The True Cost of Burning CoalFLASH PRESENTATION
Externalities from electricity generation from coal include: air pollution, greenhouse gases, water use/water quality, land use, energy security, coal combustion and mining wastes, health effects from coal burning; Garrett Hardin 1968: a “tragedy of the commons.”
Wolverine-21st Century Enegy Plan: Read the Fine Print PDF
This Plan provides the backbone for a growing 21st century Michigan economy by enhancing the state’s ability to power itself through the use of renewable resources, energy efficiency measures, and the cleanest available utility-built generation. This is Michigan’s first electric energy plan in 20 years. [NOTICE: It is apparent Wolverine doesn't want Co-op members to know that each customer will be paying thousands of dollars over and above metered rates, for construction of the power plant at Rogers City. Residents of Rogers City, served by Consumers Energy, will not! In the Executive Summary of Michigan's 21st Century Electric Energy Plan dated January, 2007 it is revealed that: "Wolverine Power Cooperative, Inc. have non-bypassable charges on their distribution tariffs to fund the plant's development." Why haven't the cooperatives revealed this to members? See the last paragraph of actual page 15 and the top of 16 plus the footnote at the bottom.) ]
Michigan Governors Executive Directive
Consideration of Feasible and Prudent Alternatives in the Processing of Air Permit Applications from Coal-Fired Power Plants.
State wants coal plant alternatives
Michigan—Companies applying to build coal-fired electric plants in Michigan will be asked to show they have considered cleaner alternatives, state environmental regulators said Wednesday. The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality said it had told developers of proposed coal plants in Holland and Rogers City to submit analyses of different possibilities within 90 days. A similar requirement could be forthcoming for Consumers Energy's proposed 800-megawatt addition to its Karn-Weadock generating complex near Bay City. The DEQ said it would begin taking public comment on the project next Tuesday. A public hearing on the Consumers Energy plant is scheduled for April 14-15. If it turns up strong interest in an evaluation of alternatives, the DEQ will request it from the company
Mich. governor wants utilities to rethink coal February 3, 2009 LANSING, Mich. - Gov. Jennifer Granholm wants to make it harder for utilities to justify building new coal-fired power plants, encouraging them to instead rely on more energy conservation. Speaking Tuesday in her seventh annual State of the State speech, Granholm called for reducing the state's reliance on electric plants powered by coal and natural gas 45 percent by 2020. The Democrat said she wants to see 100,000 homes and 1,000 schools in the state weatherized to reduce energy consumption, and get more homes and schools to install solar and wind energy systems. She suggested the monthly savings would pay for the cost of the improvements. Some of that weatherization work can be done by people who have lost their jobs, she added. Four companies have requests before the state Department of Environmental Quality to build new coal-fired power plants, the most requests for new coal plants anywhere in the country. The state already has 19 coal-fired plants. In making it harder for companies to build new power plants that rely on coal, Michigan is following the example of other states. Wisconsin officials recently rejected a request for a new coal-fired power plant, and Kansas officials have rejected proposals to build two plants in the southwest corner of the state.
Clean coal has been a persistent theme throughout the US election, with presidential candidates on both sides touting the message that coal is somehow clean. As coal industry commentator and author Jeff Goodell puts it best: "Clean coal" is not an actual invention, a physical thing – it is an advertising slogan. Like "fat-free donuts" or "interest-free loans."
Michigan needs affordable, safe, reliable, renewable energy. Our future and our health depends on it! “Michigan has the third-best 'wind-map' in the country, making it a great place to develop a wind energy industry.” Governor Granholm
Public participation is essential in order to assure that Michigan policy makers pursue real jobs, clean energy, and a healthy environment..
Clean Energy Now is taking steps to provide meaningful public involvement. CLICK HERE
Clean Energy Now! It's Our Best Hope for Recovery
The transition to a clean-energy economy is not some luxury that we can only afford in good financial times. In fact, it can easily be argued that investing in domestic production of solar power, wind energy, sustainable biofuels, electric vehicles, smart-grid technologies, and dozens of other clean-tech sectors may be the best way out of this fiscal mess. Clean tech is the "triple threat" that can address the Big Three challenges facing the United States: climate change, national security, and economic recovery.
Coal 101
The use of coal in combustion creates a number of health and environmental challenges.
What is the This Clean Coal the Politicians Keep Talking About?
Coal and its byproducts are everywhere -- in plastics, tar, fertilizer, steel and as the energy source for major industries such as paper and cement. In the U.S., however, over 90% of coal is used for electricity generation, resulting in 83% of carbon dioxide emission from the power sector. Coal is burned in power plants to create steam, thereby powering turbines and generating both electricity and a diversity of harmful air pollutants. No matter how you look at it, there isn't much clean about coal. The extraction and burning of coal is considered the dirtiest of all fossil fuels, including oil and gas. So, what is this new, innovative and so-called "clean coal"?
