Brown's US Senate campaign in Ohio, and was a founding producer of The Al Franken Show on Air America Radio.
Catherine Gautier is involved in educational aspects of climate change science and policy. Originally from Paris, France, Gautier directs the Institute for Computational Earth Systems Science at the University of California Santa Barbara. the book 'Facing Climate Change Together' was compiled and edited by Catherine Gautier and Jean-Louis Fellous.Obama and McCain both say global warming a problem, but are their proposals enough to... more
-
-
Georgia, and other states in the Southeast are learning a lesson that communities on the Hudson River in New York know well: burning coal the old fashioned way costs the river environment, not just the air.
By now, everyone's familiar with the list of pollutants that spew from coal-fired power plants, including the compounds that form ozone, smog and acid rain; those that make our fish contaminated with mercury; and those that fill the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, fueling global warming.
But coal-fired power plants -- along with nuclear and other fossil fuel plants -- also use a lot of water. Typically, this water is sucked in to a plant, used to cool condensers and then flushed back into the river or lake on whose banks the plant sits. In the process, millions of fish, fish eggs, fish larvae and other aquatic life can be killed, and heated water discharged can cause ecological problems downstream as well.
The Hudson River has been ground zero -- for 30 years -- in the fight environmentalists have waged to have old plants upgraded, and have new plants built to use minimal water. Most plants built today use a fraction of the water old plants use, but the Environmental Protection Agency has resisted ordering upgrades on older plants.
Upgrading plants is not cheap. Not by a long shot. But the drought highlights another facet of the issue: It isn't just about fish. It's about people. When drought makes water scarce, it helps if your drinking water needs don't have to compete with your electricity needs.
~~~~~~
With 45% of our country already in some stage of drought with urbanization, pollution, and substandard infrastructure causing waste, it is not feasible to continue pushing for new coal and nuclear power plants that will waste more water and endanger marinelife. That money could be better spent on altternate energy sources that conserve water and on upgrading old plants to use less water.
Georgia, and other states in the Southeast are learning a lesson that communities on... more
-
-
Sierra Club sent letters on Tuesday threatening to file suit to stop construction of eight coal-fired power plants in six states because, the environmental group claims, they violate the Clean Air Act.
"This is the first major ramification on the ground from the (Washington) D.C. circuit kicking out the Bush administration's rules in February," said Bruce Nilles, director of the Sierra Club's effort to stop coal power plants.
In February, a federal appeals court in Washington ruled that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency violated the Clean Air Act in not setting mandatory cuts for mercury emissions of power plants.
The suits would be filed in the federal districts where the proposed power plants would be located, Nilles said. The suits would seek to require the plants to go back to state permitting agencies for new permits that meet the tougher emission standards, Nilles said.
Coal-fired power plants are the largest source of mercury emissions in the United States as well as 40 percent of U.S. carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. CO2 is the by far the largest contributor to greenhouse gases that cause global warming.
Coal-fired power plants also are seen by most national politicians as essential because they make half the electricity used in the United States.
The Sierra Club said there are alternatives to coal power plants and that until capturing and sequestering carbon dioxide emissions is proven feasible and affordable, no more coal plants should be built.
Nilles said the Sierra Club has helped stop 63 of the 150 coal-fired power plants that were in the planning stages since 2002, including 31 last year.
Sierra Club sent letters on Tuesday threatening to file suit to stop construction of... more
-
-
This movie (not a clip) broadcast by Reason TV (not me) critiques the widespread and policitized doomsdayist viewpoint centered around the negative effects of global warming. The gist of the movie is that much of today's political motivation to reduce greenhouse emissions is based on poorly programmed computer modeling. The movie states that the models are flawed because those who programmed them had incomplete knowledge of how global climate change really works. Scientists in the movie take aim at the widely accepted "hockey stick" depiction of the recent spike in global temperature, claim that sea levels are actually dropping, not rising, and tell us that, when measured from the surrounding atmosphere, global temperature fluctuations are not as dramatic as those measured on the ground, where temperatures may be influenced by heat relfected by surrounding buildings and pavement.This movie (not a clip) broadcast by Reason TV (not me) critiques the widespread and... more
-
-
In its rush to recreate the industrial revolution that made the West rich, China has absorbed most of the major industries that once made the West dirty.
This is the ninth in a series of articles and multimedia examining the human toll, global impact and political challenge of China's epic pollution crisis.
Link to complete coverage:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2007/12/21/world/asia/choking_on_growth_9.html
"A study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University found that if all the goods that the United States imported between 1997 and 2004 had been produced domestically, America's carbon emissions would have been 30 percent higher."In its rush to recreate the industrial revolution that made the West rich, China has... more
-
-
They say they want to give more to alternate energy and then open their biggest coal fired plant to date and enter into nuclear agreements with France. The saying you can't have your cake and eat it too is very appropos here. So which is it? They say they want to give more to alternate energy and then open their biggest coal... more
-
-
Produced and presented by the Coastal Conservation League, Global Warming Guy is a lighthearted look at the serious issue of global climate change. We hope that this video will motivate people to explore the information and links on the website, and, in turn, join the debate on this issue.
www.globalwarmingguy.com
www.scccl.orgProduced and presented by the Coastal Conservation League, Global Warming Guy is a... more
-
