CleanEnergySC.com

2009-03-26T16:13:00.004-04:00

You'll have noted that there has been no activity on this blog for a long, long while.

Unfortunately, during that time Santee Cooper's ill-considered coal plant proposal has not gone away.

Fortunately, opposition to Santee Cooper and its plans has only grown.

There is now a new blog devoted to the issue here (http://www.scsaysno.blogspot.com),
and a great website devoted to stopping the plant here, (http://www.scsaysno.com)

Both will keep you up to date on what is going on and how to get involved.

In time, this unfortunate proposal will be cancelled (like 95 others) and South Carolina will finally be able to get to work building this state's energy future.

Till then,

Cheers!

John Mellor

Mercury Rising

2008-05-05T10:14:00.003-04:00

Troubling news from ScienceDaily. More reasons to question the wisdom of adding more mercury to an already saturated South Carolina with a new coal plant.

Autism Risk Linked To Distance From Power Plants, Other Mercury-releasing Sources

ScienceDaily (Apr. 25, 2008) — How do mercury emissions affect pregnant mothers, the unborn and toddlers? Do the level of emissions impact autism rates? Does it matter whether a mercury-emitting source is 10 miles away from families versus 20 miles? Is the risk of autism greater for children who live closer to the pollution source?

A newly published study of Texas school district data and industrial mercury-release data, conducted by researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, indeed shows a statistically significant link between pounds of industrial release of mercury and increased autism rates. It also shows—for the first time in scientific literature—a statistically significant association between autism risk and distance from the mercury source.

“This is not a definitive study, but just one more that furthers the association between environmental mercury and autism,” said lead author Raymond F. Palmer, Ph.D., associate professor of family and community medicine at the UT Health Science Center San Antonio. The article is in the journal Health & Place.

Dr. Palmer, Stephen Blanchard, Ph.D., of Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio and Robert Wood of the UT Health Science Center found that community autism prevalence is reduced by 1 percent to 2 percent with each 10 miles of distance from the pollution source.

“This study was not designed to understand which individuals in the population are at risk due to mercury exposure,” Dr. Palmer said. “However, it does suggest generally that there is greater autism risk closer to the polluting source.”

The study should encourage further investigations designed to determine the multiple routes of mercury exposure. “The effects of persistent, low-dose exposure to mercury pollution, in addition to fish consumption, deserve attention,” Dr. Palmer said. “Ultimately, we will want to know who in the general population is at greatest risk based on genetic susceptibilities such as subtle deficits in the ability to detoxify heavy metals.”

The new study findings are consistent with a host of other studies that confirm higher amounts of mercury in plants, animals and humans the closer they are to the pollution source. The price on children may be the highest.

“We suspect low-dose exposures to various environmental toxicants, including mercury, that occur during critical windows of neural development among genetically susceptible children may increase the risk for developmental disorders such as autism,” the authors wrote.

Study highlights

* Mercury-release data examined were from 39 coal-fired power plants and 56 industrial facilities in Texas.
* Autism rates examined were from 1,040 Texas school districts.
* For every 1,000 pounds of mercury released by all industrial sources in Texas into the environment in 1998, there was a corresponding 2.6 percent increase in autism rates in the Texas school districts in 2002.
* For every 1,000 pounds of mercury released by Texas power plants in 1998, there was a corresponding 3.7 percent increase in autism rates in Texas school districts in 2002.
* Autism prevalence diminished 1 percent to 2 percent for every 10 miles from the source.
* Mercury exposure through fish consumption is well documented, but very little is known about exposure routes through air and ground water.
* There is evidence that children and other developing organisms are more susceptible to neurobiological effects of mercury.

Implications

“We need to be concerned about global mercury emissions since a substantial proportion of mercury releases are spread around the world by long-range air and ocean currents,” Dr. Palmer said. “Steps for controlling and eliminating mercury pollution on a worldwide basis may be advantageous. This entails greener, non-mercury-polluting technologies.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated environmental mercury releases at 158 million tons annually nationwide in the late 1990s, the time period studied by the Texas team. Most exposures were said to come from coal-fired utility plants (33 percent of exposures), municipal/medical waste incinerators (29 percent) and commercial/industrial boilers (18 percent). Cement plants also release mercury.

With the enactment of clean air legislation and other measures, mercury deposition into the environment is decreasing slightly.

Limitations

Dr. Palmer and his colleagues pointed out the study did not reflect the true community prevalence rates of autism because children younger than school age are not counted in the Texas Education Agency data system. The 1:500 autism rates in the study are lower than the 1:150 autism rates in recent reports of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Furthermore, the authors note that distance was not calculated from individual homes to the pollution source but from central points in school districts that varied widely in area.

Data sources

Data for environmentally released mercury were from the United States Environmental Protection Agency Toxics Release Inventory. Data for releases by coal-fired power plants came from the same inventory and from the Texas Commission for Environmental Quality. Data for school district autism came from the Texas Education Agency.

Journal reference: Palmer, R.F., et al., Proximity to point sources of environmental mercury release as a predictor of autism prevalence. Health & Place (2008), doi:10.1016/j.healthplace.2008.02.001.

Adapted from materials provided by University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

Pee Dee Timeline & Video

2008-04-28T09:45:00.003-04:00

See below for a timeline of events related to the Pee Dee coal plant proposal. These were compiled by the Florence Morning News.

Click here to view a video on the Florence Morning News website featuring Terri Cook, a Pamplico resident who lives next to the proposed coal site. There's also some pro coal guy on in the video who thinks (erroneously) the new coal plant will bring a lot of jobs to the area.

Timeline of proposed coal-fired plant in Kingsburg
Saturday, Apr 19, 2008

Santee Cooper has proposed a 600-megawatt coal-fired generation facility, which would be located on a 2,709-acre tract in Kingsburg. The facility is scheduled to become operational sometime after 2012.

Officials within the company have said the energy produced by the plant is necessary to South Carolina to prevent a power shortage in the next five years.

Area residents have been divided on the issue, and an end to the debate is nowhere in sight.

Below is a timeline of the events surrounding the proposed coal plant thus far.

On April 21, 2006: Santee Cooper announces plans for a 600 megawatt pulverized coal facility with an estimated cost of $984.

On May 22, 2006: The proposed completion date is cut by two years — putting the expected completion date in 2012 — and adding $14 million to the price tag for the plant.

On Oct. 7, 2006: Santee Cooper begins submitting permits in the hopes of clearing the land of the proposed site in Kingsburg.

On Oct. 24, 2006: Pamplico Mayor Gene Gainey announces his stand in favor of the coal plant. Also, Santee Cooper announces plans to begin construction in March 2007.

On March 20, 2007: The first of the groups opposing the coal plant begin to surface. Southern Environmental Law Center and the Coastal Conservation League began making their opinions against the proposed plant known.

On March 21, 2007: Santee Cooper extols the need for more power in South Carolina, saying the company will be 385 megawatts short of the amount needed to power homes in the region by 2012, if the plant isn’t built.

On April 30: Santee Cooper announces its intention to use a more in-depth version of the Environmental Impact Statement as required by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. This process will delay the construction of the coal plant by 14 to 18 months.

On May 2: Florence County Council announces its support for proposed plant.

On July 12: The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control holds an informal public meeting to answer questions about the proposed facility.

On July 17: Columbia-based environmental consulting firm, LPA Group Inc. is selected to perform an evaluation of the environmental impact statement.

On Sept. 17: DHEC issues the draft of the Prevention Significant Deterioration despite many requests not to by conservationists and some residents.

On Sept. 27: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers holds two public scoping meetings to hear the concerns of residents affected by the proposed plant.

On Oct. 25: Members of the Coastal Conservation League, the S.C. Wildlife Federation, the Southern Environmental Law Center, the S.C. Sierra Club, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and residents of the Pamplico and Kingsburg areas gather at the S.C. Statehouse to protest the proposed plant.

On Oct. 31: Health care professionals in the Pee Dee gather to protest the plant, citing health issues as a reason for DHEC to deny the draft air permits.

On Nov. 8: DHEC holds a public hearing on the draft air permits for the Santee Cooper facility to better address the concerns of the residents in the area. Gainey presents a petition signed by more than 1,000 people in favor of the plant. Mike King, a local environmentalist and resident of the Kingsburg area, also presents a petition signed by more than 400 residents of the area who are against the plant.

On Dec. 13: Francis Marion University professors conduct an in-depth look into the economic benefits of the proposed coal plant, determining $900 million in economic output and 9,300 jobs will be brought to the region as a result of the project, based on information provided by Santee Cooper.

On Jan. 22: Formation of the Pee Dee Supporters for Progress is announced in support of the plant.

On Jan. 23: Conservation groups release 136-page analysis of coal plants, detailing potentially harmful effects.

On Jan. 29: Attorneys General from eight states urge DHEC to reconsider the draft air permits.

On Feb. 8: The federal court rules the Environmental Protection Agency violated the Clean Air Act by removing coal and oil plants from the list of hazardous air pollution sources.

On March 3: Santee Cooper CEO Lonnie Carter defends the need for the coal-fired facility to the members of the Florence Rotary Club.

On March 19: Santee Cooper announces plans to move forward with the Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT), as required by the federal court’s ruling in February.

On March 27: Santee Cooper announces plan to increase the cost of the proposed coal plant from $998 million to $1.25 billion, citing growing costs of gasoline and building materials.

On April 11: Eastern Carolina Development Corp. and the Coastal Conservation League join forces to contract an outside data firm to review the economic data of the coal plant. The data from the report, using public information, shows markedly different results than the one conducted by FMU professors in December. According to the new report, only 228 jobs would come to the region as a result of the plant.

The Environmental Impact Statement has not been released by the Army Corps of Engineers.

Although DHEC has approved a draft air permit, it is not the final permit needed for Santee Cooper to follow through with plans to begin construction of the facility.

Below is a comparison of two Santee Cooper coal plants. The Cross Three facility began producing power in January, while the rates for the Pee Dee Energy Campus are projected rates based on analysis so far. The rates are per megawatt hour.

Cross Three:
Carbon dioxide: 1,944
Sulfur dioxide: 0.512
Nitrogen oxides: 0.758
Mercury: 0.0000342

Pee Dee Energy Campus
Carbon dioxide: 1,784
Sulfur dioxide: 0.470
Nitrogen Oxides: 0.696
Mercury: Projected emission rates will be released after MACT analysis is completed in May.

The Answer: Blowing in the Wind

2008-04-26T14:54:00.001-04:00

Once again, our sister state to the north is getting there first. With one of the largest (offshore) wind resources in the nation, South Carolina can certainly more than catch up.

Note that this wind farm is being built by private citizens. If they can do it, so can the "experts."

Lawmakers in North Carolina know that. That's why they are REQUIRING utilities there to generate 12.5% of their power from renewables and efficiency over the next 12 years.

If our state's utilities would put as much effort (and money) into renewables and efficiency, we wouldn't be having this coal plant fight.

That might be happening in some of our state's utilities. It clearly isn't in others.

From the Charlotte N&O:

State clears coastal wind farmJohn Murawski, Staff Writer
Raleigh entrepreneurs Nelson and Dianna Paul cleared the first hurdle Thursday toward building the state's largest wind power plant in Bettie, east of Morehead City.

The state Utilities Commission approved the proposed project -- on condition that the wind farm is permitted by Carteret County and also cleared by the Federal Aviation Administration.

The county has imposed a moratorium on wind farms as officials there try to establish regulations for the structures in coastal areas. The three turbines proposed by Paul would exceed 400 feet in height with blades fully extended upward, towering more than twice as high as the Cape Lookout lighthouse. Residents have lobbied against the wind turbines as an eyesore and environmental hazard.

The Pauls must still apply for a permit from the FAA for their 4.5 megawatt Golden Wind Farm. The federal agency requires assurance that the turbines will not interfere with the flight path of a nearby airport and that they will not cause radio interference with an air traffic control radar.

The state approval is also conditional on the Pauls conducting a study to determine whether the airspace above the turbines can generate sufficient wind activity to justify the project. The question decided by the Utilities Commission on Thursday was whether there was a public need in the state for the wind farm.

The Pauls' proposal would provide power for about 900 homes when the wind is blowing, which is about 35 percent of the time.

"Honestly, it blows so much, it's a nuisance," Dianna Paul said.

The largest wind project in the state is a 50-kilowatt private turbine operated by military security contractor Blackwater Worldwide at the company's head- quarters in Currituck County. The Blackwater turbine generates enough electricity to power the equivalent of about eight homes.

The Pauls, both real estate agents in Raleigh, are Carteret County natives who own the 33.3-acre farm where the wind turbines would be built. Nelson Paul once worked as a wetlands scientist for the N.C. Division of Coastal Management.

The Pauls are in discussions to have Progress Energy buy the electricity that Golden Wind would produce. Private generators are not allowed to sell electricity directly to retail customers in North Carolina; they can only sell at wholesale rates to public utilities.

Progress is exploring renewable-energy options. A new state state law requires that utilities derive 12.5 percent of the electricity they sell from renewable sources or efficiency programs by 2021.

Common Sense from Florence

2008-04-25T14:50:00.002-04:00

The following open letter to the state's elected officials appeared in yesterday's Florence Morning News. Here's hoping they listen to this reasonable man.

Compromise should be reached on power plant
Thursday, Apr 24, 2008 - 04:00 AM
By Christopher Goss, Florence

I am pro-power, and I am pro-jobs. However, I ask that you please listen to those voicing concerns about the proposed power plant and work together with them and Santee Cooper to reach a compromise acceptable to both parties. As our elected officials, you have been chosen to lead based on your ability to make wise decisions now in anticipation of future events. This type of pulverized-coal plant in the Pee Dee’s mercury triangle is simply a bad idea both now and in the future.

As a chemist, I am concerned about the increased levels of methylmercury and DHEC’s refusal to at least test people and establish a mercury baseline from which one might see the power plant’s impact on our citizens’ health. As an outdoorsman, I am appalled at the lack of concern for our polluted rivers and lack of signage to educate the public how polluted our rivers are. However, it is as a fiscal conservative that I vehemently oppose the current plan. How can we let our public utility make such a horrible business decision under our watch? Just this week, George Bush has changed his stance and says he wants to rapidly slow the growth of power sector greenhouse gas emissions.

McCain, Obama and Clinton all hold more aggressive stances supporting mandatory limits on greenhouse gases. Face it. In the future, there will be carbon taxes and/or mandatory emission caps on nearly all the pollutants this type of plant releases.

Even the fair and balanced Fox News aired an ICCR article warning investors that coal is losing its appeal as a predictable investment and is instead fraught with uncertainty.

