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Posts Tagged ‘Coal’

Activists are risking arrest by demonstrating outside EPA national headquarters in make-shift tripod stands. They say they won’t go away until EPA administrator Lisa Jackson promises to make a fly-over of the Appalachian Mountain Top Removal coal mines to see first hand the destruction it is causing.

Despite the Obama administration making claims they would crack down on MTR mining, the EPA has been slow to act and has actually granted some new MTR mining permits. It is only through continued pressure and media exposure that this horribly destructive practice can finally be stopped.

Civil disobedience and direct action are one of the most effective means of fighting injustice and tyranny. These activists are putting their freedom and their safety on the line to non-violently oppose one of the most irreversibly and violently destructive industries in history. Please help support their actions by posting at RAN and by contacting Lisa Jackson and asking her to go to Appalachia and take action against MTR.

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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 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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Please join us in supporting ILoveMountains.org in their ongoing campaign to bring a halt to Mountaintop Removal (MTR) Coal Mining. There is a bill in front of the House of Representatives that would do a great deal to help stop this incredibly destructive operation.

As you probably know, MTR is one of the most ecologically destructive practices on the planet (and that’s saying a lot). It completely destroys huge sections of the Appalachian forests and mountains which are the second-most biological diverse region on the surface of planet Earth (second only to the tropical rain forests). (more…)

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Last weekend professors and scientists from four major Texas universities joined forces to write an editorial in the Houston Chronicle defending the science of global warming from skeptics and deniers.  Check it out!

On global warming, the science is solid

In recent months, e-mails stolen from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit in the United Kingdom and errors in one of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s reports have caused a flurry of questions about the validity of climate change science.

These issues have led several states, including Texas, to challenge the Environmental Protection Agency’s finding that heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide (also known as greenhouse gases) are a threat to human health.

However, Texas’ challenge to the EPA’s endangerment finding on carbon dioxide contains very little science. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott admitted that the state did not consult any climate scientists, including the many here in the state, before putting together the challenge to the EPA. Instead, the footnotes in the document reveal that the state relied mainly on British newspaper articles to make its case.

Contrary to what one might read in newspapers, the science of climate change is strong. Our own work and the immense body of independent research conducted around the world leaves no doubt regarding the following key points: (more…)

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Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) is the fossil fuel industry’s much-touted cure-all for our global warming woes. This theoretical solution to global warming is to pump all our industrial releases of CO2 underground, cross our fingers, and hope really, really hard that it will stay there – literally sweeping the problem under the proverbial rug.

It’s a nice dream, but how realistic is it? A new report has examined the feasibility of CCS, and found it “overwhelming in both physical needs and costs” and the entire strategy for geological sequestration “profoundly non-feasible.” Titled Sequestering Carbon Dioxide in a Closed Underground Volume, the report was published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering and written by M.J. Economides of the Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Houston and C.A. Ehlig-Economides of the Department of Petroleum Engineering, Texas A&M University.

(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.  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 feasibility)

(more…)

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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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Barry Smitherman, chairman of the Public Utilities Commission of Texas (PUC), made this statement regarding the “progress” Texas has been making in regards to green energy and “responsible” leadership:

Texas is the nation’s reddest state on the political map. But it produces more green energy than any blue state. The state’s top political leaders are fiercely fighting federal cap-and-trade legislation, but the state is No. 2 behind only New York when it comes to reducing the production of carbon dioxide emissions. (From the Texas Energy Report)

This is true, IF you completely ignore the plethora of new coal plants being proposed and built in Texas. Texas already has 17 coal plants (more than any other state), and there are 12 or 13 more being proposed or built (also more than any other state – by far). Current reductions in greenhouse gases include improved building codes, energy efficiency programs, replacement of pilot lights, air conditioning retrofitting, and wind farms. The reduction of greenhouse gases from all these amounts to about 16 million tons a year. If you add in the wind farms that still need transmission lines built to access their power you get around 43 million tons a year. This sounds great until you realize that the recent coal plant proposals would add 77 million tons of CO2 to our atmosphere every year – far more than offsetting these reductions.

While reductions in greenhouse gasses should, of course, be applauded, it is misleading for Chairman Smitherman to take credit for Texas reducing greenhouse gas emissions when he knows there are so many coal plants looming on the horizon that will completely overwhelm these significant reductions. If Texas were really serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions we would not allow anymore unnecessary coal plants to be built, and start replacing the old ones we have with renewable forms of power generation. This would do far more than anything to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, and the public health and environmental health benefits from getting off a fossil-fuel based electric system would far outweigh the cost.

