Coal-fired plants and climate change

The impact of coal-fired plants on climate is widely accepted. This factor may influence the future of such plants. For the first time activists are able to secure legal sanctions against coal-fired plants IN USA

K.S.Parthasarathy




July 22, 2008
http://www.dailyexcelsior.com/web1/08july22/index.html
PTI FEATURE
Coal-fired plants and climate change
By Dr K S Parthasarathy
This week, a Georgia court in USA, halted the \construction of a new 1,200-megawatt coal-fired power plant on the Chattahoochee River (the plant is also called Longleaf), because its supporters could not provide a plan to limit climate change–causing carbon dioxide emissions from it.
"The decision marks the first time that potential greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution has been cited as a factor in denying permission to build a new coal-fired power plant" (Scientific American, July 3, 2008).
This judgment relied on a 2007 Supreme Court ruling (in Massachusetts vs EPA) that found that the Clean Air Act gives the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the statutory authority to regulate carbon dioxide and other GHG emissions
The judgment against the setting up of the coal plant has serious ramifications as coal-fired electric generating plants currently provide for half of the electric power produced in USA and is likely to continue as the mainstay for the coming decades.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore noted that the plant would annually emit large amounts of air pollutants, including eight [million] to nine million tons of carbon dioxide.
"There was no effort to identify, evaluate or apply available technologies that would control CO2 emissions and the permit contains no CO2 emission limits…. Since CO2 is otherwise subject to regulation under the [Clean Air] Act, a PSD [prevention of significant deterioration] permit cannot issue for Longleaf without CO2 emission limitations," she clarified.
The judgment is clear. It recognized global warming due to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Human activity has been increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide from combustion of coal, oil, and natural gas and a few other trace gases. Current levels are greater than 380 ppmv (parts per million by volume) and is increasing at a rate of 1.9 ppm yr-1 since 2000 (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration May, 8, 2008).
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES), by the end of the 21st century, we could expect to see carbon dioxide concentrations of anywhere from 490 to 1260 ppm. This will have serious consequences.
In 1988, James Hansen, the then head of Goddard Institute for Space Studies, National Aeronautics and Space Administration appeared before the US Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee and testified that earth’s temperature is raising to record high levels due to human activity.
Last year, an interdisciplinary group from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) issued a report titled "The Future of Coal-Options for a Carbon Constrained World". asserting that carbon capture and sequestration(CCS) is the critical enabling technology to help reduce carbon dioxide emissions significantly while also allowing coal to meet the world’s pressing energy needs.
The report argued that the US government should provide assistance only to coal projects with CO2 capture in order to demonstrate technical, economic and environmental performance.
"Congress should remove any expectation that construction of new coal plants without CO2 capture will be "grandfathered" and granted emission allowances in the event of future regulation. This is a perverse incentive to build coal plants without CO2 capture today", the report clarified.
On June 23, 2008, on the anniversary of his first landmark testimony, Hansen told the House Select Committee for Energy Independence and Climate Change that the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies should be put on trial for crimes against humanity and nature!
He argued that global warming science has been corrupted in the same way that tobacco companies once attempted to blur the links between smoking and cancer, and he called for government investments in alternative energy to help end our dependence.
The unkindest cut to future coal-fired power generation came recently when the Bush administration decided to withdraw funding to FutureGen, the US government’s effort to develop a "clean coal" power plant.
Between 2000 and 2006, US utilities submitted over 150 coal plant proposals. By 2007, they constructed 10 of them; 25 additional plants were under construction. But during 2007, 59 proposed plants were cancelled, abandoned, or put on hold.
Concerns about global warming played a major role in 15 of these cases. Coal plants are being eliminated from long-range plans.
Of the 59 plants which took the hits, 44 were abandoned by the utilities themselves because of increase in construction costs, insufficient financing or failure to receive expected government grants, lowering of estimates of power demand and concerns about future carbon regulations.
Where do we go from here? Nuclear power may not offer a full solution, even though the International Energy Agency thus endorsed nuclear power for the first time in its World Energy Outlook in 2006: "Nuclear power remains a potentially attractive option for enhancing the security of electricity supply and mitigating carbon-dioxide emissions". –
PTI Feature