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Archive for the ‘Coal’ Category

Get Involved in the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission’s Review of the TCEQ

Posted in Coal, Energy, Global Warming, Good Government, Sunset, TCEQ, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 2, 2010 |

The TCEQ granted a permit to re-open the ASARCO foundry over protests of staff, residents of El Paso, and local leaders. Luckily, the EPA intervened and stopped it.

You’ve probably heard by now.  The TCEQ has failed to adhere to the federal Clean Air Act, jeopardizing our health, our safety, and the quality of our air. This is why, on Tuesday, May 25, the EPA took over the TCEQ’s authority to grant clean air permits for 40 facilities across the state of Texas, most notably the Flint Hills Resources’ crude oil refinery near Corpus Christi.

The TCEQ has failed to fulfill its promises to the federal government and the citizens of Texas, whom it is supposed to protect.

The Sunset Advisory Commission is a 12-member body appointed by the Lieutenant Governor and the speaker of the house to identify and eliminate waste, duplication, and inefficiency in government agencies. Every 12 years, over 150 government agencies are reviewed for potential changes and improvements in their responsibilities and operations. And since the review of Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the TCEQ, is quickly approaching, we’re getting organized!  Will you join us for a call next Thursday, June 10th at 6pm CT?

From the Alliance for Clean Texas:

The Alliance for a Clean Texas (ACT) will launch its 2010-2011 TCEQ sunset campaign with a conference call next Thursday, June 10th at 6:30 p.m. All Texans committed to protecting our state’s environment and health are invited to participate in the call.

ACT is a coalition of organizations and individuals around the state working together to make this a milestone year for environmental protection in Texas. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) is currently under review by the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission. Now is the time to turn our concerns about how TCEQ does and does not do its job of protecting our environment and our health into real, lasting reform.

In the last week, TCEQ has been at the center of two major stories about the Texas environment. The EPA has finally taken action to bring TCEQ air permitting back into compliance with the federal Clean Air Act–a move opposed by the TCEQ commissioners. And Fort Worth is reeling with the news that (more…)

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Week in Review

Posted in Coal, Consumers, Efficiency, Energy, Global Warming, Good Government, green jobs, Nuclear, Renewables, solar, tagged , , , , , , on May 21, 2010 |

Busy, busy, busy. Public Citizen staff have been making the rounds this week, traveling all over Texas in order to educate, empower, and organize citizens. From Beaumont to Dallas. From tar sands to the Public Utility Commission, we are working to protect the economic and environmental well-being of all Texans.

The Week in Review: (more…)

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Portland, TX Asks TCEQ to Deny Las Brisas Permit

Posted in Coal, tagged , , , , on May 19, 2010 |

Portland, Texas’ City Council members voted yesterday on a resolution to unanimously to support a State Office of Administrative Hearings’ judicial recommendation that an air permit sought for Las Brisas petroleum-coke fired power plant be denied or reviewed further.

Portland’s council has long-standing tradition of staying out of Corpus Christi and Nueces County matters, but back in March, after two administrative law judges recommended that the permit be denied or sent back to the state environmental agency for further review, City Councilwoman Cathy Skurow, a civil engineer specializing in environmental permitting, requested it be put on the agenda.

More than 50 people packed the City Council Chambers and the council heard twenty four-minutes of testimony from a couple of Portland residents and dozens of Corpus Christi residents, all against the project, because of concerns that the plant would be detrimental to residents’ health and harmful to the economy should the region fall out of compliance with air pollution limits.

Portland Mayor David Krebs told the crowd that he came into the meeting 100 percent against the resolution, but by the time the vote occurred, he and the others fully supported it.

Council members said the council is not for or against Las Brisas, but wanted to add its collective voice in asking the state agency to make sure the project meets environmental regulations before it is built.  Basically the Portland council put TCEQ on notice that they expect TCEQ to do what they are supposed to do to protect the health and environmenal wellbeing of citizens in the region.

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By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.