Building this type of pulverized-coal plant now costs 100 percent more than it did in 2002 and there appears to be no end to the skyrocketing costs.

Make no mistake. As said above, I am definitely pro-power and pro-jobs. Let’s just have some common sense and hold a public utility accountable for wanting to build a plant now that will face serious construction costs and delays and be prohibitively expensive to maintain and operate in the future.

There are other smarter alternatives that will create more, better jobs and cleaner electricity. After all, privately-held Duke Power and Progress Energy both have enough foresight to move past this type of pulverized-coal plant.

Please just listen and do what’s best for all parties involved.

After all, that’s what we elected you to do.

SCE&G Steps Up; S-C Lays Low

2008-04-25T09:10:00.004-04:00

Some utilities, at least, are trying to get it right (It can be done, after all).

Scana aims to sell less power
Company says it will continue to help customers conserve energy
By Kyle Stock
The Post and Courier
Friday, April 25, 2008

COLUMBIA — Scana Corp., the parent company of South Carolina Electric & Gas, dyed itself a deeper shade of green at its annual shareholders meeting Thursday.

The Columbia-based utility, following the lead of others in its industry, said it will continue to help its customers buy less of its power.

"Permanent irreversible reductions in electric demand are rational, save valuable resources and are clearly the right thing to do," Scana Chief Executive Officer William Timmerman told about 100 shareholders, directors and executives Thursday. "Conservation is very much on everyone's minds today."

The company announced the appointment of a new executive in charge of conservation, which it internally refers to as "demand-side management." And it is considering some aggressive "green" initiatives, including replacing its fleet of cars and trucks with hybrid vehicles, converting one of its coal plants to burn natural gas and using ponds of algae to gobble up carbon dioxide emissions.

Timmerman also said the utility has decided not to build any new coal-fired plants because of the surging price of the fuel and its relatively high emissions, which soon might be subject to a form of federal tax.

"We've just continued to push the envelope away from coal," Timmerman said. "We really did not want to create more issues for our customers by building a coal-fired plant."

Timmerman reaffirmed the company's plans to build two nuclear reactors next to a plant it co-owns with Santee Cooper near Jenkinsville. If all goes as planned, the new units would crank up in 2016 and 2019, boosting Scana generation capacity by 20 percent.

"The more we did the analysis, the more we became convinced," Timmerman said. "Nuclear became the clear choice."

For now, however, Scana has power to spare and is selling more of it than ever. The utility reported a 27 percent increase in first-quarter income Thursday, as factories and new customers sucked more electricity from its grid, despite a slowing economy and a dismal real estate market.

Scana posted income of $109 million, or 94 cents per share, in the first three months of the year, compared with $86 million, or 73 cents per share, in the first quarter of 2007. Revenue climbed 12 percent from $1.36 billion to $1.53 billion. The results handily beat analyst expectations of a profit of 76 cents per share.

"It was a solid quarter," said Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Addison. "It looks really impressive compared to a year ago, which was a miserable quarter."

Thanks to new customers and robust industrial demand, the utility sold 4.5 percent more electricity in the first quarter.

In the past year, Scana signed on 2.1 percent more electricity customers, boosting its total to 643,000 homes and businesses. Its natural gas users swelled 1.4 percent to 1.3 million.

The company reaffirmed its expectation to earn between $2.90 and $3.05 per share this year. "There's nothing out there that indicates that the inward migration to our service territories will slow," Timmerman said.

Scana also increased its annual dividend 4.5 percent to $1.84 per share.

Angie McClam, president of the Association of Scana Corp. Investors, said she was pleased with the earnings announced Thursday. "I'm real proud of Scana stock. It's holding its own," she said. "Apparently, we've got good management."

Scana's stock jumped 72 cents, or 1.9 percent, to $39.55 on the New York Stock Exchange Thursday. The shares began trading this year at $42.07.

Read more about how coal is "off the table" for SCANA/SCE&G over at The State. It makes one wonder, if Santee Cooper wasn't insulated from market forces and regulatory oversight on account of its status as a quasi-state agency (e.g. a socialist entity), would it still be pursuing a coal plant? In a state whose politics run deep with free-market conservative thought, you'd think this question would be troubling to many.

Dorthy to Coal: We're Not in Kansas Anymore

2008-04-24T10:51:00.002-04:00

Kansas Governor Vetoes Second Coal-Fired Power Bill
TOPEKA, Kansas
April 17, 2008 (ENS)

Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat, today again vetoed legislation that would have overturned a decision of her administration to deny an permit application to build two new coal-fired power plants in western Kansas.

The measure, SB 148, supported mainly by Republicans, passed without a veto-proof majority of state legislators.

Last October Secretary of Kansas Department of Health and Environment Rob Bremby denied a permit to regional wholesale power supplier Sunflower Electric Power Corporation to build two new 700 megawatt power plants at its Holcomb Station because of the greenhouse gases they would have produced.

The bill Sebelius vetoed today would have permitted the power plants and stripped the state agency of the power to deny such permits in the future if they held utilities to standards stricter than those in the federal Clean Air Act.
"Legislators who promote the expansion of coal-fired plants in Kansas made a strategic decision with SB 148," said Sebelius. "Rather than working toward a compromise solution or having any conversation about energy policy, this bill was drafted behind closed doors. It contains the same onerous elements of the previous bill that I vetoed; and again, these are elements I cannot accept and will not support."

"This maneuver has done nothing to address the issues at hand - developing comprehensive energy policy, providing base-load energy power for Western Kansas, implementing carbon mitigation strategies and capitalizing on our incredible assets for additional wind power," the governor said.

Opponents of the Sunflower project say wind and conservation are better alternatives to new coal plants, which will send 85 percent of their electricity outside the state anyway.

Supporters say Western Kansas needs the power, and that rejecting the plants will create an unstable business climate and scare future investments away.
But the political climate is changing and supporters of coal power are facing challenging times at both federal and state levels.

President George W. Bush, a long-time climate change skeptic, announced a policy shift Wednesday that would halt the growth of greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2025. While not soon enough for many scientists and environmentalists, the announcement signals a recognition that climate change is a real threat that the government must address.

Sebelius said today that the president's announcement underlines the necessity of her decision not to allow more coal-fired power plants to be construction in Kansas.

"President Bush has announced a new goal for stopping the growth of greenhouse gas emissions, and recognized that the power sector must make significant efforts to achieve that goal," she said.

"Since the most likely way to achieve this goal is through a cap and trade system, which would, in effect, tax carbon, it would be unfair to Kansans for our utilities to build coal-fired plants for other states until we can evaluate the costs of those plants for Kansas tax payers and rate payers."

"We must remember the decisions we make today have a huge impact on Kansans for generations to come. The challenges before us can and should be met through a common sense solution," she said. "I am still hopeful we can have meaningful discussions about a true compromise; rather than being sent the same bill in disguise yet again."

With this action, Sebelius has signed 91 bills this legislative session and vetoed two.

Dirty Water

2008-04-24T10:43:00.003-04:00

Not only do some utilities want to continue fouling our air and contaminating our bodies with pollution from coal plants, some also want to use their power plants to drain our rivers dry. See this article from the State:

Logjam is dooming water withdrawal bill
By SAMMY FRETWELL
sfretwell@thestate.com

An impasse between big business and conservation groups has all but killed a plan to protect rivers and drinking water across South Carolina.

Without a law to oversee water withdrawals:

n South Carolina’s drinking water plants and industries could be vulnerable if new companies divert water upstream.

• The Palmetto State will have a harder time striking deals with Georgia and North Carolina for the use of common rivers, including the Savannah and Catawba, negotiators say.

The bill, which has bogged down in the Legislature, would, for the first time, require permits — and state oversight — for new or expanding industries that want to draw at least 3 million gallons per month from a river.

Catawba Riverkeeper David Merryman said it’s a shame the Legislature could not reach an agreement.

“It is important for everyone to know who is sticking a straw in the river,” said Merryman, whose river today has been named the nation’s most endangered. “You can’t have withdrawals that are unchecked.”

Donna Lisenby, founder of Waterkeepers Carolina, said South Carolina’s failure to pass a bill could set back efforts to launch a permitting program in North Carolina that would protect users downstream in the Palmetto State. Tarheel legislators were looking to South Carolina for direction, she said.

While the bill is on the Senate’s calendar in South Carolina, it has been contested — which severely damages the possibility of passage this year, said its sponsor, Sen. Wes Hayes, R-York. The Senate would have to vote on the bill by May 1 so the House could debate it.

“I’m going to keep fighting,” Hayes said. “We have got to get a handle on our surface water withdrawals or you’re going to have battles like out West, where you don’t have enough.”

Led by Duke Energy Inc., industries fought strict versions of the bill that would keep companies from drawing rivers to low levels. Industry favored versions of the bill that would allow withdrawals below what state scientists said was good for fish and wildlife.

Power companies, who say the federal government already regulates their dams, use the majority of surface water in South Carolina. Most are proposing new power plants in the state.

Duke, for instance, plans a nuclear plant near Gaffney that will need more than 35 million gallons each day from the Broad River basin. Duke already consumes about 60 million gallons per day for existing power stations in the Upstate.

Santee Cooper, which takes about 58 million gallons per day for its existing plants, wants to consume at least 9 million gallons more each day for a proposed coal-fired power plant on the Great Pee Dee River. SCE&G could not provide comparable statistics this week.

Major environmental groups, once the permitting bill’s staunchest supporters, last week vowed to fight the legislation in the Senate because they said the latest versions don’t do enough to protect the public and wildlife.

Coal Kills

2008-04-23T06:54:00.000-04:00

We've heard a lot this week about how a coal plant in South Carolina won't create jobs or wealth for South Carolinians -- despite the claims of the utility that wants to build one.

But all these economic arguments are moot if...you're dead. See below for the latest news from the United States National Acedemy of Sciences, the most prestigeous scientific body in our country. They are stating in no uncertain terms that smog is deadly.

The Pee Dee plant will emit thousands of tons of poisonous gases that lead directly to ozone or smog every year.

This means that Santee Cooper's proposed coal plant, if built, can be expected to kill South Carolinians -- and that is no exaggeration.

The Federal government recently strengthened laws limiting ozone pollution, though it failed to tighten standards as much as health and scientific experts recommended. Even so, our state's Department of Health and Environmental Control is predicting that Florence county will have more smog in its air than is allowed by the new law.

That's without a new coal plant in Florence County. Folks who support this plant should stop and consider what it might do to the health of residents of the Pee Dee. If our nation's top scientists have anything to say about it, it is a matter of life...and death -- and that is no exaggeration.

US science panel says link between smog and premature death is clear
April 22, 2008 11:01 AM EDT

WASHINGTON - Short-term exposure to smog, or ozone, is clearly linked to premature deaths that should be taken into account when measuring the health benefits of reducing air pollution, a U.S. National Academy of Sciences report concluded Tuesday.

The findings contradict arguments made by some White House officials that the connection between smog and premature death has not been shown sufficiently, and that the number of saved lives should not be calculated in determining clean air benefits.

The report by a panel of the Academy's National Research Council says government agencies "should give little or no weight" to such arguments.

"The committee has concluded from its review of health-based evidence that short-term exposure to ambient ozone is likely to contribute to premature deaths," the 13-member panel said.

It added that "studies have yielded strong evidence that short-term exposure to ozone can exacerbate lung conditions, causing illness and hospitalization and can potentially lead to death."

The White House Office of Management and Budget, which in its review of air quality regulations has raised questions about the certainty of the pollution and mortality link, did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

"The report is a rebuke of the Bush administration which has consistently tried to downplay the connection between smog and premature death," said Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, a Washington-based advocacy organization.

Vickie Patton, deputy general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund, said the Academy's findings "refutes the White House skepticism and denial" of a proven link between acute ozone exposure and premature deaths. Such arguments have been used to diminish the health benefits of reducing air pollution, she said.

The Academy panel examined short-term exposure - up to 24 hours - to high levels of ozone, but said more studies also were needed on long-term chronic exposure where the risk of premature death "may be larger than those observed in acute effects studies alone."

Ground-level ozone is formed from nitrogen oxide and organic compounds created by burning fossil fuels and is demonstrated often by the yellow haze or smog that lingers in the air. Ozone exposure is a leading cause of respiratory illnesses and especially affects the elderly, those with respiratory problems and children.

While premature death from ozone exposure is greater among individuals with lung and heart disease, the report said such deaths are not restricted to people who are at a high risk of death within a few days.

The scientists said they could not determine, based on a review of health studies, whether there is a threshold below which no fatalities can be assured from ozone exposure. If there is such a point, it is below the ozone levels allowed for public health.

Environmentalists and health advocates have argued that a string of health studies and surveys show that exposure to smoggy air not only aggravates respiratory problems, but causes thousands of deaths a year.

But in a number of instances the EPA and the White House Office of Management and Budget, which reviews regulations, have been at odds over the certainty of a link between smog levels and deaths.

Patton said the OMB in a number of air pollution regulations has sought to minimize the relationship of pollution and premature deaths, resulting in a lower calculation of health benefits from pollution reductions.

"This has been used by industry to try to attack health standards by minimizing the societal benefits," said Patton.

One such case involves the EPA's decision last month to toughen the ozone health standard, reducing the allowable concentration in the air.

When the cost-benefit analysis was being prepared in connection with the rulemaking, the OMB argued there is "considerable uncertainty" in the association between ozone levels and deaths.

As a result, the EPA issued a wide cost-benefit range from an annual net societal cost of $20 billion (euro12.5 billion) to a savings of $23 billion (euro14.4 billion), depending largely on whether one takes into account lives saved from ozone-related premature deaths.

OMB officials also have objected to the EPA quantifying ozone-related mortality benefits in new emissions standards for lawn mowers and other small engines that release large amounts of ozone-forming pollution.

In response, the EPA removed "all references to quantified ozone benefits" in the proposed rule, according to an e-mail sent by EPA to the OMB. The small engine regulation is awaiting final action.

Bad Investment

2008-04-22T20:49:00.002-04:00

More bad news for those touting the economic benefits of a coal plant in our state. It might put money in the pockets of folks in other states (and countries) though...

Study questions power plant benefits
By Kyle Stock
The Post and Courier
Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Santee Cooper's controversial coal-burning power plant proposed for Florence County would not generate nearly as much of an economic windfall as the utility estimated, according to a new study from an environmental watchdog.

The Coastal Conservation League, a Charleston-based nonprofit, commissioned a report that said 68 percent of the dollars spent on the power plant will go out of state, and four out of five jobs will be filled by "non-local" workers, including all of the 112 or so permanent employees who will run the facility once it is built.
This is an artist's rendering of Santee Cooper's proposed coal-fired power plant in Florence County.

