Coal-Fired Power On the Way Out?
Lester R. Brown
The past two years have witnessed the emergence of a powerful
movement opposing the construction of new coal-fired power plants in
the United States. Initially led by environmental groups, both
national and local, it has since been joined by prominent national
political leaders and many state governors. The principal reason for
opposing coal plants is that they are changing the earth’s climate.
There is also the effect of mercury emissions on health and the
23,600 U.S. deaths each year from power plant air pollution.
Over the last few years the coal industry has suffered one setback
after another. The Sierra Club, which has kept a tally of proposed
coal-fired power plants and their fates since 2000, reports that 123
plants have been defeated, with another 51 facing opposition in the
courts. Of the 231 plants being tracked, only 25 currently have a
chance at gaining the permits necessary to begin construction and
eventually come online. Building a coal plant may soon be
impossible.
What began as a few local ripples of resistance to coal-fired power
quickly evolved into a national tidal wave of grassroots opposition
from environmental, health, farm, and community organizations.
Despite a heavily funded ad campaign to promote so-called clean coal
(one reminiscent of the tobacco industry’s earlier efforts to
convince people that cigarettes were not unhealthy), the American
public is turning against coal.
One of the first major industry setbacks came in early 2007 when a
coalition headed by the Environmental Defense Fund took on
Texas-based utility TXU’s plans for 11 new coal-fired power plants.
A quick drop in the utility’s stock price caused by the media storm
prompted a $45-billion buyout offer from two private equity firms.
However, only after negotiating a ceasefire with EDF and the Natural
Resources Defense Council and reducing the number of proposed plants
from 11 to 3, thus preserving the value of the company, did the
firms proceed with the purchase. It was a major win for the
environmental community, which mustered the public support necessary
to stop 8 plants outright and impose stricter regulations on the
remaining 3. Meanwhile, the energy focus in Texas has shifted to its
vast wind resources, pushing it ahead of California in
wind-generated electricity.
In May 2007, Florida’s Public Service Commission refused to license
a huge $5.7 billion, 1,960-megawatt coal plant because the utility
could not prove that building the plant would be cheaper than
investing in conservation, efficiency, and renewable energy sources.
This point, made by Earthjustice, a non-profit environmental legal
group, combined with strong public opposition to any more coal-fired
power plants in Florida, led to the quiet withdrawal of four other
coal plant proposals in the state.
Coal’s future is also suffering as Wall Street turns its back on the
industry. In July 2007, Citigroup downgraded coal company stocks
across the board and recommended that its clients switch to other
energy stocks. In January 2008, Merrill Lynch also downgraded coal
stocks. In early February 2008, investment banks Morgan Stanley,
Citi, and J.P. Morgan Chase announced that any future lending for
coal-fired power would be contingent on the utilities demonstrating
that the plants would be economically viable with the higher costs
associated with future federal restrictions on carbon emissions.
Later that month, Bank of America announced it would follow suit.
In August 2007, coal took a heavy political hit when U.S. Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who had been opposing three
coal-fired power plants in his own state, announced that he was now
against building coal-fired power plants anywhere in the world.
Former Vice President Al Gore has also voiced strong opposition to
building any coal-fired power plants. So too have many state
governors, including those in California, Florida, Michigan,
Washington, and Wisconsin.
In her 2009 State of the State address, Governor Jennifer Granholm
of Michigan argued that the state should not be importing coal from
Montana and Wyoming but instead should be investing in technologies
to improve energy efficiency and to tap the renewable resources
within Michigan, including wind and solar. This, she said, would
create thousands of jobs in the state, helping offset those lost in
the automobile industry.
One of the unresolved burdens haunting the coal sector, in addition
to the emissions of CO2, is
what to do with the coal ash—the remnant of burning coal—that is
accumulating in 194 landfills and 161 holding ponds in 47 states.
This ash is not an easy material to dispose of since it is laced
with arsenic, lead, mercury, and many other toxic materials. The
industry’s dirty secret came into full public view just before
Christmas 2008 when the containment wall of a coal ash pond in
eastern Tennessee collapsed, releasing a billion gallons of toxic
brew. Unfortunately, the industry does not have a plan for safely
disposing of the 130 million tons of ash produced each year, enough
to fill 1 million railroad cars. The dangers are such that the
Department of Homeland Security tried to put 44 of the most
vulnerable storage facilities on a classified list lest they fall
into the hands of terrorists. The spill of toxic coal ash in
Tennessee drove another nail into the lid of the coal industry
coffin.
In April 2009, the chairman of the powerful U.S. Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission, Jon Wellinghoff, observed that the United
States may no longer need any additional coal or nuclear power
plants. Regulators, investment banks, and political leaders are now
beginning to see what has been obvious for some time to climate
scientists such as NASA’s James Hansen, who says that it makes no
sense to build coal-fired power plants when we will have to bulldoze
them in a few years.
In April 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) is both authorized and obligated to regulate
CO2 emissions under the
Clean Air Act. This watershed decision prompted the Environmental
Appeals Board of the EPA in November 2008 to conclude that a
regional EPA office must address CO2
emissions before issuing air pollution permits for a new coal-fired
power plant. This not only put the brakes on the plant in question
but also set a precedent, stalling permits for all other proposed
U.S. coal plants. Acting on the same Supreme Court decision, in
December 2009 the EPA issued a final endangerment finding confirming
that CO2 emissions threaten
human health and welfare and must be regulated, jeopardizing new
coal plants everywhere.
The bottom line is that the United States now has, in effect, a de
facto moratorium on the building of new coal-fired power plants.
This has led the Sierra Club, the national leader on this issue, to
expand its campaign to reduce carbon emissions to include the
closing of existing plants.
Given the huge potential for reducing electricity use in the United
States by switching to more efficient lighting and appliances, for
example, this may be much easier than it appears. If the efficiency
level of the other 49 states were raised to that of New York, the
most energy-efficient state, the energy saved would be sufficient to
close 80 percent of the country’s coal-fired power plants. The few
remaining plants could be shut down by turning to renewable
energy—wind farms, solar thermal power plants, solar cell rooftop
arrays, and geothermal power and heat.
The handwriting is on the wall. With the likelihood that few, if
any, new coal-fired power plants will be approved in the United
States, this de facto moratorium will send a message to the world.
Denmark and New Zealand have already banned new coal-fired power
plants. Other countries are likely to join this effort to cut carbon
emissions. Even China, which was building one new coal plant a week,
is surging ahead with harnessing renewable energy development and
will soon overtake the United States in wind electric generation.
These and other developments suggest that the Plan B goal of cutting
net carbon emissions 80 percent by 2020 may be much more attainable
than many would have thought.
Adapted from Chapter 10, “Can We Mobilize Fast Enough?” in Lester R.
Brown,
Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization
(New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2009), available on-line at
www.earthpolicy.org/index.php?/books/pb4