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Arkansas Supreme Court Rules Against Turk Coal Plant

Posted in Coal, Efficiency, Energy, Global Warming, tagged , , , on May 13, 2010 |

Upholding a state court ruling made last year that found the hearing process was not conducted propery, the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled against the Turk coal-fired power plant in Southwest Arkansas.  This is great news for the People of Arkansas, surrounding states, and the planet in general. Perhaps SWEPCO will take this as a hint that coal power is the past and start investing in the energy of the future with efficiency and renewables. Congratulations to everyone who has worked so hard on this issue including Audubon Arkansas, Sierra Club, and many others.

For more details, here are links to stories at Arkansas Matters and Forbes.

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By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.

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The Nuclear Energy-Promoting, Oil Drilling-Championing, Coal Mining-Boosting Gift to Polluters Bill

Posted in Coal, Efficiency, Global Warming, Nuclear, Renewables, solar, tagged , , , , , on May 12, 2010 |

[polldaddy poll=3193510]

After half a year of delay, Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) are set to release their nuclear energy/cap-and-trade bill today. Until we see legislative text, we can comment only on the broad outline made available yesterday and an additional summary being circulated among legislative staff.

It’s not accurate to call this a climate bill. This is nuclear energy-promoting, oil drilling-championing, coal mining-boosting legislation with a weak carbon-pricing mechanism thrown in. What’s worse, it guts the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) current authority to regulate greenhouse gases as pollutants under the Clean Air Act.

Here’s our take on what we know is in the new bill: (more…)

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Is the Sky Falling? Fossil Fuel Disaster Strikes San Antonio

Posted in Coal, Energy, Global Warming, Toxics, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 5, 2010 |

What is happening? Black blood continues to ooze, pump, and explode into the Gulf. B.P., the Coast Guard, and the U.S. military are powerless to stop its wave of utter, incomprehensible destruction. Bigger than the Exxon Valdez spill. 100,000 or 200,000 or 500,000 gallons a day for going-on three weeks; an amount we will never be able to imagine. Canyons of crude death. Generations of flora, fauna, and ecosystems erased. Gone. For good.

And everybody shrugs their shoulders and talks about the costs. Everybody asks, “what was the cause?”

Does it take an engineer to explain why sucking the marrow out of the earth is a deadly process?

Now, today, a tanker truck exploded at a San Antonio refinery loading dock. Firefighters are struggling to control the blaze, spending most of their efforts to prevent the fire from spreading to the jet fuel and diesel storage facilities. Fire Chief Charles Hood does not sound optimistic.

The coal mine explosion in West Virginia. The coal carrier crash at the Great Barrier Reef. The burst pipeline in the Louisiana National Wildlife Refuge. The BP platform explosion and leak – the most devastating fossil fuel catastrophe in decades, perhaps ever. The TVA Kingston slurry damn failure just over a year ago in Tennessee (one of the worst disasters in history). The dozens of other “minor” accidents involving the harvesting of coal, oil, and natural gas.  And, now, today, here in Texas, the latest explosion in humanity’s mad pursuit of 19th century fuel.

What does it all mean? Why do these things keep happening? What are YOU going to do about it?

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By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.

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New Report on Carbon Capture and Sequestration Says a Flaw in the Theory May Deflate Clean Coal Claims

Posted in Coal, Global Warming, tagged , , , on April 28, 2010 |

According to a new study published in the Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering on carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) by Michael Economides of the University of Houston and Christine Ehlig-Economides of Texas A&M University, clean coal is unlikely to prove a real solution to carbon emissions because the process of carbon capture and sequestration won’t prove feasible.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: It has been pointed out to us that many of these claims made by Dr. Economides may be overinflated or just plain spurious- a retort posted by NRDC here which we take very seriously.  Because we don’t believe in just throwing blog posts down the memory hole, we want to give this big caveat, and watch for a further discussion on CCS from us.) (more…)

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Monday’s Earth Week Action: Get One Person to sign on to Clean Energy for Austin!