Scott Moore, a former Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce statistician who crunched the numbers for the Conservation League, pegged the plant's total economic impact in South Carolina at $542.6 million, 35 percent less than the estimate in a report commissioned by Santee Cooper, $839.1 million.

"A coal plant just isn't a good way to create jobs," said Ben Moore, a project manager at the league. "Whether this plan is debated on economic terms or health terms, it's just the wrong answer for South Carolina."

Santee Cooper has asked regulators for permission to build a 600-megawatt coal-burning power plant near the tiny town of Kingsburg in Florence County. The utility said it needs to fire up the facility by 2012 or its customers could face brownoutsand blackouts.

Though environmental watchdogs have long sparred with the state-owned utility over the proposed plant's pollution levels, the league's study is the first to challenge the economics of the facility.

In December, Santee Cooper received a bullish economic-impact report commissioned from Francis Marion University. That study said about 1,200 workers would be needed to build the plant, while some 639 other laborers would be required to support the construction in a variety of roles, from serving meals to delivering materials.

All told, workers tied to the plant would draw $481 million in wages during the five years it would take to build the Pee Dee generator. Santee Cooper would spend another $537 million in South Carolina on construction materials and other expenses, according to the Francis Marion researchers.

However, the Conservation League consultant said most of those workers would come from outside the area and take their paychecks with them when they leave.

Barry O'Brien, dean of Francis Marion University's business school and an author of the Santee Cooper study, stood by his analysis Monday.

"I hate the term apples and oranges, but (Moore) was looking at economic impact for the region and we were looking at economic impact for the state," he said.

O'Brien said his group also looked closely at where Santee Cooper would buy goods and services and how much of that money would "leak" across state borders.

It's likely that both studies are already outdated. Late last month, Santee Cooper said the first phase of its proposed plant would cost $1.25 billion, one-fourth more than the $998 million it originally estimated. Santee Cooper blamed the increase on surging costs for construction materials and delays in getting state and federal permits.

A growing number of utilities pursuing coal plants are finding construction costs, and concerns about global warming and mercury pollution, making such projects too expensive. U.S. power companies canceled or postponed plans to build more than 45 coal-burning generators in 2007, according to Energy Department statistics.

Reach Kyle Stock at 937-5763 or kstock@postandcourier.com.

Coal in Florence

2008-04-21T12:52:00.004-04:00

The Florence Morning News has a new webpage devoted to the coal controversey going on in its backyard.

Job(less)

2008-04-20T18:58:00.000-04:00

More coverage of an alternative study of the benefits (or lack thereof) of Santee Cooper's coal plant (from the Columbia Free Times):

Study: Santee Cooper Inflates Plant’s Economic Impact
Opponents to Plant Say Conservation, Green Energy Can Meet Power Needs
by : Eric K. Ward

Santee Cooper has one hell of a fight on its hands in the state-owned utility’s effort to build a coal-fired power plant on the Great Pee Dee River in Florence County.

The latest punch at the plant is a study of its projected economic impact by Moore Data, a number crunching firm in the Charleston area.

The study concludes that a Santee Cooper economic impact review of the proposed plant, conducted by a research team at Francis Marion University in Florence, overstates the benefits of the facility.

The South Carolina Coastal Conservation League, an environmental group that is part of a broad-based coalition fighting the plant, commissioned the Moore Data analysis and released it April 11 in conjunction with the Florence-based Eastern Carolina Community Development Corporation.

“It was important to produce a transparent, publicly available study that communicates what this plant will really mean to the region’s growth,” Moore Data’s Scott Moore, who oversaw the study, says in a summary of its findings. “Because most of the jobs are not local, and most of the investment is flowing out of the state, this project will not have the large economic impact people are looking for in the Pee Dee region.”

Santee Cooper spokeswoman Laura Varn referred questions about the Moore Data analysis to Barry O’Brien, who led the team that performed the Santee Cooper study and is dean of the School of Business at Francis Marion.

Varn said she would contact O’Brien and have him call to respond to the Moore Data report. O’Brien did not call before press time.

The Santee Cooper study says construction of the plant would create nearly $900 million in economic activity for the South Carolina economy and more than 9,300 full-time jobs, including 200 permanent local positions.

The Moore Data analysis says that 70 percent of the cost of the plant would be spent outside of the Pee Dee region and that the local workforce would fill only about 20 percent of the jobs.

The utility aims to build the plant near the small town of Kingsburg and have it operational sometime after 2012. Santee Cooper says the facility is necessary to meet a growing need for electricity in the state.

The opponents counter that the plant is not needed because South Carolina could meet its power needs through conservation and green energy efforts. They further contend that coal is a dirty, dinosaur electricity source that harms public health, fish and wildlife and the environment.

Santee Cooper asserts that the plant would feature the latest environmental control technology available and be one of the cleanest power stations in the country.

No matter which side is right, this fight promises to persist for at least a few years. — EW

"The jobs are simply not there"

2008-04-19T12:40:00.000-04:00

A new report was recently released on the proposed Pee Dee Coal plant. You can read it here or read about it below:

New study of proposed Kingsburg plant contradicts FMU study
Economic impact focus of both studies
Friday, Apr 11, 2008 - 02:01 PM Updated: 04:34 PM
By Jamie Durant

FLORENCE — Eastern Carolina Community Development Corp., in conjunction with the Coastal Conservation League, has released a new economic impact analysis on the proposed Santee Cooper coal-fired power plant in Kingsburg.

The results show a marked difference from the economic impact study conducted last year by Francis Marion University, which used data directly from Santee Cooper.

The 600-megawatt plant, called the Pee Dee Energy Campus, is proposed to be located on a 2,709-acre tract along the Great Pee Dee River, is scheduled to become operational sometime after 2012. Although Santee Cooper officials say the plant will be one of the cleanest coal plants in the state, many citizens and conservation groups disagree.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has yet to issue its environmental impact statement regarding the plant.

The Rev. Leo Woodberry, executive director of the Eastern Carolina Development Corp., said he thinks it is no accident that coal plants are commonly located in areas that are primarily black or impoverished.

“When you look at most coal-fired facilities, they are either in people of color’s communities or in very very low income communities,” Woodberry said. “So that was our interest this. We had some questions about that.”

Nancy Cave, North Coast director of the Coastal Conservation League, said she thinks there are safer alternatives to coal that must be considered by Santee Cooper.

“There are alternatives that are being looked, at and what we have to make sure of is that they are being implemented here in South Carolina,” Cave said.

Cave said the report done by FMU was done using information supplied directly by Santee Cooper, but so far, the basis for those numbers have not been released to the public.

“We’re using public information and Santee Cooper is using information they don’t want to share with anybody,” she said. “It’s a matter of transparency.”

The report, compiled and developed by Scott Moore, president of Moore Data, indicated that cost of the proposed power plant would end up being greater Santee Cooper’s projected cost of $1.25 billion, coming in at $1.35 billion.

The total number of jobs the plant would bring to the region was vastly different than in the Santee Cooper/FMU study, as well. The number of jobs brought to the area, according to Santee Cooper and FMU, was roughly 1,200.

According to Moore’s data, the coal plant would only bring an additional 228 jobs to the region, and would result in a local investment of $432 million.

“We commissioned people from the outside to do a peer review,” Moore said. “We wanted to know what people who were clearly not connected with the project thought about our findings.”

Moore said Santee Cooper’s claims of many jobs resulting from the power plant are easily disproved.

Just as race car drivers aren’t needed in Charleston Harbor, but ship captains are, the types of people who are available for work in the Pee Dee would not be qualified to work in the power plant, Moore said.

“The jobs are simply not there,” Moore said.

“This has nothing to do with the quality of the work force in Florence,” he said. “Why would anybody in Florence have the types of skills when we don’t have this type of facility? It’s just common sense.”

“We feel efficiency can happen now, and it can help all the areas of the community faster than any coal plant ever will, ” Cave said.

Turn out for Friday’s announcement of Moore’s study results was much greater, Cave said, than she anticipated.

“We’re very pleased,” she said. “Dr. (Benetha) George said it well, that this is the impetus for a town hall meeting to discuss the coal plant’s impact, particularly on the African-American community. This is the impetus to let them learn and give them a voice about what is right for their community.”

George is a retired physician who grew up in the Pamplico area before moving to Maryland to practice medicine. She said she returned to the Pee Dee and plans to fight against organizations that would cause harm to impoverished people in the region.

“The No. 1, 2 and 3 causes of death (among blacks) are associated with emissions from coal-fired power plants,” she said. “That is not to say coal-fired plants exclusively cause these problems, but they add to it.”

If coal is so good...

2008-04-18T11:07:00.004-04:00

...then why do we need advertisements to convince us?

Coal's media campaign just got a huge anabolic shot in the arm, but the message remains the same: let's burn more coal, let's make the taxpayers pay for it, and lets spend a lot of money conving you it's a good idea.

Check out their latest marketing attempt below. Too bad it doesn't come with the list of sideeffects we are used to from pharmaceutical adds (higher electricity prices, medical bills, etc.). Interesting that all the "believers" featured can't seem to spit out the word "coal." Hard to be a convincing believer when you appear to be embarrassed by your message.

COAL: The industry and its allies fire up a new outreach effort
04/17/2008
Christa Marshall, ClimateWire reporter
The lobbying and outreach operation pushing for clean coal just got bigger, and its newest representative is not ruling out the prospect of a mandatory cap-and-trade
system.
A new coalition that includes more than 40 U.S. companies -- including Peabody Energy and Duke Energy Corp. -- announced it will develop a federal lobbying effort on climate change and bring new advertising to the airwaves. It aims to push Congress to adopt legislation that includes a workable regulatory framework for carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.

"So many people in this country still don't know half of their electricity comes from coal, and in some states it's more than 90 percent, " said Stephen Miller, the president of the new group, American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE).

"It's America's fuel, and we have to tell them that."

In addition to coal producers, companies from the electricity generation, transportation, energy technology and equipment manufacturing industries will fund and constitute the new organization.

ACCCE consolidates two predecessor groups, the 1992-founded Center for Energy and Economic Development (CEED) and Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC), the backer of the pro-coal "America's Power" campaign. That campaign will continue under the new organizational structure.

CEED previously focused on environmental policies at the state and regional levels, a structure that Miller said needed updating in today's political landscape.

The new coalition will not only establish a new federal lobbying presence but also stand behind a set of 12 principles for formulating national "carbon management" legislation, which recognizes a mandatory cap-and-trade program as an option, according to Miller.
A 'big step' for 'America's fuel'
"For a group getting coal industry money to signal an openness on cap and trade feels like a big step forward to me," said Manik Roy, director of congressional affairs at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. "A lot of companies wouldn't have done that in the past."

Still, the coalition emphasized that such a mandatory system would have to stick with the 12 principles, which include a request that any emission cuts be "reasonable," with an understanding that many technologies to reduce emissions are not yet
commercially available.

The other 11 points, available on the coalition's Web site, range from a call for CCS to "become commercially deployable as soon as possible," with a solid stream of funding, to an emphasis on deploying U.S. technologies for carbon capture overseas via the State Department.

The group expects to take a position soon on the climate change legislation sponsored by Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John Warner (R-Va.), although Miller expressed concern to E&E TV that the bill may "push too far and too fast."
Renewable energy, natural gas, nuclear power and energy efficiency also should play a role in cutting emissions, said Miller, even if that means less coal being used at some power plants.

Asked about that point, Kraig Naasz, the president and chief executive of the National Mining Association, which represents many coal companies, said "we believe the nation is well-served if [energy] comes from a diversity of sources -- including energy savings through energy efficiency."

And a bigger pot of money for national advertising "Our analysis shows, however, that the nation will need more coal -- even in a carbon-constrained environment -- along with other fuels and increased efficiency," Naasz said, adding that he supports the 12 objectives and ACCCE's communications effort.

The prospect of increased advertising on clean coal doesn't worry the Sierra Club, which has called for a timeout on new coal-fired power plants because of their current role in emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

"Every day, more money is being thrown into this campaign to try and convince the public that this dirty fuel is a smart move for energy," said Alice McKeown, who works on coal issues at the Sierra Club. "It's a sign that they are worried they are losing the battle."

ACCCE's formation has roots in an ABEC meeting in the fall of 2006 where industry members heard that "the mood of the country was shifting" and a more aggressive communications strategy was necessary. After that push, member companies have provided the coalition with a roughly $38 million annual starting communications budget that is expected to increase, Miller said.

"We'll be able to run advertising nationally, but also target messages in states and congressional districts," Miller said. "We didn't have a big enough campaign and pot of money to do that before."

The Big Lump Gets Thumped

2008-04-18T10:19:00.001-04:00

From Grist

King Coal's year of rejection by banks, judges, and a whole lotta other folks

Earth Policy Institute just released this revelatory chronology of really sad, horrible, and depressing events in the life of the coal industry since February 2007. What's next -- will Santa be switching to lumps of dirt?

Additional commentary can be found at http://www.earthpolicy.org/Updates/2008/Update70_timeline.htm

26 February 2007 - James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and a leading climate scientist, calls for a moratorium on the construction of coal-fired power plants that do not sequester carbon, saying that it makes no sense to build these plants when we will have to "bulldoze" them in a few years.

26 February 2007 - Under mounting pressure from environmental groups, TXU Corporation, a Dallas-based energy company, abandons plans for 8 of 11 proposed
coal-fired power plants, catalyzing the shift from coal-based to renewable energy development in Texas.

2 April 2007 - The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has the authority to regulate carbon dioxide and that EPA's current rationale for not regulating this gas is inadequate.

3 May 2007 - Washington Governor Christine Gregoire signs a bill that prevents new power plants from exceeding 1,100 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per megawatt hour of electricity generated, creating a de facto moratorium on building new coal-fired power plants in the state.

30 May 2007 - Progress Energy, an energy company serving approximately 3.1 million customers in the Southeast, announces a two-year moratorium on the construction of new coal-fired power plants.

2 July 2007 - The Florida Public Service Commission denies Florida Power & Light the permits needed to move forward with the massive 1,960-megawatt coal-fired Glades Power Park, citing uncertainty surrounding future carbon costs.

13 July 2007 - Florida Governor Charlie Crist signs an Executive Order establishing "maximum allowable emission levels of greenhouse gases for electric utilities." Under the emissions cap, building new coal-fired power plants in the state seems unlikely.

18 July 2007 - Citigroup downgrades the stocks of Peabody Energy Corp., Arch Coal Inc., and Foundation Coal Holdings Inc., prominent U.S. coal companies. The decision
reflects the growing uncertainty surrounding coal's future in the United States.

18 August 2007 - After opposing new coal-fired power in Nevada, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says that he is opposed to building coal-fired power plants anywhere.