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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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Anybody catch this article last week in the Houston Chronicle? An important issue to think about: how coal plants will not only affect the surrounding air quality, but that of communities down wind. If the White Stallion coal plant is allowed to be built: Houston, we will have an even worse smog problem. Look for Ryan’s quote to close it out!

City’s smog concerns may choke power plant

Pollution near Matagorda could drift to Houston

By MATTHEW TRESAUGUE

HOUSTON CHRONICLE

A proposed coal-fired power plant in mostly rural Matagorda County, 90 miles from the traffic-choked freeways and smokestacks of Houston, has moved to the center of the debate over the big city’s air.

Some federal regulators, Houston lawmakers, and environmentalists say the proposed White Stallion Energy Center would only exacerbate the city’s stubborn smog problem as tougher nationwide limits for the widespread pollutant come into play.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, for one, wants Texas regulators to prove that pollution from the coal plant would not make Houston’s smog worse before issuing permits. Critics also want the state to require the power company to consider new technology that might slash emissions of smog-forming pollution.

The push comes amid a review of the proposal by the State Office of Administrative Hearings, which will soon recommend whether the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality should grant the plant’s air permit.

The plant would be built less than 20 miles from the boundary of the eight-county Houston region that was long in violation of federal limits for smog or ozone. Rules on industrial pollution — in particular, new sources — are tighter inside such areas than outside, even though smog ignores county lines. (more…)

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Perry Flaunts State, Federal Law in EPA Lawsuit

Statement from Tom “Smitty” Smith, director of Public Citizen’s Texas Office and Ken Kramer, director of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club

This morning Governor Perry attempted to show Texas voters that he is bigger than both Texas and federal law by enacting a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency’s(EPA) endangerment finding for carbon dioxide, but instead just further highlighted his failure to protect Texans’ health and the safety and long term stability of our economy and climate.

Instead of suing the EPA, Perry should be taking proactive steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and build up our clean energy economy.  Our governor likes to brag about all he’s done to promote wind and energy efficiency and the emissions Texas has avoided as a result, but at the same time he is hammering through a second Texas coal rush that will negate all that hard work and add 77 million tons of CO2 to Texas’ already overheated air.

Perry’s blustering behavior has actually caused Public Citizen to file a lawsuit against the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality for its failure to regulate global warming gasses. Texas law clearly requires that “air contaminants” be regulated, and defines contaminants as follows:

“‘Air contaminant’ means particulate matter, radioactive material, dust, fumes, gas, mist, smoke, vapor, or odor, including any combination of those items, produced by processes other than natural.” Tex. Health & Safety Code § 382.003(2).

Perry has proudly demonstrated willful ignorance of this portion of Texas law time and time again, and has ordered state agencies such as the TCEQ to ignore it as well. For this reason and his actions today we are issuing our Governor a Citizens’ Citation to cease and desist endangering the health of breathers, the economy and the climate in Texas by continuing to permit coal plants and other large sources of CO2.

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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 Austin American Statesman’s article this morning about Austin’s 2020 energy plan leaves a few things out that are crucial to understanding the costs and benefits of adding more energy efficiency and renewable power to Austin’s generation portfolio. Judging from the rather depressing comments section, many readers took away the unfortunate misconception that poor Austinites will have to sacrifice for green energy goals. I’d like to clear that up today.

Few things irk me more than when people fail to see the connection between improving social welfare and protecting the environment.

The notion that green power has to come at the expense of low-income households needs to be eradicated. Social welfare and protecting the environment are not conflicting or exclusive goals. By cleaning up the way we produce electric power and making homes more energy efficient, we can do much to improve the quality of life in Austin. And by making homes that can be heated and cooled with less energy, we can save low-income families money on one of their biggest monthly expenditures AND keep Austinites healthy and safe during bitter cold and dangerous summer heat.

There are a few key points that need to be part of the public discussion about the energy plan which have largely been absent from the public radar. I’d ask any Austinite doing their homework for the Mayor’s Town Hall on Monday to take these issues into consideration:

The Plan is Flexible

As part of the Generation Resource Planning Task Force, I voted with all other members of the Task Force to include a provision that Austin review the plan every two years in case any one resource option became too costly (recommendation 3a-b). That way, AE would have the ability to adapt its plan and go with something cheaper. This is a ratepayer protection and cost control mechanism that will protect all customer classes and should be included in the public discussion about the plan. As my friend Cyrus Reed at the Sierra Club puts it astutely: the plan is a roadmap, not a straightjacket.