Posted in Coal, Efficiency, Energy, Global Warming, green jobs, Renewables, solar, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on April 19, 2010 |

Wanna do something green to start off Earth Week? You can do this from your desk. Quick and easy:

  1. Sign up as a supporter for Clean Energy for Austin.
  2. Tell a friend or co-worker to sign on too!*

Austin City Council will vote on this forward-thinking energy plan this week! Clean Energy for Austin is a coalition that exists to support council passing this plan. Learn more at www.cleanenergyforaustin.org.

Public Citizen, Sierra Club, Environment Texas, Environmental Defense Fund, SEED Coalition and others endorse this plan but we need your help! Spread the word, and look forward to more easy actions as the week unfolds.

*You’d totes get a ton of karma points if you got 5 people to sign on. You’ll also get a high-five from me, which you can claim on Thursday at City Hall.

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Our thoughts are with the victims of West Virginia mining disaster

Posted in Coal, tagged , , , , , on April 6, 2010 |

Our hearts are with the victims of the West Virginia mining disaster. Reports now indicate that the explosion claimed the lives of 25 workers, making this the worst mining disaster in 25 years. Huffington Post is pulling together a list of places where you can donate to support the victim’s families.

The mine is owned and operated by Massey Energy, who has a terrible record of safety violations. At the mine where the disaster occurred, 57 violations were reported in March alone, including “repeatedly failing to develop and follow a ventilation plan.”

Massey is responsible and should be held accountable for this tragedy, but instead they are “actively contesting millions of dollars of fines for safety violations at its West Virginia coal mine where disaster struck yesterday afternoon.”

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By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.

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The Decarbonization of America

Posted in Coal, Global Warming, tagged , , , , , , , on April 5, 2010 |

New federal statistics indicate the decarbonization of our nation is starting to happen.  Wind power is on the rise, big time; rooftop solar is coming down in price and large scale utility solar is beginning to be considered.

In 2008, 19,000 megawatts of new generating capacity went online. Around 8,300 megawatts of that were from wind and only 1,600 from coal with much of the rest from natural gas. Over the next few years, utilities are planning to put 27,000 megawatts of capacity on line, only 5,000 of which is coal — and 11,000 of which is wind power.

If solar (both distributed and large scale utility generation) gets a foothold combined with storage in the next several years and we pursue energy efficiency efforts agressively, we could dramatically reduce the need for the development of new fossil fuel generation.

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By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.

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Corpus Christi Residents Can Breathe a Short, but Clean, Sigh of Relief

Posted in Coal, Global Warming, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 30, 2010 |

This week the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality received a recommendation from two administrative judges denying the air permit for the proposed Las Brisas Energy Center in Corpus Christi.  The decision is a ray of hope in the battle to prevent the petcoke plant from showering the citizens of Corpus Christi with harmful pollutants including nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, mercury, and lead.

Set to be built in the Inner Harbor of Corpus Christi, the petroleum coke-fired power plant would cost nearly $3 billion.

Petcoke piles along the ship channel in Corpus Christi

The recommendation was issued following two weeks of testimony and nearly two months of private deliberation between the judges.  Reasons for their decision against the permit were that the company:

  • failed to perform analysis on maximum achievable control technology to be used for its boilers
  • failed to properly account for second emissions
  • failed to properly account for emissions from material handling
  • improperly adjusted the moisture content of the petroleum coke handled at the Port of Corpus Christi in violation of state and federal guidance, resulting in unreliable emissions modeling (more…)

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DOE Throws $154 Million Down A Texas Hole

Posted in Coal, Global Warming, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on March 11, 2010 |

The United States Department of Energy has sunk $154 million into a carbon capture and sequestration project in Texas proposed by NRG Energy near Houston. The “demonstration” project will be built on their existing Parish Generating Station in Thompsons, TX (one of the biggest and dirtiest coal plants in Texas and the United States). The project will only be capturing 60 megawatts worth of CO2 from the plant – or 400,000 metric tons of CO2 annually. In comparison the Parish plant currently generates 2,697 megawatts of power and releases over 21 million tons of CO2 every year. Also keep in mind that the CO2 from this “capture” process will be used in what’s called “Enhanced Oil Recovery” meaning that the CO2 being sequestered will be partially offset by the CO2 released when the resulting oil is burned. And even industry analysts have said that between 35-50% of the CO2 solution used in EOR comes back up during the oil recovery process, with this carbon being released back into the atmosphere. (more…)

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FACTCHECK: Governor Perry sends a letter to Congress about the EPA- More hot air?