18 October 2007 - The Kansas Department of Health and Environment denies Sunflower Electric Power Corporation air quality permits for two proposed 700-megawatt coal-fired generators on the basis that carbon dioxide is an air pollutant and should be regulated.

3 January 2008 - Merrill Lynch downgrades the investment ratings of Consol Energy Inc. and Peabody Energy Corp., two leading U.S. coal companies.

22 January 2008 - The Attorneys General of California, six eastern states, and the District of Columbia submit a letter to the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control opposing the proposed 1,320-megawatt Pee Dee coal-fired power plant. They note that emissions from this plant would "seriously undermin[e] the concerted efforts being undertaken by multiple states to address global warming."

30 January 2008 - Citing escalating costs, the Bush administration pulls the plug on federal funding for FutureGen, a joint project with 13 utilities and coal companies to build a demonstration coal-fired power plant that captures and sequesters carbon.

4 February 2008 - Investment banks Morgan Stanley, Citi, and J.P. Morgan Chase announce that any future lending for coal-fired power plants will be contingent on the utilities demonstrating economic viability under future carbon costs. Demonstrating economic viability would require speculation of future costs, imposing a risk on the investment.

8 February 2008 - The U.S. Court of Appeals overturns two EPA mercury rules covering coal-fired power plants, thus requiring new coal-fired plants to implement the most stringent mercury controls available. Compliance is expected to raise the
considerable costs of 32 proposed coal plants, some already under construction.

12 February 2008 - Bank of America announces that it will start factoring in a cost of $20-40 per ton of carbon emissions in its risk analysis when evaluating loan applications from utilities.

19 February 2008 - The federal government suspends a low-interest loan program for rural utilities seeking assistance for new coal-fired power plants.

11 March 2008 - Representatives Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Edward Markey (D-MA) introduce a bill that would block the EPA and states from issuing permits to new coal-fired power plants that lack state-of-the-art carbon capture and storage technology. Since this technology is at least a decade away from commercial viability, if this bill passes it would essentially place a near-term moratorium on new coal-fired power plants.

SC's First Fuel? SC Utilities in Last Place

2008-04-03T09:31:00.005-04:00

Below is a press release from another Southeastern electric utility, Florida Power and Light. It outlines how FPL plans to meet its customer's needs for electricity over the next ten years. Note the complete absence of coal from their plan. Also note how prominently energy efficiency is featured in their plan (it is considered FPL's "first energy resource").

Keep this in mind next time you hear certain utilities in our state claim that they can't do any thing significant with energy efficiency (or "demand-side management") -- how about nearly 2000 MW w/in ten years? FPL appears determined to climb the ranks of the best utilities when it comes to delivering energy savings to its customers.

How long will we allow Santee Cooper (and other utilities that serve our state) take up the "back of the pack" when it comes to helping us save energy and lower our bills? Click here for a incomplete ranking of utilities in terms of how much energy they save every year. Note how our guys stack up against the competition.

FPL releases strategic plan for meeting Florida's energy needs

JUNO BEACH, Fla. – Florida Power & Light Company filed its 10-year plan for meeting the state’s energy needs with the Florida Public Service Commission today, outlining a strategy that combines prudent additions in generating capacity with industry-leading demand-side management programs that will avoid the need to build four medium-sized power plants.
FPL, which currently serves 4.5 million customers in 35 counties, projects it will need an additional 5,600 megawatts of power, or an increase of about 25 percent, to meet rising demand through 2017. FPL expects its customer base to grow to 5.3 million by 2017, coupled with a 16 percent increase in energy use per residential customer.

“We expect a significant increase in demand for electricity over the next decade, and we will meet this demand by maximizing our proven energy efficiency programs and by providing our customers with additional energy that is safe, dependable, efficient and clean,” said FPL President Armando Olivera.

Highlights of FPL’s “Ten Year Power Plant Site Plan, 2008-2017” include:

-Upgrades to FPL’s existing nuclear plants at Turkey Point and St. Lucie to generate additional emission-free energy.

-A proposed expansion of renewable energy from a variety of sources, especially solar power.

-Construction of a clean natural gas unit at the company’s West County Energy Center in Palm Beach County.

-Potential repowerings and additional clean natural gas-fired generation to
continue to provide reliable electric service to our customers.

“The plan we have outlined will reduce the rate of carbon dioxide emissions though
energy conservation and cleaner generation, promote stability in customer bills by increasing nuclear capacity, and create the option for repowering aging plants if a third gas plant at West County is approved,” said Olivera.

In addition, FPL’s industry-leading demand-side management (DSM) programs are expected to avoid the need for 1,850 megawatts of generation, or four medium-sized natural gas plants. To date, FPL’s DSM efforts have avoided the need to build 12 power plants. “For FPL, conservation is the first energy resource used to meet customer demand,” Olivera said.

Americans for Burning Every Chunk of Coal

2008-04-02T11:00:00.002-04:00

Readers of this blog are already familiar with the folks at Americans for Balanced Energy Choices and the $35 million dollars they are spending during the 2007-2008 presidential campaign to convince us that coal is god's gift to humanity, but there is a new pro-coal group in town that everyone should be aware of: Americans for Burning Every Chunk of Coal.

ABECC unveiled their website yesterday, April 1, 2008 with a simple message: "COAL: IT'S A SMALL PRICE TO PAY ...TODAY."

The website is so persuasive that we here at CleanEnergySC have begun to wonder if we haven't got it all wrong ...Nah.

Fossil Fools Day Action

2008-04-02T10:21:00.003-04:00

From the "It's Getting Hot in Here!" blog, coverage of an anti-Pee Dee coal plant rally held by College of Charleston students in honor of international Fossil Fools Day. Apparently these students are not interested in enrolling in the so called "Energy Campus" planned for the Pee Dee. Go College of Charleston!

Foolin’ With South Carolina’s Coal Kings
Published by sethgunning, April 2nd, 2008

By Carly Sothoran

College of Charleston students and Charleston community members joined thousands of people across the globe in an international day of action against the fossil fuel industry. Alliance for Planet Earth, the student environmental group at the College, hosted a rally in Marion Square where participants demanded a halt to Santee Cooper’s proposed coal plant to be located on the Great Pee Dee River.

Over 50 protestors addressed the ridiculousness of a new coal plant by dressing in clown outfits, waving signs and handing out “coal plants.” Numerous petition signatures were collected against the coal plant and pedestrians received informational flyers on clean energy alternatives. “Today’s event was about letting the youth’s voice be heard, encouraging people to take action and insisting that Santee Cooper invest in efficiency and renewable energy rather than a new dirty coal plant” said event spokesperson and Alliance for Planet Earth member Carly Sothoron.

Guest speakers, Ian Sanchez of Lowcountry Environmental Education program and Dr. Matt Wasson of Appalachian Voices, discussed the absurdity of building a technologically outdated coal plant in South Carolina and the advantages of energy efficiency and renewable sources like wind and solar. “Building this coal plant from an economic, health, and environmental view is a kick in the teeth to the young and future generations” stated Dr. Wasson.

Our state spends over $740 million a year on out of state coal. If we want an energy independent South Carolina, it is time to invest in our own home grown energy sources. This new coal plant will emit 3,500 tons of ozone-forming nitrous oxide, 7,500 tons of soot-forming sulfur dioxide, and 900 tons of lung-damaging particulate matter each year, along with 8.7 million tons of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. According to DHEC’s draft air permit, this plant is permitted to emit annually 138 pounds of toxic mercury!

Enough fooling around with fossil fuels! Clean energy and efficiency will make South Carolina a healthier and greener place to live.

More coverage (and pictures of the rally!) over at the "Go Green Charleston Blog."

Doing it the Hard Way

2008-03-31T11:08:00.002-04:00

The threat of global warming is truly an inconvenient truth of life in the 21st century. One of the most troublesome inconveniences is the fact that we cannot go on building coal plants to meet our energy needs as we have done in the past. That is because coal in uniquely good at spewing millions of tons of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas most responsible for global warming, into the atmosphere every year.

Santee Cooper, unfortunately, is learning this the hard way. As of 2006, nearly 80% of Santee Cooper's energy came from coal. If its plans unfold as they'd like, they will have added 2400 additional megawatts of coal to their system between 2006 and 2016, dramatically increasing their dependence on coal and nearly doubling their greenhouse gas emissions to the size of a country like New Zealand.

This "all eggs in one basket" strategy puts Santee Cooper's customers (and really the whole world) at great risk. Clearly, they are not taking global warming seriously.

They say they'd rather not build a coal plant (which is good), BUT the technology is not available to do it any other way (which is wrong). But don't take it from me. Below is a weekly "Climate Fact" from the folks at Environmental Defense. Santee Cooper could play a role in nearly every one of the 5 sectors indentified below.

We CAN do it! Technology exists to cut greenhouse gases.

Think we don’t have the technology to significantly cut our greenhouse gas emissions? Think again.

In December of 2007 the widely-respected management consulting firm McKinsey & Company released an analysis[1] showing that the U.S. has the technologies available today that can significantly cut U.S. emissions. In fact, the report identifies more than 250 opportunities within the U.S. to cut emissions using conservative assumptions: No less than 80 percent of these reductions can be had with technologies that have already been proven to work at a commercial scale, while the remainder can be achieved by existing technologies with high-potential for commercialization by 2030.

All together the emission-cutting opportunities McKinsey identifies could result in U.S. emissions in 2030 that are 28 percent below 2005 levels, about the level called for in leading climate legislation.

These technologies fall into five key sectors:

1. Buildings and Appliances – Increasing energy efficiency in buildings and appliances can cut up to 870 million tons of annual emissions – and actually save consumers money in doing so.

2. Transportation – Lowering the carbon intensity of fuels and improving the efficiency of transportation can reduce emissions by up to 660 million tons each year.

3. Industry – Deploying a variety of existing technologies in the industrial sector, like expanding the practice of combined heat and power and recovering non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions, could cut up to 770 million tons annually, many of which can directly benefit companies’ bottom-line.

4. Carbon Sinks – Expanding and enhancing carbon sinks in agriculture and forest lands can capture up to 590 million tons of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere each year, which can also benefit farmers and create new habitat for wildlife.

5. Electric power production – A variety of options exist for the utility sector—including the expansion of renewables like wind and solar, improving the thermal efficiency of electric generation, and co-firing fossil fuel with biomass, as well as other options— which combined could cut up to 1,570 million tons each year.

McKinsey also found that the total cost of adopting these technologies is small: Nearly 40 percent of the emission-reduction opportunities would not only pay for themselves, but earn enough savings to largely offset the cost of more expensive options. And, of course, the report does not even consider the costs to society of not taking action on climate change, or the benefits of doing so.

McKinsey did warn, however, that unless we enact strong policies we will fail to capture these opportunities. In fact, we may miss opportunities – especially the cheapest ones – if we wait too long. In other words, the more we delay, the harder and more expensive is becomes to reduce emissions.

We have the technology to reduce emissions steeply and cheaply – if we act soon. It’s time to cap emissions now.

[1] Reducing US Greenhouse Gas Emissions: How Much at What Cost?, conducted by McKinsey & Company and published jointly with the Conference Board in November , 2007is available here.

SC Small Biz: Clean Energy is the Way Forward

2008-03-30T10:50:00.000-04:00

Manufacturing CEOs Take to Airwaves to Support Cap on Global Warming Pollution
Business Leaders See Promise of New Jobs, Economic Growth

(Washington, DC – March 17, 2008) Chief executives from top American manufacturing companies are taking to the airwaves in an unprecedented national advertising campaign that calls on Congress to drive economic growth with a cap on global warming pollution.

The ad, sponsored by Environmental Defense Fund, features the CEOs of two respected American brands – Robert Lane of Deere & Co. and Sandy Cutler of Eaton Corp. – along with Frank Knapp, president of the 5,000-member South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce.

Together they say solving climate change is an opportunity to jumpstart the U.S. economy, and that America can own the energy technologies that will power the 21st Century if Congress acts quickly. Amid a heated national debate over job losses, the business leaders point to the job-creating power of a national cap on global warming pollution.

“We joined this effort not because it was green to do so, but because it’s good business,” said Sandy Cutler of Eaton Corp., a Cleveland, Ohio-based manufacturer with 77,000 employees. “This ad tells the real story about fixing climate change: American companies can win the race for new technologies and the jobs that come with them if Congress acts now to cap carbon.”

"Small business entrepreneurs are ready to be turned loose on developing new energy technologies and conservation efforts. We're just waiting for the federal government to open the gate," said Frank Knapp Jr., of the South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce. "It's not just about creating a new industry and jobs, it's also about protecting our existing businesses and employees from the negative impact of global warming."

The EDF ad campaign launches as Congress approaches a critical juncture in the climate change debate: the Senate will soon vote on the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, which would substantially reduce U.S. emissions through an emissions cap and trade system. The House is expected to begin debating a similar plan next month, increasing the odds that Congress will enact a cap this year.

“When corporate leaders openly ask Congress to pass a major environmental law, you know it’s critical to our economic future. These companies want Congress to act now for the economy’s sake,” said David Yarnold, EDF’s executive director. “The environmental imperative is clear, and the CEOs in this ad know the economic reality better than anyone. Congress has a common-sense plan that works for both, and an opportunity to get it done in 2008. There is no time for delay.”

The ad begins running today in dozens of key congressional districts across the country and in Washington, D.C. View the spot online at: www.edf.org/AmericanJobs

The Week in Florence

2008-03-28T10:36:00.002-04:00

The coal debate is heating up in Florence. Not only do concerned citizens continue to ask tough questions about this exceedingly dirty venture, but Florence now has a mayoral candidate who is opposed to the multi-billion dollar project, expected to bring less than 100 jobs to the 9 counties of the Pee Dee.

Group holds meeting concerning proposed power plant

Tuesday, Mar 25, 2008 - 10:31 PM Updated: 12:58 PM
By Mackenzie Taylor
Florence Morning News

Florence County Citizens In Action held the second of two public meetings Tuesday night concerning Santee Cooper’s plans to build a coal-fired power plant near Kingsburg. The meeting was held at Florence Bible Chapel.

Santee Cooper’s senior vice president and general counsel, Jim Brogdon, spoke to the group. He said the power plant is needed to meet growing population demands.

"I believe the numbers that you hear fairly frequently is that by 2025 we will grow by another million people here in South Carolina. So, those folks will come and they’ll expect to have electricity when they get here," said Brogdon.

Some, however, disagree.

"If they increased their use of renewables and combined that with efficiency, there would be no need for a new coal plant and the impacts of this coal plant on the water, on the air, on the health of the citizens of this state would never then happen," said Nancy Cave of the Coastal Conservation League.

