by Cynthia Andre
In the early 1970s, Springfield was a large, albeit still somewhat sleepy, Ozark town, although it had been slowly and steadily growing and local citizens had just approved the construction of a new coal-fired power plant. With the additional, inexpensive power, it continued to grow.
In fact, according to City Utilities of Springfield (CU) which manages the city’s power plants, the peak use of electricity in Springfield, which occurs during the hot, summer months, doubled during the next 25 years, reaching 605 MW by 1995. By 2000, just five years later, it had reached another milestone in its peak load – 706MW.
Coal-fired generators continue to provide most of Springfield’s electricity. On a recent cold, blustery winter morning, a group of local Sierrans viewed CU’s stockpile of coal from a catwalk ten floors up on the outside of the main building of Springfield’s Southwest Power Plant. Far below was a black sprawling field of many acres, piled high with coal. On the leveled top of the mound, two front-end loaders moved about like small robotic creatures, continuously feeding coal into a hopper that connected like a long vacuum hose to the main building.
Mesmerized by this scene, we only belatedly noticed the 120 railroad cars partially surrounding the field. The coal in these cars, a CU staff person explained, had been transported to Springfield from Utah and would be burned in less than one week. In fact, he added, Springfield is now burning one railroad car full of coal per hour.
In spite of this staggering consumption of a finite resource, CU is projecting that it will be unable to meet the growing demand for electricity in Springfield, plus the needed reserve, by 2008. An additional 275 MW baseload unit (capable of running continuously) is needed, CU says, in addition to its current 595 MW baseload capacity. Like many utility companies across the country, CU has been considering its options. CU says that any recommended solution must do three things:
- Secure reliable energy supplies
- Keep electricity prices competitive and stable
- Responsibly safeguard our natural environment.
From literature CU provided to its consumers, the specific options considered included two coal-burning units, two gas-burning units, and several alternative energy options – wind, microturbines, distributed generation, and fuel cells. Alternative energy options were dismissed as having two main drawbacks – too expensive and/or too little energy generated.
CU then narrowed the options to three--1) a pulverized coal unit (one of the least expensive, most polluting coal-burning units), 2) a combined cycle gas turbine (one of the most expensive, least polluting natural gas-burning units), and 3) purchasing the extra power from the “deregulated wholesale electricity market.”
Arguing that natural gas prices were too volatile and that transmission of wholesale energy over the grid was too unreliable, CU then settled in December on the first option – coal – clearly prioritizing cost and reliability of the energy supply. “Safeguarding our natural environment”, the last criteria on CU’s list and clearly the last in priority, was dismissed with reassurances that CU will meet all of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources’ (MDNR) requirements regarding compliance with the provisions of the Clean Air Act.
Sound reasonable?
Why Springfield citizens should be concerned
Let’s begin with the burning of coal. The Environmental Protection Agency has identified 67 separate hazardous compounds and chemicals in the flue gas emitted from power plant smokestacks. Of these, 55 are known neurotoxins or developmental toxins (i.e., they affect the development of a child’s brain, nervous system, or body). In addition, 24 are also known, probable, or possible human carcinogens.
Damage to the environment from air pollutants such as nitrogen oxides (NOx) and sulfur dioxide (SO2) have been well documented for many years. NOx is associated with the development of ozone, which can damage plants; both NOx and SO2 contribute to acid rain, which has killed the aquatic wildlife in many streams and lakes in the northeastern United States as well as causing damage to crops, trees and other plants on which wildlife depends.
In addition these pollutants have been increasingly linked to health risks for humans. Abt Associates, for example, estimates that power plant emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides alone are responsible each year for an estimated 30,100 premature deaths, 20,100 hospitalizations, 603,000 asthmas attacks and over 5,000,000 lost workdays. Evidence from studies by researchers at the Harvard School of public health indicates that people living in a 30-mile radius of certain large, utility company smokestacks have a 3-4 times higher chance of dying from respiratory illnesses than those living outside that area.
In addition to our elderly, children are particularly susceptible to air pollution. They, more often than adults, engage in outdoor physical activity, have a larger ratio of lung to body size, and their lungs are still developing. Recent research has indicated that children’s lung capacity increases when they move away from heavily polluted, industrialized areas and that children may have a much higher risk than adults of developing cancer from exposure to certain chemical pollutants.
Nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide are only two of the many toxics released by the burning of coal, however, and of this long list the Clean Air Act (CAA) controls only six. It does not, for example, control the emission of carbon dioxide, one of the main contributors to global warming, which threatens to cause the extinction of many species of plants and animals if the climate changes too rapidly for adaptation.
Nor does the CAA control the emission of mercury, which once released persists for a very long time in the environment, often entering the food web when it is converted to methyl mercury. Children are exposed both by eating foods contaminated with mercury (such as largemouth bass >12” in Missouri) or as fetuses in utero. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that 8% of women of childbearing years in the United States already have unsafe levels of mercury in their bodies, putting the number of babies at risk over 300,000. Evidence is increasing that exposure to high mercury levels can cause mental retardation and other neurological problems in young children.
It is evident in reviewing just a few of the many pollutants, such as mercury and carbon dioxide, that simply meeting the requirements of MDNR, the state agency responsible for the compliance of power plants in Missouri with the provisions of the CAA, offers little protection for “our natural environment”, i.e., our air and our water and subsequently any life dependent on clean water and clean air – human, plant and wildlife.