That’s the beauty of a diverse energy portfolio. Austin would not have this ability if it were locked into building a new nuclear plant or coal plant (like CPS Energy is).

Energy Efficiency is part of the plan

Public discussion of this plan tends to focus on supply-side renewable resources, but the biggest component of the energy plan is energy efficiency. If it met its goals, Austin would achieve 800-1000 MW of energy savings by 2020. The next highest new resource addition would be wind (~562 additional MW when taking into account 203 MW worth of expiring wind contracts). 800 MW of efficiency represents 55% of all the resource additions that encompass the Resource & Climate Protection Plan (note that 100 MW of gas, 100 MW of biomass, and 30 MW of solar that are due to come online over the next three years are not part of the plan).

Efficiency achieves carbon reduction objectives and affordability objectives. Thus, the biggest component of the energy plan will help keep bills low. It’s also worth pointing out that if we do not achieve the efficiency goals, we will need new supply-side generation in order to keep the lights on–800 MW worth. Without efficiency, bills are sure to go up much higher because all supply-side options are more expensive than efficiency.

Comparisons give perspective

Let’s talk about bill impacts on the poor. Take a drive down I-35. San Antonio’s utility, CPS Energy predicts they will need to increase rates 40% by 2020 and that does not even include the future cost increase for natural gas or costs for investing in the proposed expansion of the South Texas Nuclear Plant, which has risen from ~$6 billion in 2007 to $18 billion today before license application are adjudicated or construction begins.

No one is advocating for environmental protection at the expense of the poor. That is flat-out a false choice. This plan won’t do that because of the protections that will be put in place, the overwhelming focus on energy efficiency and AE taking a more proactive and cooperative approach to services for those struggling to pay their utility bills. In order to make electricity more affordable for people, it is up to us as a community to adopt a pragmatic approach to realizing and achieving the complimentary goals of social welfare and environmental protection. After all, you can’t have one without the other.

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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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Rice farmers in Matagorda County, Texas have united to stop the development of the White Stallion “clean” coal plant in Bay City. As Heather Menzies reported in the Bay City Tribune, local farmers have formed action groups with Public Citizen Texas’ Ryan Rittenhouse and Tom “Smitty” Smith to rally public  opposition to the plant’s extensive environmental hazards and intensive water usage.

The coalition plans to write and call state Senators Glenn Hegar and Joan Huffman in order to demand that their community’s interest be protected. If built, the coal plant will consume a substantial portion of the remaining water supply from the river basin. If there isn’t enough water, the rice farmers won’t get any, and there won’t be a rice crop. And when the Lower Colorado River Authority is already prepared to declare the 2009 drought the worst in 50 years, should significant water supplies be given to new coal plants?

Yet many local politicians and candidates feel that the coal plant’s construction and operation will create much needed jobs in a county that is starving for economic development.  On Wednesday, February 10th, the State Office of Administrative Hearings will began adjudicating the contested air permit case of White Stallion Energy Center, LLC. The hearing offers another case indicative of the greater fight against fossil fuel industries that money and muscle their way to booming profits at the expense of everyone. (more…)

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TODAY is our National Coal Ash Day of Action –  please ask the White House to allow the US EPA to finally regulate coal ash as the hazardous waste it is. Currently, coal ash is less regulated than household trash!  This toxic waste stream has never been regulated and that must change, now.

1.  Please send an email to President Obama:  http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact

2.  Call the White House:
  • Comments: 202-456-1111 – leave a message
  • Switchboard: 202-456-1414 – talk to an operator
  • FAX: 202-456-2461

This toxic waste is often stored in wet, slurry impoundments  like this TVA one that failed just over a year ago in Tennessee. Such facilities post the risk of catastrophic failure – the TVA disaster was labeled one of the worst environmental disasters in history by the EPA. Toxic sludge can leech and runoff into nearby watersheds over the course of years, contaminating the ecosystem. The ash is also sometimes stored in dry landfills, as is often the case in Texas. While these landfills don’t pose the same catastrophic risk of slurry impoundments, they still contaminate the environment through leeching, runoff and by the wind blowing the toxic dust off the piles.

It is extremely important that Texans call in because Texas tops the list of states at risk from coal combustion waste. The coal industry is attempting to get dry-ash landfills exempted from new regulations – and most of the coal ash in Texas is stored in this fashion. It is the same, exact, toxic substances in both storage facilities, the only difference is whether or not you mix it with water. ALL coal ash waste MUST be regulated as the hazardous waste it is. (more…)

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Austin is not alone in preparing for clean and affordable energy.