I wonder how many of those million folks moving to South Carolina will be choosing to relocate to the Florence area in order to live near a coal plant, a non-attainment area for ozone, or a mercury contaminated river?

I think the northerners are moving down here to get away from all of that.

The Coal Bubble

2008-03-28T10:10:00.003-04:00

From the Florence Morning News, earlier this month:

Santee Cooper’s plan part of nationwide rush

Sunday, Mar 09, 2008 - 04:00 AM
By Dana Beach, Executive Director of the Coastal Conservation League

An op-ed in last Sunday’s Morning News by O.L. Thompson, chairman of the Board of Santee Cooper, makes three unsupportable claims regarding the state’s energy needs: first, that South Carolina is in imminent danger of blackouts; second, that energy efficiency and renewable energy cannot meet the state’s energy needs; and third, that the only way for Santee Cooper to serve its customers is to build a new coal-fired electric generation plant on the Great Pee Dee River.

Santee Cooper and Mr. Thompson contend we need this coal plant because of South Carolina’s growing population. If we don’t build coal plants to keep up with growth, they say we’ll run out of power. There are a number of reasons to doubt this claim.

We all expect South Carolina to grow over the long term, but if recent economic trends are any indication, growth will not be coming to our state as quickly as we thought back in 2005 when Santee Cooper began developing its plans for new generation.

In fact, Santee Cooper’s proposal is part of a nationwide rush on the part of utilities to build coal plants. As with any rush, it is characterized by “irrational exuberance.” Indeed, the Department of Energy has recently estimated that far more power plants are being developed than are necessary.

Santee Cooper itself just recently finished constructing a new coal plant last year and will complete another next year. Do we need another? In the Carolinas, the electric power industry’s own planning authority, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, estimates that there will be more than enough power for our region over the next ten years.

Even if bullish growth projections come true, growth doesn’t directly equate to energy consumption. South Carolina is among the least efficient users of electricity in the nation not because of a unique set of conditions beyond our control, but because our utilities have failed to promote ways to maintain our standard of living while using less energy.

Santee Cooper and its Chairman assert that energy efficiency and renewable energy are incapable of meeting the state’s energy needs. Yet the national expert Santee Cooper hired to demonstrate the need for additional power is the same national expert that produced two studies for Santee Cooper’s largest customer, the state’s electric cooperatives. These studies show that energy efficiency and renewables could cost-effectively produce up to 25 percent of the states energy by 2017.

Santee Cooper’s own CEO has led the National Action Plan on Energy Efficiency, which concluded that “Well designed energy efficiency programs are delivering annual energy savings on the order of 1 percent of electricity and natural gas sales.” Energy savings at this level are enough to displace the need for new power plants.

But according to data it has provided to the Department of Energy, Santee Cooper has saved only about 0.6 percent of its retail sales, achieving less than 0.02 percent annual savings over the past four years. In truth, Santee Cooper has yet to take a serious look at energy efficiency.

Instead of spending over a billion dollars to build a new coal plant, our state power authority should provide incentives to its customers to conserve energy and produce renewable energy in homes and businesses.

Clean energy alternatives like efficiency and renewables are faster to deploy, cheaper to build, cleaner to operate, and produce more jobs per unit of energy than any other option. For this reason, they are the clear answer to the needs of Santee Cooper’s customers.

In contrast to Chairman Thompson’s claim, rushing to build a coal plant is the easy way out for Santee Cooper. Its customers will pay the tens of billions of dollars it will cost to operate this plant, over its 50 year lifetime, through increased electric bills; they will pay for the global warming it helps to cause via higher insurance rates; and they will pay for the pollution it generates through more frequent doctor’s visits. Santee Cooper will pay none of these bills.

Before Santee Cooper goes ahead with its plans, it ought to spend a little of its time and money studying the full costs and implications of its proposed coal plant, and how alternative energy options compare. Santee Cooper hasn’t done that yet. We call on the state’s Public Service Authority to join us and the public it serves, to do such a study. It might be tough, but it’s the right thing to do.

— Dana Beach is the executive director of the Coastal Conservation
League
Read a like-minded letter to the editor of the Florence Morning News.

Got Inflation? $998 Million is now $1.25 Billion

2008-03-27T09:49:00.004-04:00

In a move that is beginning to suggest a pattern, Santee Cooper has revised its cost estimate for one of its two proposed Pee Dee Coal plants.

As with its decision to reevaluate its approach to mercury pollution, the revised cost for the plant announced by Santee Cooper is something that opponents of the plant have called for from the beginning.

Too bad Santee Cooper attempts to blame it on pollution control equipment and permitting, when it actuality the price hike is a result of labor, materials, and financing.

Still, its nice to see Santee Cooper moving towards the truth these days. Its clear, however, which side is providing the more reliable information.

There's room for improvement, though, as always. In the Post and Courier article below detailing the inflating price tag of the coal plant, a Santee Cooper spokesperson claims that coal is the most abundant and cost-effective source of energy.

Unfortunately, this is false.

Energy efficiency is indisputably the cheapest and most abundant source of electric capacity available (Coal, meanwhile, is fast becoming one of the more expensive ways to meet our power needs, especially once the federal government puts a price on its unmatchable carbon dioxide emissions).

Here's hoping Santee Cooper comes around to admitting this fact soon too.

Santee Cooper ups cost of coal plant
Utility increases price tag for proposed Pee Dee facility to $1.25 billion
By Tony Bartelme
The Post and Courier
Thursday, March 27, 2008

The price of gasoline isn't the only thing that's going up. Santee Cooper said Wednesday that the first phase of its proposed Pee Dee coal-fired power plant will cost $1.25 billion, up from its original estimate of $998 million.
Surging demand for electricity is driving up prices for new power plants across the world, as utilities scramble for concrete, steel and other construction materials, said Laura Varn, Santee Cooper's vice president of corporate communications.

The costs of new pollution-control equipment coupled with delays in getting state and federal permits also kicked up the Pee Dee price tag, she said. Ratepayers will pay for the increase, she said, though it's too soon to say how much it might add to people's power bills. The new estimate isn't a deal-killer for the project, she added. "Coal is still the most abundant and cost-effective fuel source."

Santee Cooper wants to build a 600-megawatt plant near the tiny town of Kingsburg in Florence County. Santee Cooper said it needs the plant by 2012 or its customers could face brownouts and blackouts.

The utility is seeking state and federal permits for two 600-megawatt generators, but the power company's board has OK'd only one.

Conservation and citizens groups say the Pee Dee project will foul the air with greenhouse gases and add mercury pollution to areas already suffering with high levels of mercury-contaminated fish. They say that focusing on conservation and renewable energy makes more sense.

Blan Holman, a lawyer for the Southern Environmental Law Center, said Santee Cooper's $1.25 billion price tag is "still a lowball" that "doesn't even include the big rise in coal prices or the Hindenburg-sized" costs that could come with proposed new taxes on carbon emissions.

Ben Moore, climate and energy project manager for the Coastal Conservation League, said that the $1.25 billion estimate is more realistic, but that it "won't be the final number."

Santee Cooper and many other utilities have long depended on coal to provide low-cost, year-round power. But amid rising construction costs and concerns about global warming and mercury pollution, utilities canceled or postponed more than 45 projects in 2007, a new analysis by the U.S. Energy Department found.

In another setback to coal interests, Wall Street investment banks said last month they would include the cost of carbon emissions in their financing calculations, a move that some analysts think will cut coal's cost advantage over other energy options,
including wind and some types of solar power.

A look at other coal projects shows Santee Cooper's estimate is on the low end of the spectrum.

Duke Power, for instance, said a new 800-megawatt generator for its Cliffside plant near Charlotte will cost $1.8 billion, plus another $550 million to $600 million in financing costs.

In Florida, a utility recently scuttled a plan to build a 750- megawatt generator for $1.4 billion. In Idaho, another utility abandoned a 600-megawatt plant tagged at $1.4 billion.

Varn said the "very distinct reason why our construction costs are lower" is that Santee Cooper serves as its own general contractor when it builds a plant.

She said this approach is "fairly uncommon in the industry," but that it keeps costs down and ensures employees "know the system inside and out."

She added that the original $998 million estimate was two years old, and that Santee Cooper revised the cost as "a good business practice."

New Dark Age?

2008-03-26T08:57:00.003-04:00

Santee Cooper is fond of saying that we in South Carolina are running out of power; if we don't roll over and let them build another one of their coal plants, South Carolina will be plunged back into the "dark ages."

In Santee Cooper's defense (sort of), this is really no different from what utilities trying to build coal plants all over the country are saying to the public. Nothing like a healthy dose of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) to sway public opinion and get what you want...

Only, it turns out (surprise) that there's not as much to this "sky is falling" scenario as folks would have us believe.

At least, that is what the Department of Energy is saying.

From the Gristmill blog:

Want to kill one coal plant? Use a lawyer.

Want to kill a hundred? Use a spreadsheet.

On March 4, without fanfare, a bureaucrat named Guy Caruso caused 132 coal plants to disappear with a wave of his magic mouse.

Caruso is the head of the Energy Information Administration, the division of the U.S. Department of Energy that, well, comes up with information on energy. Sort of like the CIA, but less glamorous.

A year ago, the EIA projected [PDF] that electricity use would grow at the rate of 1.5 percent per year through 2030. But on March 4, Caruso told Congress [PDF] that the EIA had decided to put a new figure in the "projected growth rate" cell of his forecasting spreadsheet: 1.1 percent.

As we all learned in algebra, a small change in a percentage rate can make a big difference over time. Applied to coal, the new growth rate caused projected electricity generation in 2030 to drop from 3191 terawatt hours (tWh) to 2756 tWh, a decrease of 435 tWh.

What does 435 tWh equate to in terms of coal plants? Assuming a 75 percent capacity factor (the percentage of hours in an average year that a plant is running full-bore), that's the output of 66,200 megawatts (mW) of generating capacity, or 132 new coal plants (500 mW each) that won't have to be built after all between now and 2030.

Of course, a lot of people already knew this was going on, including Wall Street. For years, the Energy Information Administration, which should be leading the way in guiding decision makers, has been out of step with reality. It tends to play the role of cheerleader for an industry that has always wanted to build, build, build.

But at some point reality intrudes -- the cheerleader turns around and actually looks at the game.

And that's why 1.5 percent just became 1.1 percent, and 132 coal plants suddenly went poof.

Of course, it's not really the EIA administrator who decides which power plants are going to be built -- that's done by individual utilities and power authorities, each making its own economic and power growth projections. But EIA projections do set the tone for federal policy at all levels. An aggressive projection sets in motion the policy wheels of regulation, subsidies, and any number of other measures. So even though 132 coal plants weren't directly cancelled by Caruso's scaled back projection, the revision will nonetheless have the effect of curbing the coal boom.

But there's another lesson here as well. Like nuclear plants, coal plants tie up great gobs of capital during their extended construction periods. For the sponsors of such projects, the shifting sands of economic uncertainty can spell financial disaster, as many a utility learned the hard way during nuclear's fiscal meltdown.

In contrast, solar, wind, and conservation all have shorter lead times, a fiscal advantage not sufficiently appreciated, especially in uncertain economic environments like the present. So in addition to loving these options for being "green," planners can also love them for being "just in time."

Virginia Takes Power into its Own Hands

2008-03-25T08:23:00.001-04:00

Despite repeated calls from a coalition of groups opposing Santee Cooper's plans to build a coal plant on the banks of the Pee Dee, it took a Federal Court ruling that struck down a flawed law to get our state owned utility to study how it could better control the mercury emissions from its coal project.

Nothing like the threat of being caught breaking the law to motivate a state-owned power monopoly into being a good corporate citizen.

In Virginia, where a similar coal proposal has been advanced, citizens are taking power into their own hands.

Otherwise, it seems, the tough questions will never get asked.

Last week, a citizen advisory group in Virginia exercised its legal authority to take over the permitting process for a coal plant planned in their state from the state Department of Environmental Quality. The reason? They didn't have confidence in their state regulatory agency (or the utility) to adequetly examine alternatives to the coal project.

Why do we need Federal Courts and engaged citzens to ensure that our utilities and state agencies do a thorough job? Especially when we are considering multi-billion dollar, long-term projects that have serious impacts on our health and environment? Do we really want businesses and regulators to cut corners in these situations?

Why won't DHEC and Santee Cooper committ to thoroughly studying not only the impacts of Mercury pollution from the proposed Pee Dee coal plant, but alternatives to building the plant in the first place?

If they won't, who will?

Air board takes over power plant permitting

KEITH STRANGE / Staff Writer

Expressing concerns that all alternatives aren't being addressed, the Virginia Air Pollution Control Board voted Thursday to take over the permitting process for Dominion Virginia Power's Virginia City Hybrid Energy Center.

It was an unusual move last taken two years ago, according to the Department of Environmental Quality. Typically, the board — citizens appointed by the governor — defers to DEQ staff on air permitting decisions.

Contacted yesterday, DEQ Public Affairs Director Bill Hayden confirmed that the board decided to take charge of the permitting process with a 3-2 vote.

According to Hayden, who attended the meeting, board members Hullihen Williams Moore, Bruce C. Buckheit and Vivian E. Thomson were in favor of overseeing the permit, and John N. Hanson and chairman Richard D. Langford wanted DEQ to continue to handle the matter.

Hayden said the board expressed concerns that all options aren't being addressed and DEQ's proposed emissions limits aren't stringent enough.

"They want to look at options that provide for cleaner, more efficient use of coal in whatever power plant gets looked at," he said.

Hayden noted that state law enables the board to seize control of the process. He said DEQ will now provide any information requested to the air board and draft any potential permit at the board's direction.

"If they decide to take over the permit, they direct DEQ on what kind of analysis will be done, they oversee the drafting of the permit," he said.

NOT ROUTINE ACTION

According to Hayden, the last time the air board voted to take over permitting authority was about two years ago on a proposed power plant in Alexandria.
"They still have taken no action on that permit," he said.

Prior to that, Hayden said, there were only a "handful" of instances in which the air board took over permitting authority.

"It's not routine, but they do have the authority," he said.

WHAT NOW?

Dominion had been hoping for permit issuance on April 1.

"I think DEQ will not have a permit on April 1," Hayden said. "The board indicated they would like additional analysis and will be conferring with DEQ over the next several weeks on what type of information and studies they would like presented to them."

Hayden said there is no longer a specific timetable on the air permit for the $1.8
billion plant, but the air board indicated it would like to see a draft permit in May.
The DEQ spokesman declined to speculate on when the board might take action on the Virginia City permit.

"They did say they wanted to get it done expeditiously," he said. "But it's difficult to speculate on their time frame."

