AEP Bats Clean Up - October 12, 2007

AEP Bats Clean Up - October 12, 2007

This article misses the salient point. To reduce energy consumption, lower electric cost, and reduce global warming we need to replace these old inefficient coal plants one for one with modern efficient low emission ones. This does not include the fantasy that carbon sequesting will work. The modern coal plant is 10% - 25% more efficient than one built from 1940 to 1990. We can increase our electrical supply while reducing our coal consumption and pollution. Lets get to it and stop trying to add pollution controls to antiquated equipment. I think people will support this idea if presented correctly. The simple truth is we can generate more electricity with less coal if we retire these old plants.

Scott Greenbaum
Greene Energy Consultants, LLC

How ridiculous -- talking like the end of coal is the end of the world. Please wake up and realize that we cannot live without clean air and water, and if the ecosystem collapses -- which will happen if we continue to increase CO2 and other CO2 equivalents like CH4 (methane), we're cooked. Have you seen the news that we're up to 455 ppm CO2 equivalent? Have you read about all the methane that's trapped in the permafrost, which is melting? The methane in the permafrost dwarfs even what coal plants emit.

So what if the cost of coal doubles? Thank god! Efficiency is a fraction of the cost of coal, with no pollutants; concentrating solar is coming in at 11-12 cents kWh. It's hard to say what coal really "costs" us when the ocean is acidified, we have permanent drought, crop failure, more hurricanes, the seas rise one foot per decade, and other fun and frolic my children can look forward to.

It's sickening, what the coal and oil and utilities have sold us for 30 years. It's keeping me up at night. But there's only one planet -- and we're all in this together -- so I hope that you and your colleagues will start working on actual solutions rather than half-truths and fantasies like carbon sequestration.

www.energyjustice.net/coal/igcc

Three million tons/YEAR of CO2 sequestered is NOT a solution - it's a scam.

Nancy LaPlaca
Bardwell Consulting Ltd