With goals of zero-emissions coal power plants, the U.S. has spent over $2.5 billion since 2001 in research and development for "clean coal technology." Unfortunately, none of the options on the table actually help coal--as a whole--become any cleaner.
Obama's Green Jobs Revolution
Barack Obama is promising a $150bn "Apollo project" to bring jobs and energy security to the US through a new alternative energy economy, if his final push for votes brings victory in the presidential election on Tuesday. "That's going to be my number one priority when I get into office," Mr Obama has said of his "green recovery" plans. Making his arguments in a radio address yesterday, the Democratic favourite promised: "If you give me your vote on Tuesday, we won't just win this election. Together, we will change this country and change the world."
Wanted: A Climate Bailout
What a difference an emergency makes. Scare people enough and $700 billion can materialize almost overnight. The White House can repudiate its core economic philosophy--government should leave markets alone--within hours. Congress, where spending bills sometimes wait years to reach the floor, can pass one of the costliest laws in its history within days. Even the endlessly fickle media can provide 24/7 news coverage, making the emergency the topic on everyone's mind. When will we see this same sense of urgency devoted to the greatest emergency of our time? You wouldn't know it from our politicians or TV shows, but the climate crisis is even more serious than the financial crisis. The financial crisis, while painful and severe, can be resolved, given time and wise policies. The climate crisis, not so. The earth's climate system has tipping points beyond which no return is possible. Yet there is a very real danger right now that sliding oil prices will lull the public into an even deeper complacency. We are now in danger of passing a third tipping point--the descent into cataclysmic, irreversible climate change. The United States and the world need to launch a climate rescue plan that is at least as ambitious as the financial rescue plan. We need a massive shift of government incentives and funds away from fossil fuels and toward energy efficiency, solar and wind power, and other low-carbon alternatives.
Carbon Capture: Real, or Just Blowing Smoke?
GAYLORD—In Otsego County earlier this year, a drilling crew from Traverse City-based Core Energy punched two holes in the ground outside this county seat of 3,700 residents. As they bored down nearly 6,000 feet into layers of rock older than dinosaurs, the crew pushed Michigan closer to the center of one of the most important scientific and economic discussions of our time—whether by storing their plants’ greenhouse gas emissions (CO2) underground, utilities can continue to use coal to make electricity without wrecking the planet’s climate. To date, Michigan’s energy discussion has hardly touched on the “carbon capture” technology being tested here. Instead, it is focused on Michigan’s 20 existing coal plants—many among the country’s oldest and, collectively, the nation’s tenth-largest source of CO2 emissions—and whether the state should allow companies to build eight new ones, the most proposed for any state. The Michigan Legislature required utilities to use more renewable energy and increase energy efficiency, and to begin paying better rates to homes and businesses for power from self-installed solar panels and other renewable energy sources. The votes, according to the Michigan Public Service Commission and clean energy producers, reflect the fact that electricity from renewable sources is or soon will be cheaper than electricity generated from new coal-fired plants. The price of new coal plants has doubled in 18 months, according to several studies, and the price of coal itself has increased almost as sharply. But the wind and sun are free.
Union of Concerned Scientists Report on Coal PDF
If the United States continues burning coal the way it does today, it will be impossible to achieve the reductions in heat-trapping emissions needed to prevent dangerous levels of global warming. Coal-fired power plants represent the nation’s largest source of carbon dioxide (CO2, the main heat-trapping gas causing climate change), and coal plant emissions must be cut substantially if we are to have a reasonable chance of avoiding the worst consequences of climate change. Yet despite the urgent need to reduce CO2 emissions, the United States is poised to increase its emissions greatly—by building many more coal plants.
Carbon Capture and Storage is a Myth
#1: CCS cannot deliver in time to avoid dangerous climate change
The earliest possibility for deployment of CCS on a large commercial scale is not expected before 2030. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) does not expect CCS to be commercially viable until at least 2050. Nor does Oil-giant Shell who "doesn't foresee CCS being in widespread use until 2050."
#2: CCS wastes energy
The technology uses between 10 and 40% of the energy produced by a power station. Wide scale adoption of CCS is expected to erase the efficiency gains of the last 50 years and increase energy consumption by one-third.
#3: CCS is expensive
CCS could lead to the doubling of plant costs, and an electricity price increases of as much as 91%. The US Department of Energy (DOE) recently pulled out of the only "clean coal" pilot project with CCS technology in the US due to massive budget increases from initial estimate of $800 million to $1.8 billion.