DOMINION RESPONDS

In a press release issued shortly after the vote, Dominion spokesman Jim Norvelle called the decision disappointing.

"An extended delay — much beyond 60 days — in granting the air permit could result in a very significant increase in costs to Dominion and its customers as some
construction contracts likely would have to be re-negotiated," he said.

According to Norvelle, the utility has already invested more than two years and spent more than $6 million on studies and emissions modeling for the plant.

"It has shown that the 585-megawatt station scheduled to begin commercial operation in 2012 in Wise County . . . will meet or exceed all environmental laws and regulations," he said.

Sun News Says No to a Coal Plant w/ No Mercury Controls

2008-03-24T14:10:00.002-04:00

Long touted as "one of the cleanest coal plants in the country," the Pee Dee "Energy Campus" is finally coming back to earth. Yes, Earth, a planet on which thousands of pounds of mercury pollution are NOT considered clean. And a planet where the U.S. court system is finally making EPA and the utilities they regulate do something to control these mercury emissions.

Kudos to the Myrtle Beach Sun News for noting Santee Cooper's return from orbit, and for pointing out the utility's responsibility to stay on terra firma from here on out.

For a true grounding, however, we need to consider if a coal plant is even necessary if our state utility would do more with renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Reducing mercury in rivers worth higher electric rates

In response to government and interest-group pressure, Santee Cooper agreed last week to study how much mercury its proposed Florence County coal-fired power plant would produce. Good.

Mercury, a heavy metal neurotoxin, is an inevitable byproduct of coal-burning. Even trace amounts of can cause brain damage, especially in small children.

The existing plan for the $1 billion plant envisions emissions of about 100 pounds of mercury per year. For this, leaders of the state-owned utility have a weak defense: Because the Pee Dee River (along which the plant would sit) and other rivers are already polluted with mercury from other sources, emissions from the plant would make matters no worse.

The utility's view of the mercury situation was consistent with the Bush administration's lax interpretation of the U.S. Clean Air Act. For a while, it looked as though this thinking might be enough to persuade the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control to issue an air permit for the plant.

Then last month came a federal court ruling that effectively shot down the administration's twisted logic on mercury emissions. All new coal-fired plants, said the court, must meet the strict standards of the law. That decision threw a roadblock into Santee Cooper's path toward DHEC air-permit approval.

There ensued a spirited effort by S.C. conservation groups to bend the utility to the perceived will of the federal court decision. And after it became clear that the decision posed a threat to swift DHEC approval of its air permit, Santee Cooper last week ordered a maximum-achievable-control-technology analysis - in effect, a new environmental impact study. The MACT study will determine whether Santee Cooper should modify its power-plant plans to include more equipment to further reduce emissions of mercury and other pollutants.

Ever since Santee Cooper proposed the plant, Chief Executive Lonnie Carter has pledged that the plant, called the Pee Dee Energy Campus, would include the best emissions-control equipment available. So if the MACT analysis shows pollution-control deficiencies in the current plans for the plant, Carter will surely ask the Santee Cooper board to approve a pollution-control upgrade and alter the plans accordingly.
Such an upgrade would likely increase the cost of the plant. And that, in turn, could result in higher rates for business, industrial and residential customers who use Santee Cooper power. That population includes direct service to residents of the
utility's service area - Horry, Georgetown and Berkeley counties - and indirect service to electric-cooperative customers statewide.

Conservation groups insist otherwise, but there seems little doubt that the plant is a necessity. Growth in our part of the world is strong and will continue. Carter makes a persuasive case that strict conservation measures alone can't "create" enough spare power to make construction of new generating capacity unnecessary.

If it's possible for Santee Cooper to build a cleaner plant at higher cost, then
ratepayers should gladly pay higher rates to support its construction. As the utility effectively recognized in knuckling under to a MACT analysis, promising to increase toxic pollution only a little bit no longer cuts it. Even as we heat and cool our houses, heat our bath water, light our houses, boot up our computers and crank up our home theaters, we should resolve to decrease power-plant pollution to the greatest extent possible.

At the movies, w/ SC Sierra Club

2008-03-20T15:25:00.002-04:00

Wanna watch another? The coal fight down the road in Georgia.

Mercury Rising, continued....

2008-03-20T10:35:00.004-04:00

In response to a federal court ruling that rendered current mercury regulations in the United States illegal, Santee Cooper has announced that it will conduct a review of how its proposed Pee Dee plant would limit significant mercury pollution (since as it stands; the plant is illegal).

Readers of this blog will note that opponents of this plant have argued for this kind of review all along.

Questions that will remain unanswered even after Santee Cooper completes this analysis:

How will more mercury pollution affect the health of South Carolinians?

How much will more mercury pollution cost of state, our citizens?

Why hasn't Santee Cooper considered alternative ways to generate the power it claims it needs that would have ZERO mercury emissions?

From the Post and Courier:

Pee Dee power plant pollution to be examined
Santee Cooper to analyze mercury-reduction methods
By Tony Bartelme (Contact)
The Post and Courier
Thursday, March 20, 2008

Amid rising
concerns over mercury and greenhouse gases from coal-fired power generators, Santee Cooper on Wednesday said it plans to take a closer look at its pollution-control strategy for the proposed $1 billion Pee Dee plant.

Conservation groups have been pushing Santee Cooper for months to do such an analysis. "It should have started long ago," said John Suttles, a lawyer with the Southern Environmental Law Center.

The group says other coal-burning technologies, including one that turns coal into gas, are cleaner than Santee Cooper's Pee Dee plan.

Santee Cooper decided to do what's known in regulatory circles as a "Maximum Achievable Control Technology" analysis after a federal appellate court last month struck down the Bush administration's controversial "cap-and-trade" program to reduce mercury pollution.

Among other things, the program would have let utilities buy and sell mercury pollution "credits." The court said this was wrong and that utilities should find the most effective technology to cut mercury, a powerful neurotoxin linked to numerous health problems.
Santee Cooper said its study will examine technology in other plants to reduce mercury and other pollutants and that such studies usually involve more opportunities for the public to comment.

Santee Cooper wants permits for two 600-megawatt generators for a new power plant on the Great Pee Dee River near Kingsburg. The utility says it needs the plant to keep lights burning in fast-growing areas of coastal South Carolina.

Lonnie Carter, Santee Cooper's president and chief executive, said he was confident the utility's plans to reduce mercury "are among the most stringent in the country." Suttles said Carter's statement suggests "it already knows the results of a mercury study before the study has even been conducted. That's like announcing the winner of American Idol before first the contestant sings."

The study will delay the permitting process by a few months, said Laura Varn, the utility's director of corporate communications.

More coverage from the Florence Morning News and The State.

Small town thinks big

2008-03-19T10:40:00.003-04:00

From SCBIZ, "South Carolina's Media Engine for Economic Growth," an inspiring story about how small-town South Carolina is finding new ways to generate the power it needs to grow (see below).

Bethune, South Carolina -- not too far from where Santee Cooper plans a dirty coal power plant -- went with solar panels to generate clean energy, but of course there are a number of other ways to do it: biomass, wind, and don't forget energy conservation.

If more towns and more homes followed little Bethune's example, our state would be cleaner, healthier and, perhaps most importantly, more economically vibrant... and we wouldn't need another dirty coal plant.

Small town Bethune is going green

Wednesday, 19 March 2008
SCBIZ Daily Staff

BETHUNE – Thanks to a state grant, Bethune will soon be known as a small town that thinks big. Bethune’s Town Hall, which also houses the Police Department, will have 48 solar panels installed on its roof, which will generate about half of the Town Hall’s total electricity.

The grant, entitled "Peacefully Green" was submitted in March 2007 by then Town Councilor Worth Thomasson, which asked for $125,000 "to help our town start a transformation to become a model S.C. Green Community."

Considering the size of the town, population 352, Thomasson was pleased that the state recognized Bethune's desire "to improve our community's health and environment, improve our position to develop economically, and offer a reason for travel and tourism in our area."

After receiving the check in September, Thomasson began looking for solar installation companies, explaining, "It was a long process. We were looking for a turnkey operation, a company that would oversee the entire process. We didn't find
many."

The town eventually found Argand Energy Solutions, and co-founder Erik Lensch has been working with the town for months preparing for the town's transformation next week.

According to Lensch, "The roof of the Town Hall building is wide open and faces south" where it catches the most light. The photovoltaic solar panels will generate 8kW of electricity, which, according to Lensch is enough to power one to two homes for a year. It will generate about half of the town hall's total electricity and will offset approximately 11,400 pounds of CO2 emissions annually.

"It's not a huge amount of electricity, but it works well for their situation. Most of the town hall's power consumption occurs during the day when the offices are open and there are computers, air conditioning, and lights on," said Lensch. "They also did some solar lighting around the town's entrance signs."In addition to powering Town Hall with solar energy, Thomasson says they are converting a deserted two acre little league baseball field into green space for use by the public, with gazebos, a fountain,
and new playground.

The goal, he says, is to create a green space that gives citizens and families a peaceful location for social activities, community involvement, and raises the public's awareness about the benefits of "green communities."

Besides residential conversions, Argand Energy Solutions has been working on larger solar installations like the Freedom Center in Charlotte, NC and the Charleston Battery's Blackbaud Stadium and is excited to be involved in the "Peacefully Green" project for the Town of Bethune.

Says Lensch, "I think it's part of a bigger initiative to put Bethune on the map as a green and renewable energy friendly community," a municipal trend that he hopes to see grow in the future.

http://www.scbizmag.com/content/view/66961/1/

Green = $$$

2008-03-18T10:34:00.006-04:00

Renewable energy and energy efficiency are right for South Carolina and coal plants are wrong.

Forget for a moment the environmental issues.

Clean energy is better business. Read up on the growing "Green Tech" industry here.

See below for a recent opinion on the potential for job creation in Ohio from a committment to clean energy (as opposed to coal).

The same is true here in South Carolina.

In our state about 75% of our electricity consumption is sourced from coal (in Ohio the figure is 90%). As the recent woes on Wall Street remind us from time to time, it is NOT smart to keep all your eggs in one basket.

Ohio, like South Carolina, has been bleeding high-paying manufacturing jobs for years now. Fortunately, like Ohio, South Carolina stands to gain big time from an economy focused on clean energy.

Witness GE in the upstate which continues to add hundreds of jobs per year just to keep up with the demand for wind turbines.

Or check out this study indicating 20,000 manufacturing jobs could be had in our state in the solar and wind manufaturing business.

Santee Cooper's multi-billon dollar coal plant will create less than 100 jobs and increase substantially our dependence on coal.

One often hears that a committment to clean energy would increase electricity rates in our state (already some of the lowest in the nation). Study after study shows that renewable energy would increase electric rates only slightly -- if at all. Ohio has studied it and reached that conclusion.

A small price to pay for thousands of jobs, and a healthier environment.

Green energy = jobs And it won't harm Ohio's coal industry
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Richard Stuebi
Cleveland Plain Dealer

You may have seen billboards cropping up around town showing an electrical cord plugged into a lump of coal. They suggest that coal mining and coal-based electricity
generation is essential for creating or preserving jobs in Ohio.

Similarly, advertisements in The Plain Dealer and other publications ask the question: "Green-collar jobs might sound good to some people, but what does that mean for Ohio jobs . . . what does it mean for your job?"

This media blitz is sponsored by Americans for Balanced Energy Choices, an organization funded by coal interests. It presents one side of the debate over the future of our state economy, implying that a continued dependence upon coal in Ohio's energy mix is the best path for our state's economic health.

On the other side are those who see the need to build an advanced energy economy more reliant on energy efficiency and renewable technologies. They believe advanced energy not only will meet our power needs while better addressing environmental concerns, but also will spawn many thousands of green-collar jobs to manufacture and install wind, solar and other advanced energy sources.

The old-liners are skeptical. Advanced energy represents a threat to their livelihood, and they want you to believe it will cause energy prices to rise dramatically, forcing
companies to lay off employees or go out of business.

We at the Cleveland Foundation have studied these issues at length and have concluded that a concerted move to advanced energy in Ohio would not cause undue
economic harm. In fact, the economic benefits would far outweigh the costs.

A study we commissioned last year confirmed that public policy to promote advanced energy in Ohio would cause, at most, miniscule increases in electricity prices 10 years from now and would not materially harm our coal industry.

We are not against coal. Coal has been a backbone of our electricity sector - and, therefore, our heavy industry and consumer society - for decades. Almost 90 percent of the electricity generated in Ohio comes from coal, and that's not going to change overnight. In almost any scenario, environmentally responsible mining and utilization of coal will be essential for a long time.

But consider this: Would you want 90 percent of your financial assets in one investment? Not if you're prudent.

So, ask yourself: Do we really want 90 percent of our electricity to come from one source? Especially when coal-fired power generation is almost certainly going to face adverse economic consequences when the next president signs legislation to reduce carbon emissions?

Let's not allow ourselves to mortgage the future of Ohio, continuing to rely too much on a single type of fuel for our electricity needs to protect jobs that are increasingly
vulnerable and may not be savable.

Instead, Ohio needs to create new employment opportunities - green-collar jobs associated with advanced energy - to replenish the blue-collar jobs that are going away.

If you care about the possibilities and the future, not only for you, but also for your children and grandchildren, encourage your elected officials to push aggressively for policies favoring advanced energy. It's the right thing to do for the economy as well as for the environment.

Read More

Coal Moratorium Law

2008-03-17T10:41:00.004-04:00

Will our SC delegation vote for it?

Top House Dems offer bill to stop coal plants
Darren Samuelsohn, E&ENews PM senior reporter
03/11/2008

Two top House Democrats introduced legislation today that would prevent the permitting of coal-fired power plants that cannot capture and sequester most greenhouse-gas emissions.

Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said their bill should give the electric utility industry and its investors a clear signal that a new U.S. climate policy is on the way.

"Comprehensive economy-wide regulation to address global warming is coming soon," Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said in a press release. "But new uncontrolled coal-fired power plants are being built today."

Under the bill, U.S. EPA and all state permitting agencies would face a moratorium on issuing permits for any electric utility that does not capture and permanently sequester at least 85 percent of its heat-trapping emissions. The moratorium would stay in place until Congress or EPA adopts a mandatory measure that limits midcentury greenhouse-gas emissions by 80 percent below 1990 levels.

"This bill will make companies prepare for the future and prevent them from building low-tech coal fired power plants before a global warming bill is passed that will necessitate the use of the newest, most climate-friendly technologies," said Markey, the chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

According to a recent Energy Department analysis, 47 coal-fired power plants are in either the permitting or the construction phase across the country -- but only a small number have the capacity to capture their greenhouse-gas emissions. Another 67 plants are in earlier stages of development.