When good news like this comes across the internet like this, we have to share. From the cloudy northwest:

Portland General Electric Co. would shut down the state’s only coal-fired power plant 20 years earlier than planned under a proposal it hopes to finalize with state and federal regulators in the coming months.

Essentially, the new plan to shut the Boardman plant down 20 years earlier than planned is to avoid extra costs for pollution controls (more than $500 million by 2017) and avoid carbon risks.  PGE still owes $125 million on the plant, and replacing the 500 MW of power will have its costs too, but read on…

Based on its analysis of carbon and natural gas prices, however, PGE maintains that a 2020 shutdown would be the low-cost, least-risk plan for utility ratepayers and shareholders [emphasis mine]. Under the existing plan, both face the risk of making the huge investment to control haze causing pollution – which does nothing to control the plant’s carbon emissions — then seeing the plant close anyway if global warming legislation or a carbon tax makes its output prohibitively expensive.

Read the full article here. Coal represents about a quarter of PGE’s generation mix. (Los Angeles also has a goal to get out of coal by 2020.)

Austin Energy has similar plans to get out of its only coal plant, the Fayette Power Project. No target date is set yet, but the utility’s 2020 generation plan would reduce Austin’s dependence on it by 20-30%. The next two years will be important as Austin works with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas  (the grid operator for most of Texas) and the Lower Colorado River Authority (co-owner of Fayette) to see what the most practical and fair way out. Learn more about the resource plan and some excellent additional recommendations at www.cleanenergyforaustin.org. You can also learn a lot from AE’s website www.austinsmartenergy.com.

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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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Blasting on Coal River Mountain was halted due to a tree sit by three activists: Eric Blevins, 28, Amber Nitchman, 19, and David Aaron Smith, 23.  On standby at the trees’ base were the direct supporters Josh Graupera, 19, and Isabelle Rozendaal, 22. Associated with Climate Ground Zero and Mountain Justice, these activists are opposed to the devastating process of mountain top removal (MTR) going on at Coal River Mountain. Perched 60 feet in the air in tulip poplars and oak trees just a stone’s throw from the blasting site these activists risked their own well being in a direct action attempt to halt the exploitation of Appalachia.

Too often people talk about how terrible something is without any action behind their words. These individuals not only understand that MTR mining must be stopped, they are willing to risk their safety and liberty to non-violently bring its operations to a halt – if even for only a day. If every person in this country who was concerned about MTR mining followed their example it would be shut down forever.

The time is long past when we should have stopped using coal for fuel in general. That we are now destroying the second most biologically diverse ecosystem on the surface of the planet in order to allow companies like Massey to stay competitive with other coal mining companies is grossly obscene. These individuals should be commended by anyone who cares in the slightest about the health of our environment and the health of the general public – and as many people who can should join in their acts of non-violent civil disobedience.

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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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Thursday evening at 6:30pm Robert F. Kennedy Jr will debate Don Blankenship, the CEO of Massey Energy – the largest coal producer in West Virginia. The subject of debate is the future of coal, Mountain Top Removal (MTR) mining, and economic opportunities for Appalachia. Kennedy is the chief litigator for the Waterkeeper’s Alliance and a staunch opponent of coal power and MTR coal mining. The debate can be watched online Thursday night, January 21, 2010 at 5:15pm here. It will also be available on that website on-demand following the broadcast.

Blankenship is infamous for his denialist stance on global warming, and Massey Energy is infamous for violating the Clean Air Act with thousands of instances of environmental pollution violations – so bad that environmental groups have filed a lawsuit against them. Let us hope Blankenship and his company’s gross irresponsibility and criminal behavior will not be tolerated much longer, and that Kennedy will mop the floor with him tonight during the debate.

Stephen Colbert did a bit recently on the ills of MTR. Though in this segment they discuss how traditional mining would be better than MTR (and that is true) it is far more important to get us off of all coal mining and burning altogether. The efforts here are reciprocal – helping to end MTR mining will help stop coal plants and stopping coal plants helps stop MTR. Click on the photo to go to the video:

Hardest of all for Blankenship and his ilk will be to dispute this recent call by scientists to put a moratorium on all new MTR permits. A peer-reviewed study recently published in Science Magazine “unequivocally documents irreversible environmental impacts” due to MTR coal mining. Basically there is now hard, scientific proof of what we “crazy enviros” have been saying for years – that MTR mining is one of the most destructive practices in existence and must be ended. For some more previews of Blankenship and his anti-enviro rantings you can check out this video – but be sure to tune in tonight to see Kennedy go round for round with this baron of pollution and champion of denial.

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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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