Posted in Coal, Energy, Global Warming, tagged , , , , on March 11, 2010 |

Governor Perry sent a letter to Congressional leadership and the Texas delegation asking them to strip the EPA of the authority to regulate greenhouse gases, which they were told to do by the Supreme Court in 2007’s Massachusetts v. EPA.

Governor Perry needs to check his facts a little more carefully.

He stated in the letter “Texas is aggressively seeking its future in in alternative energy through incentives and innovation, not mandates and overreaching regulation.”  Gov Perry is correct, in one sense– we have cut our CO2 emissions as a state, but the primary driver of those cuts was the expansion of wind energy that created thousands of new jobs.  And how did we accomplish that?  Through a Renewable Portfolio Standard, or, a fancy term meaning a government mandate.

What Perry should be doing is begging the Federal government to impose a nationwide RPS, which would mean renewable resource poor states would come to Texas to buy our renewable energy the same way they’ve counted on us for our oil and gas in the past.

Further, Perry tries to induce fear by saying EPA regulation would affect “every small business, farm, rancher and family” when the EPA earlier this week said they would only begin regulating tailpipe emissions this year, moving on to power plants which emit more than 100,000 tons of CO2 within the next 2-3 years, then on to other facilities which emit more than 75,000 tons (large facilities like cement kilns or refineries).  This would never affect any small business or church or school…. unless, of course, you go to Carbon Burnin’ High, home of the Flaming Smokestacks!

Governor Perry needs to focus more on bringing these clean energy jobs to Texas and a little less to railing against “the Man” in DC.

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North Texas Public Hearing on Ozone Pollution — Have Your Voice Be Heard!

Posted in Coal, Energy, Toxics, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 8, 2010 |

Support the EPA’s proposal for a stricter ozone pollution standard

Join us for an important public hearing at Arlington City Hall, 101 W. Abram St, Arlington, TX. For more info check out http://www.cleanairtexas.org

Texas has the potential to be at the forefront of the green economy and the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) proposed new ozone pollution standard would clean up our air, protect our health and improve our quality of life. A stricter ozone standard would put Texas on the path to a cleaner, greener future.

The final decision by the EPA will affect the quality of the air we breathe for decades to come and it is a decision that depends on your input and your support. Your voice can influence the outcome. (more…)

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Public Citizen responds: Check your facts, Judge

Posted in Coal, Energy, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 2, 2010 |

For those of you following our work organizing citizens in the Bay City area against the proposed White Stallion coal plant, there is a new chapter to add to the saga. You may remember that we were down there recently speaking with rice farmers concerned about the plant’s potential (huge!) water use. Turns out not everyone in the county was happy with this turn of events, especially Judge Nate McDonald, who thinks the project will be “great” for the county and the state of Texas.

Clearly, we’re going to have to part ways on that one. Judge McDonald fired the first shot with an op-ed in the Bay City Tribune, but the paper gave us a forum to respond. You’ll find our answer below, and can find the rice farmer’s response here.

No such thing as ‘clean coal’

by Tom “Smitty” Smith

Recently, County Judge Nate McDonald expressed his concerns that rice famers met with Public Citizen, a national consumer and environmental group, to discuss the negative impacts of the proposed White Stallion coal plant, particularly the amount of water the plant will use. Unfortunately, he got his facts wrong about both the plant and our organization.

The judge says he welcomes development and that his requirement for White Stallion is “that it be the cleanest coal plant there is and do no harm to our environment and air quality,” but the facts show that this plant is not the “cleanest coal plant there is” and will do substantial harm.

There is no such thing as “clean coal.” Even if there were, White Stallion would certainly not qualify.

This coal plant would be, by far, the largest source of pollution in Matagorda County. (more…)

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