'A common sense policy'

The Waxman-Markey legislation becomes the latest piece to a climate debate already brewing on Capitol Hill. The two lawmakers rank Nos. 2 and 3 in terms of seniority on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, but they are often among a select few to push such far-reaching environmental measures.

A senior Waxman aide predicted the bill would get other lawmakers' attention. "The prospects for this legislation are excellent because it is such a common sense policy," the aide said.

Speaking earlier today with reporters, Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) said there is a greater than 50-50 chance that a cap-and-trade bill limiting U.S. emissions will make it into law this year.

Boucher, chairman of the House Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee, also addressed the specific carbon capture technologies that Waxman and Markey would envision requiring right now of the electric utility industry.

Under conservative estimates, Boucher said carbon capture technologies would not be commercially available until about 2025. "This isn't rocket science at all," Boucher said during a news conference hosted by Platts.

"It isn't even auto mechanics. ... It will work."

House Energy and Commerce Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.) "welcomes contributions from all members and plans to review this proposal," a spokesman for the lawmaker said.

Sierra Club national coal campaign director Bruce Niles said the Waxman-Markey legislation would challenge electric utility companies into following through on their multimillion-dollar commercial campaign aimed at promoting "clean" coal technologies. "This bill holds them to their rhetoric and will demonstrate whether there is any truth behind the industry's slick public relations campaign," he said.

But Edison Electric Institute spokesman Dan Riedinger rejected the bill's underlying premise.

"The power sector is keenly aware of the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but this bill isn't going to get us there," Riedinger said. "Halting coal plant construction will do almost nothing to reduce atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, yet it will leave U.S. consumers exposed to higher and more volatile energy prices at a time when they can least afford it."

Click here to view the bill from Reps. Waxman and Markey.

Do you need another?

2008-03-14T11:13:00.003-04:00

Area scientists are weighing in on coal, and they are not for it. See a recent editorial in the Sun News by marine scientist Dr. Dan Abel (below); or this one from the Charlotte News & Observer by biogeochemist Dr. William Schlessiger

More reasons to say no to coal
Do we need a new coal-fired power plant in southern Florence County, as Santee Cooper asserts? Here are reasons the answer is a resounding no.

Because of the magnitude of their contribution to global warming, no more coal-fired power plants should be built. This proposed plant will annually emit about 8.6 million tons of carbon dioxide, the primary contributor to global warming. Coal-fired power plants are responsible for about 40 percent of the U.S. carbon dioxide emissions. Since we have already exceeded the planet's capacity to absorb CO2, building new coal-fired power plants is irresponsible. And since it is inevitable that CO2 will soon be heavily taxed, it is also stupid. Also, significant amounts of methane, a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, are released during mining.

Global warming is the defining issue of our era and is at least as large a threat to the security of the U.S. and its citizens as nuclear terrorism is. Ironically, this plant will contribute to the sea level rise that severely threatens coastal South Carolina. Kansas recently became the first state to reject a permit for a coal-fired power plant on the
basis of CO2 emissions.

Traditional pulverized coal-fired power plants represent the dinosaurs of technology and are throwbacks to a technologically primitive era.

While the new plant will be slightly more advanced than current plants, it is but a variation on the theme.

Coal burning is a major contributor of mercury to the environment. Mercury levels in freshwater and marine fish here and in other states are high enough to trigger health warnings. Levels of the most toxic form of mercury, methylmercury, which might not harm an adult, can damage a child's developing brain, leading to deficiencies in IQ,
attention deficit and impaired motor function. Fetuses and infants are especially vulnerable. The plant will annually emit 138 pounds of mercury annually. It is morally indefensible to allow this to happen.

Burning coal produces other pollution, including high levels of toxic sulfur oxide gases; appreciable quantities of toxic heavy metals like uranium and chromium; and
oxides of nitrogen.
Sulfur oxide gases and oxides of nitrogen can contribute to smog and acid precipitation, which can damage buildings and cause pulmonary problems. Jeff Goodell, in his book "Big Coal," reports that air pollution from coal plants has killed more than 500,000 Americans in the past 20 years.

Discharge of heated water will warm the Pee Dee River. Thermal pollution is often the forgotten pollution. Discharge of heated water can cause hypoxia (low dissolved oxygen levels) that may lead to fish kills and other ecosystem damage. Nearly 30 million gallons of water will be withdrawn from, heated, and after some cooling, returned to the Pee Dee per day.

Building the plant will destroy critical habitat. About 93 acres of wetland will be
affected.

Santee Cooper does not adequately promote conservation, efficiency or green power sources.

Santee Cooper underestimates its ability to develop green energy and promote its use. Investing the $1 billion or more that the coal plant will cost into these areas can easily achieve increase in efficiency necessary to obviate the need for the plant. Santee Cooper is also reluctant to institute any meaningful conservation programs. Curbing energy waste through a combination of incentives or tiered-pricing (such as lower cost for the first 1000 kilowatt-hours and higher rates for excessive use) could result in old power plants being retired.

The human and environmental costs of mining coal have not been considered.

These are two moral issues beyond the boundaries of the state. First, while the U.S. has among the world's safest coal mines, deaths from 2000 to 2006 averaged about 30 per year. The U.S. Center for Disease Control estimates that each year 2,000 former miners die from lung diseases caused by exposure to coal mine dust.
Second, mountaintop removal, a controversial form of surface coal mining that is changing the very face of states like West Virginia and Kentucky, levels mountaintops and produces millions of tons of debris that are dumped into adjacent valleys, changing the contours and drainage patterns of thousands of square miles in the eastern U.S., spoiling an entire way of life, and contributing to flash floods that kill residents. Mountaintop-removal mining has permanently destroyed more than 1,200 miles of streams, polluted groundwater and rivers, and demolished some 400,000 acres of forest in Appalachia alone.

Building large projects like power plants and prisons as jobs programs is a poor substitute for sustainable economic development. For better and permanent jobs, invest in job training, tax incentives, green public works projects, infrastructure, and meaningful K-12 education.

Let's hope that the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers put the people and environment of the state first and refuse to issue permits to Santee Cooper for this ill-conceived and immoral plant.

DAN ABEL is an associate professor of marine science at Coastal Carolina University and director of the CCU Campus and Community Sustainability Initiative.

Another coal plant cancelled!

2008-03-06T09:41:00.002-05:00

This time by the very utility planning to build one -- and an electric cooperative no less! Santee Cooper partisans out there -- please note the utility's reasons for cancelling plans for the plant, reported in the Kansas City Star:

Nancy Southworth, a spokeswoman for AECI, told the Carroll County Commission on Monday that the cooperative had two main concerns: The cost to build the plant had increased from just under $1 billion to $1.7 billion, and regulations for costly carbon dioxide controls are being considered by Congress.

Both apply to Santee Cooper's project. Also cited was the fact that their federal finacing fell through. While Santee Cooper may be seeking private financing for its project, its hard to believe that private funders will not be far behind when the government thinks its too risky to invest in these things.

Also note how AECI intends to serve its customers needs in lieu of a coal plant:

AECI will continue to look at energy efficiency initiatives, natural gas, renewables and nuclear resources to address future generation needs.

Read the full story in the Kansas City Star below:

Construction of coal-fired power plant east of Excelsior Springs delayed indefinitely
By KAREN DILLON
The Kansas City Star

Utility officials have delayed indefinitely construction of a coal-fired power plant 50 miles east of Excelsior Springs because of financial and environmental concerns.

The announcement Monday by Associated Electric Cooperative Inc., which provides electricity to almost all rural Missouri, caught many by surprise.

The decision, voted on by the utility’s board on Friday, comes just days after AECI had received a permit from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, a signal that construction could begin.

Nancy Southworth, a spokeswoman for AECI, told the Carroll County Commission on Monday that the cooperative had two main concerns: The cost to build the plant had increased from just under $1 billion to $1.7 billion, and regulations for costly carbon dioxide controls are being considered by Congress.

In addition, Southworth said during an interview that a loan from the Rural Utilities Service, a government agency that provides funding to co-ops to build coal plants, fell through. The agency has halted giving loans because of increased construction costs and the regulatory uncertainty.

“This will force us to find other sources of generation,” she said. “We are looking at gas, energy efficiency, renewables, and we will look at nuclear. All of those are part of the mix.”

Southworth said the co-op did not seek private funding.

Wall Street investment bankers recently announced that loans to build new coal plants were risky because of the concerns over future CO2 emission controls. Also, Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, has begun an inquiry into government financing of new plants.

Nelson Heil, Carroll County presiding commissioner, said the county was taking a major financial hit by the “shocking” decision.

Heil said the plant would have meant 135 permanent jobs and a payroll of $10 million to $12 million annually. The number of construction jobs was expected to peak at more than 1,000.

“We have nothing in this county that even compares,” Heil said. “I don’t know at this point what we are going to do. It’s a big economic hit for the residents.”

But a number of county residents didn’t want the plant. More than 300 people turned out for a public hearing in November to argue the merits of the plant.

Four years ago the country had plans to build at least 160 coal plants, and now 63 of those proposed plants will not be built, said Bruce Nilles, director of Sierra Club’s National Coal Campaign.

“All indications are that this trend is accelerating as costs of coal skyrocket and the nation focuses its attention on global warming solutions,” Nilles said.

The Sierra Club was on the verge of filing litigation against AECI to try to halt the construction, said Melissa Hope, Sierra Club’s Missouri Chapter development director.

“Associated Electric is taking a giant step forward in our collective fight to stop global warming,” Hope said. “Associated Electric was the first in Missouri to embrace wind power and today they vault into the ever-growing ranks of electric providers moving beyond coal. Unfortunately in Kansas, Sunflower (Electric Power Corp.) is still headed in the wrong decision.”

Steve Miller, a spokesman for Sunflower, a co-op that wants to build two generators in western Kansas, expressed surprise over the decision.

“I am just bamboozled by that,” Miller said. “If the United States is evolving itself into a policy of no coal, we are going to be in trouble. I feel really sorry for the people of Missouri.”

Mercury (continues) Rising

2008-03-05T14:15:00.002-05:00

From yesterday's Post and Courier, a story on DHEC's (pathetic?) effort to deal with the mercury contamination issue faced by our state. Signs are great; requiring the absolute best pollution controls on coal plants (or denying permits for new plants) would be better.

Mercury warnings posted
Signs about tainted fish going up at fishing spots in S.C.
By Tony Bartelme
The Post and Courier
Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Hoping to raise awareness about mercury-tainted fish, health officials have begun posting roughly 400 warning signs at fishing holes and lakes across South Carolina where biologists have found high levels of mercury.

DHEC State health officials are installing signs on the Edisto River and other sites around the state advising people about the dangers of eating fish with high levels of
mercury.

Written in English and Spanish, the signs have pictures of fish tailored to each particular water body and include advice on how much fish is safe to eat and, in some cases, whether people should avoid eating a single bite.

Mercury is a potent neurotoxin linked to nervous disorders, brain damage and other health problems.

A series in The Post and Courier last year identified freshwater mercury hot spots in the state and revealed for the first time how people who frequently eat fish from these areas have unusually high levels of mercury in their bodies.

The series prompted the state Department of Health and Environmental Control to take a new look at how it measures and regulates mercury. Installing the signs is one of the first steps in this effort.

"The signs are to increase awareness about eating the right types and safe amounts of fish," said David Wilson, chief of DHEC's Bureau of Water.

Wilson said the 400 signs cost about $50,000 and should be in place within six weeks. Among other things, the signs include advice to those most at risk of mercury poisoning — women who are pregnant, nursing or in childbearing years.

Some signs also will identify waters that have high levels of fecal-coliform bacteria from human or animal waste, he said. People who swim in these waters have a higher chance of getting sick.

More than 1,700 miles of river in South Carolina have fish with high levels of mercury, DHEC records show. Man-made sources of mercury include coal-fired power plants, cement plants and certain factories.

"There was such a burning need for these signs," said Nancy Vinson of the Coastal Conservation League. "Unless people had computers or read the paper, they weren't likely to know that most of our rivers have fish that are toxic for human consumption."

The next step, added Blan Holman of the Southern Environmental Law Center, is for DHEC to clamp down on the state's biggest mercury polluters: coal-fired power plants."

Read previous stories on mercury in the Post and Courier

Progress-ive Policy

2008-03-05T10:48:00.003-05:00

Progress Energy recently made a presentation to Wall Street that just a few years ago would have seemed incredible. The presentation was motivated by a recent survey Progress made of its customers in Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina.

While the findings may not be palatable to stodgy, reactionary utilities, Progress should be commended for living up to its name and realizing that the old adage is true: "the customer is never wrong."

Among the findings:

"79% of our customers think climate change requires immediate and drastic action"
Expanding the utilization of renewable energy and energy efficiency is twice as important as ensuring a reliable supply of electricity and more important than avoiding rate increases.
Public opinion virtually eliminates coal plants as an option

Progress rightly sees this as a sea change in the way they will do business in the future. Instead of emphasizing cheap and reliable electricity at any cost to our health and the environment, its customers want energy services that allow them to save money while heading off the worst effects of climate change.

Progress customers also see their utility as playing a disproportionate role in making sure that happens.

Comparing Progress to Santee Cooper reveals a striking result. Progress surveyed its customers to find out how the company should respond to climate change using alternatives to coal. Santee Cooper surveyed its customers to find out how to sell more coal.

From the Charlottee News & Observer:

Published: Mar 01, 2008 12:30 AM
Modified: Mar 01, 2008 05:41 AM

Progress sees shift to renewables
Customer demand and carbon gas limits will force changes, the utility warns investors

John Murawski, Staff Writer

Half of Progress Energy's customers in North Carolina say the company isn't doing enough to develop renewable energy, and a whopping 79 percent say that global warming requires immediate and drastic action.

Those are some polling results that the Raleigh electric utility released Friday as a warning to investors that power companies could face major costs to comply with carbon dioxide limits that are expected to be imposed by Congress. Progress Energy said that the cost of compliance could add $3 billion a year to the cost of doing business in this state and 5 billion annually in Florida -- or as much as $20 a month for a typical residential customer.

About half the electricity generated by Progress Energy in the Carolinas comes from
coal-burning power plants, making officials jittery about the potential cost of meeting federal carbon-emissions limits. Coal plants are the leading sources of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas blamed for overheating the planet.

Progress Energy's customer surveys, presented at a conference for Wall Street analysts that the company hosted in Florida, show how far public opinion has swung in this state on combating climate change. Progress Energy, which has 3.1 million customers in the Carolinas and Florida, said public opinion virtually eliminated coal plants as an option.

