by Henry Robertson
In 2009-10 the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations tried to get a climate bill out of Congress. It didn't work. The public doesn't care enough about global warming, and the corporate interests were downright hostile. Forget Congress. The real action is in the states and, at the federal level, the EPA. The Club is shifting its focus from global warming to the public health effects of coal. This is politic, but I can't let go of global warming just now. Those of us who care enough to learn about it and make it a high priority need to inform the rest. It shouldn't be hard after what happened last year: 2010 tied 2005 as the warmest year on record.
• Still paying the price of coal
The Environmental Integrity Project has ranked the states and individual coal plants for CO2 emissions as of 2010. Missouri is number 10 among the states. Ameren Missouri's Labadie plant in Franklin County ranks number 7 in the country. Missouri's power plants rank high for other pollutants as well.We get 85% of our electricity from burning coal.
A new study led by Dr. Paul Epstein of Harvard Medical School attempts to put a dollar value on the full life cycle costs of coal from the impacts of mining, transportation, combustion, water pollution, ash disposal and health care. As a reference point, Missouri's residential electric rates average about 8.5 cents per kilowatt hour.
Our comprehensive review finds that the best estimate for the total economically quantifiable costs, based on a conservative weighting of many of the study findings, amount to some $345.3 billion, adding close to 17.8¢/kWh of electricity generated from coal. The low estimate is $175 billion, or over 9¢/kWh, while the true monetizable costs could be as much as the upper bounds of $523.3 billion, adding close to 26.89¢/kWh. These and the more difficult-to-quantify externalities are borne by the general public. Is coal really so cheap?
What we're doing. The US EPA recently sued Ameren for Clean Air Act violations at its Rush Island plant in Jefferson County following a Notice of Violation issued to all four of Ameren's coal plants. National Sierra Club and the Missouri Sierra Club are intervening in this suit to give a boost to EPA.
The Missouri Chapter and the Eastern Missouri Group are supporting the Labadie Environmental Organization in its struggle to stop Ameren from putting a huge new coal ash landfill in the Missouri River floodplain next to the Labadie plant, the biggest coal plant west of the Mississippi.
• Efficiency rules!
The Public Service Commission’s (PSC) energy efficiency rules are an attempt to solve a conundrum: how can a company stay in business by selling less of its product?
Things are changing at the customer's end of the line. Appliances from light bulbs to air conditioners to refrigerators are getting much more efficient. Efficiency is cheaper than coal! Often, however, there's a high up-front cost to the customer. This is where our utilities can help. They can pay the upfront costs and recoup them in rates. As an incentive, we can even pay them part of the savings customers realize.The PSC rules allow this. Everybody saves from not having to build new power plants and transmission lines or import millions of tons of coal from Wyoming. What we're doing. Ameren has filed a new 20-year plan called an Integrated Resource Plan. Are they eager to take advantage of the new incentives in the PSC rules? No, they're holding out for more. Even though the PSC rules actually allow for lost revenue recovery if utility revenue drops below the level used to set rates, that's not enough for Ameren, so they're cutting back their already minimal efficiency programs. The Missouri Sierra Club is a party to the IRP proceedings.
• EPA
What you can do. This year EPA will be rolling out a series of rules to crack down on pollution. You'll be getting emails asking you to contact EPA in support of these rules. Please do so.
The first of these rules is already out. It is a revised, less costly version of an earlier rule that will reduce mercury, soot, lead and other emissions from small boilers and solid waste incinerators by improving work practices rather than requiring new pollution controls.
This summer we expect New Source Performance Standards to reduce greenhouse gas pollution from power plants and oil refineries. Republicans in Congress are trying to revoke the EPA's authority to regulate carbon dioxide, an authority the Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that the agency had.
Also this summer the EPA is to issue a stronger air quality standard for ozone, something of great importance to those of us in St. Louis, which has long exceeded standards for ozone, a leading cause of asthma and other respiratory and heart problems. Still pending is a new rule for coal ash landfills, which should treat toxic coal ash as a hazardous waste.
The Missouri Sierra Club will also be highlighting the opportunities for green jobs in renewable energy and efficiency, such as factories making wind turbine components in Washington, Jefferson City and soon Kansas City.
Fossil fuels refuse to die. Fighting them is a dance of two steps forward and one step back. So far the only alternative that's getting traction in Missouri is a new, outrageously expensive nuclear plant. But we have a better and cheaper alternative - reduce energy demand through efficiency and build renewable generation instead.We'll keep up this fight.