#4: "Capture Ready" coal plants are pure greenwash
CCS is being used as an excuse by power companies and utilities to push ahead with plans to build new coal-fired power plants, branding them as "capture ready." Promises to retrofit are unlikely to be kept. Retrofits are very expensive and can carry such high efficiency losses that the plants become uneconomical.
#5: Storing CO2 underground can have unintended consequences
The world has no experience in the long-term storage of anything, let alone CO2. A 2006 United State Geological Survey (USGS) field experiment showed there is every chance that carbon dioxide will behave in ways that are totally unexpected.
The researchers were surprised when the buried CO2 dissolved large amounts of the surrounding minerals responsible for keeping it contained.
Upside Down Smokestacks: Why Carbon Capture and Storage is a Scam
We have no time to waste on dubious CSS technology if we are to avert the most drastic effects of global warming. The premise of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is that carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants can be captured before it enters the atmosphere and then stored underground in geological formations. The coal industry has been promoting the idea of “clean coal” through the usage of CCS technology as a solution for global warming despite the fact that its efficacy has yet to be proven on a large scale and even best-case scenarios don’t have CCS being in place for at least a couple decades.
". It is the ultimate coal industry pipe dream,” said the report’s author, Emily Rochon,. “Governments and businesses need to reduce their emissions—not search for excuses to keep burning coal.” CCS technology is woeful inadequacy on numerous points. CCS wastes energy, for one thing, as it uses between 10 and 40% of the plant’s power output just to function. It is also expensive, and could possibly double the cost of constructing a coal-fired power plant, which in turn could lead to the raising of electricity costs for consumers. And despite its exorbitant cost, there is actually no guarantee that storing carbon underground is totally safe or effective – even a very low leakage rate could completely undermine the benefits of CCS.
Michigan Land Use Institute Letter to the DEQ
Dear Ms. Dolehanty: I am writing on behalf of the staff, board, and 2,500 members of the Michigan Land Use Institute to oppose the draft air permit that your agency issued on Sept. 23 to the Wolverine Clean Energy Venture, a coal-fired power plant proposed for Roger City. The Institute opposes this project because of the harm it will do to local and regional air and water quality, as well as to prospects for reversing climate change.
How Clean is Coal?
Coal is clean, dirty, good for the economy and bad for the environment. Those were the differing perspectives at an energy forum held Thursday evening at Delta College. More than 50 people packed a room at the college, many of them critical of plans to build two new coal-fired power plants in the area, one each in Bay County's Hampton Township and Midland. Dennis Marvin, communications director of new generation for Consumers Energy, showed up to argue the merits of his company's plans to construct a 930-megawatt plant, with 800 megawatts of net power. He was pitted against Lee Sprague of the Sierra Club environmental group early in the forum. The audience later heard from Steve Smiley of Heron Wind Manufacturing in Traverse City and Peter Sinclair, a climate change educator from Midland. "Coal plants, if you build them, they take up the market for renewable energy," Sprague said.
Kyle Sieradzki, 20, of Caro, said he came thinking the new plant was a good idea, but left with the opposite opinion. "I don't favor it, because of all the negatives," said Sieradzki, who's studying to be a registered nurse. "It's just not good for the environment, for the people around here."
Carbon Dioxide Emissions Compared by Fuel
To calculate the CO2 emission from a fuel, the carbon content of the fuel are multiplied by the ratio of the molecular weight of CO2 (44) to the molecular weight of carbon (12) -> 44/12 = 3.7. Approximately environmental emission of Carbon Dioxide - CO2 - from the combustion of different fuels can be approximated from the table.
Switch to alternative
Use of coal draws money out of Michigan economy; wind power will bring money into the state The Legislature is considering bills regarding the energy future in Michigan. Along with the benefits of producing clean energy, investment in wind energy would also provide an economic stimulus our state is in dire need of. Energy users in Michigan currently pay $18 billion per year for coal, oil and natural gas. Michigan imports 100 percent of the coal from other states and has no coal mines. By investing in new coal-fired power plants, we are making a long-term commitment to the economies of the states we buy coal from instead of our own state. In addition to the costs of purchasing coal, impending carbon taxes and/or cap-and-trade systems will incur further costs on electricity generated from coal. While the costs of coal rise over the coming decades, renewable energy is poised to produce profits for those with the foresight to invest early.
DEQ Letter: Rogers City
Dear Interested Party: This letter is in reference to a Permit to Install application for Wolverine Power Supply Cooperative, Inc's. proposed installation of a 600-megawatt (MW) coal-fired steam electric power plant. The power plant will be located within the Oglebay-Norton Quarry property, Rogers Township, Presque Isle County, Michigan. The Permit to Install application is identified as No. 317-07.
