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Sunday, November 12, 2006
Environment - Coal is big
"Committed to Coal, and in a Hurry, Too" was the headline to this story in the Nov. 7th NY Times. Here is how it begins:
FAIRFIELD, Tex. — In a huge pit, gigantic bulldozers and earth-moving machines are removing two layers of coal, the last shavings in a monumental task that has dug 200 feet down and expanded across 20 square miles over the last 35 years.Today the Louisville Courier Journal features a story titled "Coal's pitfalls and promises," part of an ongoing special project on global warming. The story by James Bruggers begins:The coal feeds two plants nearby that help keep the lights on and the air-conditioners humming throughout Texas. But in doing so, the operation has released hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide, the main contributor to global warming.
Now, the pit’s owner, the TXU Corporation, is embarking on its next monumental task: the nation’s single largest coal-oriented construction campaign, with a plan to add more than 9,000 megawatts of new capacity, the equivalent of 3.5 percent of the nation’s current coal-fired capacity. That is enough to power millions of homes, using coal from other giant pits like this one and still more in Wyoming.
Even as some utility executives are joining environmentalists in seeing future controls on carbon emissions as inevitable, TXU is betting that it can beat the consensus, placing a $10 billion wager on 11 new coal power plants that will produce copious amounts of global warming gases for decades to come.
[On Monday, TXU announced that in addition to 9,000 megawatts of capacity in Texas, it is considering 7,000 to 14,000 more megawatts of capacity in other parts of the country, possibly including the Northeast and Midwest, which would make it a national player in the industry.]
Maybe this is good energy-system planning, or maybe it is environmental brinksmanship, outsiders say.
For decades, Kentucky and Indiana have relied on cheap electricity from vast reserves of coal to light their homes and power energy-intensive industries, from manufacturing plants to aluminum smelters.But now, because of fears about human-caused global warming, coal has become an international villain, and some say it's only a matter of time before the coal-fired power plants of the South and Midwest feel political heat -- and consumers here get an economic wallop.
"As we come to grips with global warming, coal-producing regions of the country are likely to take a big economic hit if we can't find a way to use coal without releasing gases that cause climate change," said Severin Borenstein, a leading economist and director of the University of California's Energy Institute.
Increasingly, though, coal is being viewed as a possible part of the solution -- if new techniques can be deployed to capture carbon dioxide emissions on a grand scale and trap them deep underground.
And that could keep Kentucky and Indiana, ranked third and eighth in coal production, in the energy business -- although experts predict electricity rates will climb, pinching individual pocketbooks and cutting into industry bottom lines.
"It is going to hit very hard," cautioned David Brown Kinloch, a Louisville energy consultant.
But he and others say that a crackdown on the production of greenhouse gases could eventually help the economy by bringing about money-saving energy efficiency and driving the development of alternative fuels, such as those made from biomass, low-impact hydropower and a new generation of more climate-friendly coal-fired plants.
It's better to "get in on the ground floor (and) not hold out and be the last man standing," said Kenneth A. Colburn, former executive director of an association of Northeast air-quality agencies.
"Look at hybrids. Look at Toyota and Honda vs. General Motors."
Posted by Marcia Oddi on November 12, 2006 07:25 PM
Posted to Environment | Indiana economic development