Unfortunately, it is not just the burning of coal that is of concern. The extraction, purification and transportation of coal are also degrading to the environment and to the health of the people and wildlife living in those areas. Even the residue from coal burning, which contains concentrated levels of numerous contaminants – arsenic, mercury, lead, chromium and cadmium, and radioactive elements, for example – presents health and environmental risks. Quoting the Clean Air Task Force, “It is clear from current disposal practices, however, that state rules are inadequate to control or mitigate the public health and environmental risks of coal combustion waste disposal.”
Coal is cheap only because private individuals and the general public pay the health and environmental costs of burning coal. If utility companies had to compensate people for these losses, the cost of coal would be prohibitive.
What Are the Alternatives?
Although CU initially considered several forms of clean, renewable alternative energy sources, not everyone agrees with CU’s assessment. In addition, there were at least two alternative options were overlooked altogether – biomass and landfill gas.
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and the Missouri Public Interest Research Group indicate that Missouri has the potential to produce more electricity from clean energy sources – wind, clean biomass (e.g. switchgrass), solar and landfill gas –than it currently generates using polluting technologies.
Windpower technology is rapidly improving and windpower has already become cost competitive in some areas. Wind mapping on a small enough scale to effectively identify areas sufficient to support a utility sized project will not begin in Missouri until later this year and will take approximately one year to complete. Recent remapping of Illinois identified several such areas, which older mapping techniques had missed.
Research in the use of native switchgrass in Iowa for burning with coal to reduce pollution, keep revenue in the state and support family farms is progressing well, but is not complete. The use of this and other clean biomass technologies and leasing of land for wind farms would mean millions of dollars in new income for farmers and rural communities.
Likewise, research in photovoltaic technology utilizing solar energy is rapidly progressing, bringing prices down and paving the way for energy storage without the use of batteries. Sacramento, California is an example of a town that is already successfully using this technology to significantly reduce their use of coal.
Clean, renewable energy not only eliminates the health and environmental risks associated with burning coal, but a switch to renewable energy would give a much needed boost to our sagging economy in Missouri. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) points out that Missouri imports virtually all of its coal, nuclear fuel, and natural gas from out of state, exporting millions of dollars and many jobs in the process.
By using wind power to replace only 20% of its energy needs by 2020, UCS indicates that Missouri would experience $1.6 billion in new capital investment, $62 million in new property tax revenues, and $4 million in lease payments to rural Missourians.
If CU builds a 275 MW coal-fired unit, it will lack the flexibility to take advantage of these clean, renewable energy technologies as they become available. Springfield will, instead, be committed for years to the use of coal and the loss of millions of dollars each year in revenue to the area.
An important option that could be exercised today and that would permit CU to maintain its flexibility – reducing the demand for electricity – was also missing from the options considered by CU. Energy conservation is a simpler, far less costly and much cleaner solution than the one offered by CU. Many utility companies, arriving at the same conclusion, have successfully lowered customer demand by offering incentives to customers to reduce their use of electricity.
CU’s only incentive program currently is a voluntary curtailment by its largest energy users during periods of peak demand. But to participate in this program, industries must stop all use of electricity when requested. No industry to date has been able to agree to this, as their ongoing operating expenses continue while they are offline. CU needs to redesign this program, so that it will work for industries.
There are also a number of other effective ways to encourage conservation of energy, which are already in use by other utility companies, such as Columbia Water & Light in Columbia, Missouri. For example, peak loads could be reduced by the voluntary installation of a radio-transmitted device on air conditioning units for which consumers received a rate reduction. The devices would allow CU to shut down the compressors for short periods of each hour during peak demands, which is hardly noticeable to the average homeowner.
CU does offer energy audits for homes or businesses with suggestions for improving energy efficiency, but residential customers and businesses have underutilized this resource as, unlike Columbia W&L, there is a sizable fee and no rate relief for or help with the costs of following the recommendations made.
Along these same lines, rebates or low-interest loans could be offered to consumers to encourage the purchase of energy-efficient appliances and appliances with timers that allow use during non-peak demand periods.
However, if CU builds the unit they are currently proposing, the $660,000,000 indebtedness incurred to fund the unit will preclude any use of funds for promoting the conservation of energy. It is more likely, in fact, that CU will actually be motivated to generate and sell excess energy to reduce their indebtedness. Springfieldians will then be forced to tolerate higher levels of air pollution in order to generate electricity for people living outside the area.
In this event, the reduction in emissions touted by CU resulting from the retirement of their older, more polluting units following the startup of the new plant will be short-lived, if it ever occurs. In any event, with no incentives for conservation, demand will soon catch up with capacity and CU will be running all units—new and old—resulting in a significant increase in emissions.
Not giving consumers an option to conserve energy unnecessarily limits them to the option of utility plant expansion with increased rates and increased pollution of their air and water.
Take action
All Sierra Club members are encouraged to oppose the construction of any new coal-fired units in Missouri. Members in the Springfield area are encouraged to vote against the funding for this proposal when it comes up on the local ballot in August. In summary,
- coal is not the cheapest fuel, when health and environmental costs are considered,
- a new coal-fired plant will continue the revenue drain on the local economy,
- it will prevent an early conversion to clean renewal energy,
- it is unnecessary, if simple proven methods are put in place to encourage conservation.
Members in the Springfield area can find more information about this issue and how they might participate in opposing CU’s proposal on the Chapter website (missouri.sierraclub.org) under “Outings and Local Groups/White River Group.”