Op-Ed from Sierra Club
Coal is a dirty fuel, regardless of whether it is burned, gasified, vaporized or turned to liquid. There is no such thing as "clean" coal. Sierra Club looks at the entire lifecycle of coal, from the environmentally destructive way it's mined to the carbon dioxide and pollutants that come out of the stack and coal combustion waste that pollutes are waterways and can create up to 160 semi-truck loads of toxic ash per day in our landfills. It takes only a trip to the Appalachia Mountains (or a quick surf of the web) to see the destruction that mountaintop removal is inflicting upon one of our country's most spectacular mountain ranges and the terrible consequences our ravenous appetite for coal is having on Appalachian communities.
Letter to the Editor of Presque Isle Advance
As I see it, Wolverine wants to do whatever they want regarding fuel for its plant. Can't really blame them for that. But, for them or their supporters to accuse others of conflicts of interest, is ludicrous! From Lansing to our county building, it's apparent Wolverine doesn't want Co-op members to know that each customer household will be paying thousands of dollars, over and above metered rates, for construction of the power plant at Rogers City. Residents of Rogers City, served by Consumers Energy, will not!
Michigan's Wakeup Call
“At a time when dozens of other states are embracing a renewable energy standard and creating good-paying jobs in a high-growth sector of the economy, Michigan must not wade into the backwaters by building dirty, polluting coal plants that will inflict a heavy cost on consumers, businesses and our Great Lakes,” said Dave Holtz, director of Clean Water Action. “A clean renewable energy standard is vital to building a strong energy future for Michigan. Clean energy equals good-paying Michigan jobs, independence from imported energy and coal plants, and the best way forward in our fight against global warming.”
Mountains Forever Disappear So That You May Burn Coal
Mountaintop removal is a radical form of coal mining in which entire mountains are literally blown up -- and it is happening here in America on a scale that is almost unimaginable. Mountaintop removal is devastating hundreds of square miles of Appalachia; polluting the headwaters of rivers that provide drinking water to millions of Americans; and destroying a distinctly American culture that has endured for generations.
Risk Outweighs Benefit
Innovest Strategic Value Advisors, the world ’s #1 provider of financial research that quantifies hidden risks and value, today released a case study on coal-plant financing called ‘Sunflower Electric Power: Carbon Risks Outweigh Benefits of Holcomb Expansion’. The report examines how current and proposed regulatory scenarios, alternatives to coal-fired generation, regulatory and stakeholder opposition, and rising construction costs continue to shift the competitive balance away from coal-fired electricity generation.
Say No to Coal and Climate Change
Major power companies and the current White House administration are telling Americans that coal is the future of affordable energy. But increased greenhouse gas emissions, dangerous coal mining, mercury pollution, increased asthma and human health problems, and dramatic groundwater waste are costs that no one can afford.
Support: H.R. 5575: Moratorium on Uncontrolled Power Plants Act of 2008
The bill - H.R. 5575, otherwise know as the “Moratorium on Uncontrolled Power Plants Act of 2008.” addresses the largest new source of global warming pollution — new coal-fired power plants that are being built without any controls on their global warming emissions. The complete language of the bill and a summary can be found at: http://oversight.house.gov/story.asp?ID=1797
Costs of Coal-Burning
Electrical Generating Units, Health Impacts: 60 Toxic Air Pollutants Released, including the heavy metals of mercury, lead, arsenic, chromium, selenium and manganese. Some of these build up in our land and water and end up in our food chain. Mercury, lead, and arsenic are potent neurotoxins. Dioxin is also released along with other persistent organic pollutants. Persistent organic pollutants take a very long time, decades, to break down in the environment. Coal-burning power plants released 2,625.2 and 2,488.4 pounds of mercury in 2001 and 2002. Coal-burning electric generating units create air pollution, contribute to acid rain and have local, regional, and global effects.
Cherryland Electric Cooperative is over invested in Coal
Wolverine Power Cooperative (WPC) is owned by the six member cooperatives covering 38 Counties in northern and west Michigan with approximately 200,000 customers, 80% are residential.
HomeWorks Tri-County Electric Cooperative is over invested in Coal
Wolverine Power Cooperative (WPC) HomeWorks Tri-County Electric Cooperative, Portland is owned by the six member cooperatives covering 38 Counties in northern and west Michigan with approximately 200,000 customers, 80% are residential.
Presque Isle Electric & Gas Co-op is over invested in Coal
Wolverine Power Cooperative (WPC) is owned by the six member cooperatives covering 38 Counties in northern and west Michigan with approximately 200,000 customers, 80% are residential.