The company regularly surveys its customers to assess its public image and to gauge customer sentiment about public policy. Progress added questions about renewable energy about two years ago.

"It's important to know where customers stand, because policymakers are going to be responding to public opinion," John McArthur, the company's general counsel and senior vice president, told the analysts.

The most recent survey polled 1,700 customers in the fall, including about 700 in North Carolina. In one of the more surprising responses, customers said they are more interested in developing renewable energy -- such as solar, wind or animal waste -- than they are in receiving reliable electricity.

Public opinion turns

Now Progress officials say they have a new challenge: The public may be overly
optimistic about the potential for renewable energy. Though environmental advocates have said alternative energy is cheaper than building power plants, Progress executives said renewables are costly and not as dependable as power plants.

"The public has unrealistic expectations about renewables," McArthur said. "They think it's twice as important as reliability."

But McArthur noted that the surveys show customers are willing to pay extra for green energy, after years of saying that, above all, they demanded cheap and reliable power. Knowing that customers will tolerate cost increases, Progress Energy supported a state law requiring that 12.5 percent of electricity in the state come from renewable energy sources and efficiency programs by 2021.

But the survey did find some in favor of more traditional power options.
In North Carolina, 56 percent of customers favor new nuclear plants. Progress Energy last week applied for a federal license to add two nuclear reactors at the Shearon Harris site in Wake County, and it will apply for two additional reactors in Florida this year. Utility officials tout nuclear energy as an answer to global warming, because, unlike coal-burning power plants, nuclear plants emit no greenhouse gases.

Though alternative energy is coming down in cost, estimates for nuclear plants have tripled in the past several years.

The Westinghouse AP1000 reactor that Progress Energy is considering for Florida and the Shearon Harris site has been estimated at as much as $9 billion. Progress Energy has not revealed its cost estimates, but the company will file preliminary estimates for the Florida plant with utility regulators in that state in coming weeks.

Coal Pushers: Oxymorons

2008-03-04T09:27:00.003-05:00

Op-ed in Sunday's Washington Post:

'Clean' Coal? Don't Try to Shovel That.

By Jeff Biggers
Sunday, March 2, 2008; B02

Every time I hear our political leaders talk about "clean coal," I think about Burl, an irascible old coal miner in West Virginia. After 35 years underground, he struggled to conjure enough breath to match his storytelling verve, as if the iron hoops of a whiskey barrel had been strapped around his lungs. In 1983, during my first visit to Appalachia as a young man, Burl rolled up his pants and showed me the leg that had been mangled in a mining accident. The scars snaked down to his ankles.

"My grandpa barely survived an accident in the mines in southern Illinois," I told him. "He had these blue marks and bits of coal buried in his face."

"Coal tattoo," Burl wheezed. "Don't let anyone ever tell you that coal is clean."

Clean coal: Never was there an oxymoron more insidious, or more dangerous to our public health. Invoked as often by the Democratic presidential candidates as by the Republicans and by liberals and conservatives alike, this slogan has blindsided any meaningful progress toward a sustainable energy policy.

Democrats excoriated President Bush last month when he released a budget calling or more -- billions more -- in funds to reduce carbon emissions from coal-burning power plants to create "clean coal." But hardly a hoot could be heard about his proposed cuts to more practical investments in solar energy, hydrogen fuel and
home energy efficiency.

Meanwhile, leading Democrats were up in arms over the Energy Department's recent decision to abandon the $1.8 billion FutureGen project in eastern Illinois, planned as the first coal-fired plant to capture and store harmful carbon dioxide emissions. Energy Department officials, unlike politicians, had to confront the spiraling costs of this fantasy.

Orwellian language has led to Orwellian politics. With the imaginary vocabulary of "clean coal," too many Democrats and Republicans, as well as a surprising number of environmentalists, have forgotten the dirty realities of extracting coal from the earth. Pummeled by warnings that global warming is triggering the apocalypse, Americans have fallen for the ruse of futuristic science that is clean coal. And in the meantime, swaths of the country are being destroyed before our eyes. Here's the hog-killing reality that a coal miner like Burl or my grandfather knew firsthand: No matter how "cap 'n trade" schemes pan out in the distant future for coal-fired plants, strip mining and underground coal mining remain the dirtiest and most destructive ways of making energy.

Coal ain't clean. Coal is deadly.

More than 104,000 miners in America have died in coal mines since 1900. Twice as many have died from black lung disease. Dangerous pollutants, including mercury, filter into our air and water. The injuries and deaths caused by overburdened coal trucks are innumerable. Yet even on the heels of a recent report revealing that in the last six years the Mine Safety and Health Administration decided not to assess fines for more than 4,000 violations, Bush administration officials have called for cutting mine-safety funds by 6.5 percent. Have they already forgotten the coal miners who were entombed underground in Utah last summer?

Above ground, millions of acres across 36 states have been dynamited, torn and churned into bits by strip mining in the last 150 years. More than 60 percent of all coal mined in the United States today, in fact, comes from strip mines.

In the "United States of Coal," Appalachia has become the poster child for strip mining's worst depravations, which come in the form of mountaintop removal. An estimated 750,000 to 1 million acres of hardwood forests, a thousand miles of waterways and more than 470 mountains and their surrounding communities -- an area the size of Delaware -- have been erased from the southeastern mountain range in the last two decades. Thousands of tons of explosives -- the equivalent of several Hiroshima atomic bombs -- are set off in Appalachian communities every year.

How can anyone call this clean?

When the Bush administration announced a plan last year to do away with a poorly enforced 1983 regulation that protected streams from being buried by strip-mining waste -- one of the last ramparts protecting some of the nation's oldest forests and communities -- tens of thousands of people wrote to the Office of Surface Mining in outrage. Citizens' groups also effectively halted the proposed construction of 59 coal-fired plants in the past year. Yet at last weekend's meeting of the National Governors Association, Democratic and Republican governors once again joined forces, ignored the disastrous reality of mining and championed the chimera of clean coal. Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell even declared that coal states will be "back in business big time."

How much more death and destruction will it take to strip coal of this bright, shining "clean" lie?As Burl might have said, if our country can rally to save Arctic polar bears from global warming, perhaps Congress can pass the Endangered Appalachians Act to save American miners, their children and their communities from ruin by a reckless industry.Or at least stop talking about "clean coal."

Million Dollar "Public Service Announcements"

2008-03-03T12:42:00.003-05:00

Andy Brack, of the SC Statehouse Report provides more in depth coverage of Santee Cooper's squandering of public funds in its quest to saddle our state with another coal plant. According to Brack, the publicly owned utility is running more than a million dollar tab in an attempt to dupe folks into thinking another coal plant is a good thing for our state.

Santee Cooper plays scary media hardball
By ANDY BRACK, publisher

FEB. 29, 2008 -- Santee Cooper has spent about $150,000 this year on a slick media campaign that critics say used negative political-style messaging to build support for a new coal-fired power plant.

Judge for yourself. A recent newspaper ad featured a picture of a frowning electrical outlet with this headline: "A future without enough electricity is scary." The text of the ad outlined how the state would outgrow its electricity supply within five years and how Santee Cooper, a public utility, was planning to meet the need by building a new power plant.

Two billboards that were part of a January-February media campaign by Santee Cooper. Click here to view the "scary" newspaper ad. "That's the kind of thing we decry when there are two candidates who are tearing each other up and they do that without the benefit of public funding," said environmental leader Dana Beach of the SC Coastal Conservation League in Charleston. "Here is a publicly-funded agency using fear tactics to torque a very important and very complex policy decision in its favor."

Santee Cooper spokesperson Laura Varn said the advertising campaign also included messaging on how it planned to build a new coal-fired plant in the Pee Dee with the latest technology and how Santee Cooper had a long history of environmental leadership. "We're not trying to go over the line, but we're not trying to sugar-coat it either," Varn said. When asked whether the "scary" ad was good, she added, "We thought it was a way to effectively communicate the seriousness of the situation and our proactive solutions to it."

She noted the state, one of the fastest growing in the country, faced a looming shortage of electricity. A new coal-fired 600-megawatt plant recently opened as the third plant at the utility's Cross facility; a fourth is expected to open next January.

"That power is essentially spoken for when we turn it on," she said. By 2011, the utility will start facing capacity challenges with what it generates, which is why she said it needed another plant in Kingsburg. The proposed Pee Dee "campus" has raised the ire of environmentalists because it would, in part, add to mercury pollution in an area already with levels that are too high.

Concerns about opposition to the plant spurred the utility into overdrive last year when it signed an 18-month communications contract with Rawle Murdy, a Charleston advertising agency. A January Freedom of Information Act request by SC Statehouse Report about Santee Cooper's relationship with the agency revealed:
General invoices. The contract includes a $10,000 a month minimum retainer for the agency, but invoices show costs generally to be well over the retainer. In November, for example, Rawle Murdy sent a one-page bill for $251,005 to Santee Cooper that included three simple one-line explanations of work: Professional services ($54,849.02); creative development ($195,692.50); and expenses ($463.48).

Varn said the utility worked "hand in glove" with the agency, which did not return a call for comment, with daily phone calls and meetings two or three times a week. As such, it was acutely aware of what the agency was doing on its behalf and more detailed invoices weren't needed, she said. Work has included development and creation of two Web sites, messaging, a $57,000 poll and a January-February media campaign on the radio, billboards, newspapers and the Internet.

Million-dollar account. Invoices show the agency sent bills to Santee Cooper for $557,343.11 for work from July through December 2007. During the same time period, the utility paid $397,563.70. The difference was that an invoice for November work ($95,914.41) and postage costs for a brochure were not paid in 2007 due to payment cycles.
Varn said the communications agreement between the utility and agency likely would be the equivalent of a $1 million a year account for the agency. The costs of the January-February media buy, projected by Varn to be about $150,000, came this year and were not part of the FOIA response.

Expensive advice. According to the documents, the advertising agency's billing rates were $400 per hour for chairman David Rawle; $300 per hour for president Bruce Murdy; and $175 per hour for the client services director, creative director, public relations director and interactive services director. The lowest hourly rate was $80 for travel.

Bottom line: Santee Cooper hired an agency to develop messaging that, in part, intended to scare South Carolinians into supporting a new power plant. But in doing so, perhaps it showed another face: that it is, in fact, a little scared that public opposition might have been getting too strong.

Santee Cooper is a public utility. That means we own it. It shouldn't use our money to scare us into submission.
Andy Brack, publisher of Statehouse Report, can be reached at: brack@statehousereport.com.

"Clean Coal" is Dirty Coal

2008-02-29T13:28:00.003-05:00

From today's Myrtle Beach Sun News (Mountaintop removal mining is also "beloved" by Santee Cooper -- it gets all of its coal from this practice):

Coal mining disastrous for residents, land

By June Jordan

We are told that the newest technology of low-emissions coal plants will be a benefit. Cleaner coal from the power plant doesn't start there. Many are not aware that when they flip that electric switch the average modern home burns the equivalent of 6 tons of coal a year through air conditioning, lights and an array of ever increasing appliances, but they do not give a thought to the people who are exploited every day so we may enjoy this luxury.

In order for us to have this inexpensive energy source, the mining companies have destroyed over 500,000 acres of beautiful old mountain forests in Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky. To date, mountaintop mining has destroyed 450 mountains. The mountains are clear cut then 1,000 vertical feet blasted off and the resulting debris scraped into the adjacent river valleys burying and polluting 1,200 miles of streams.

The solid and liquid waste by-product of coal mining is stored in coal slurry impoundments. These impoundments can be hundreds of feet high and sometimes are close to schools or residences. Some exceed 500 million gallons in volume, but can be larger than 7 billion gallons. There are approximately 1,000 of these impoundments tucked away in the mountains of Central Appalachia. The most controversial sludge dam sits above Marsh Fork Elementary School in Sundial, W.Va. The school is 400 yards downslope from one of West Virginia's largest impoundments containing 2.8 billion gallons of coal sludge. Would we want to live here and send our children to this school every day? Residents in these areas can no longer use the water from their faucets. They have to haul their daily water supply in plastic jugs from a water tank truck to their homes.

In 1972, 132 million gallons of sludge rushed through the narrow Buffalo Creek hollow in West Virginia killing 125 people and leaving 4,000 homeless. There have been many sludge disasters including Martin County, Ky., when in October 2000, an impoundment broke propelling 306 million gallons of sludge down two tributaries. Another break sent ooze downstream where it eventually emptied into the Ohio River near Ashland, Ky., affecting over 70 miles of waterway. Communities on the Kentucky and West Virginia water supplies were shut down and private water wells were ruined.

Mountaintop mining is beloved by mining moguls because the need for human labor is nearly eliminated and therefore increases industry profits.

No amount of clean coal as an end product can justify the exploitation of the people who live in this once-beautiful region but are powerless and poor.
The writer lives in Murrells Inlet.

The Easy Math

2008-02-29T09:46:00.003-05:00

Coal Plant = Wrong Direction
Right direction =

Starting to piece together an energy policy for South Carolina
By MIKE FITTS
Associate Editor
AN ENERGY PLAN for South Carolina is starting to come together — but in a very South Carolina way, in pieces and with halting steps.
Before I talk about what’s been rolled out this month, I guess I still, even in the world of $100/barrel oil, need to make the case that the Palmetto State needs such a plan. Here goes:

On energy, South Carolina is in a painful bind. We are among the poorest of states on citizen income, earning about 80 cents to the nation’s dollar. Add to that our waste of energy: We rank as the fourth least-efficient state in the nation. The combination leaves us spending a lot of our meager income to pay the energy bills and not investing enough in conservation.

Where can we expect energy costs to go in the future? Up. Energy is a global commodity; even if we drill for more oil in the Gulf of Mexico and knock off the tops of more Appalachian mountains to get at the coal underneath, we’ll still be competing with our (weaker) dollars with consumers from here to Beijing to buy these resources. As the Third World continues to grow its middle class, the price of energy seems a lock to keep climbing.

That doesn’t even mention the environmental cost. Given the overwhelming likelihood that all this incinerated carbon is quickly warming the atmosphere, we have to accept that we can’t burn our way out of our energy problems.

What’s the cheapest way to meet energy needs as growth pushes our demand higher? Becoming more efficient, and actually using less. Efficiency improvements to save kilowatts cost about half as much as building a power plant to provide that power, says Ben Moore, project manager at the S.C. Coastal Conservation League. That makes sense, given our state’s limited resources and the need to begin really addressing climate change.

Enough (and then some) about the need. What’s being done?

Earlier this month, utility officials and League executive director Dana Beach, who haven’t exactly been singing in harmony over Santee Cooper’s proposed new coal plant, gathered together as a slate of conservation legislation was announced. Senate President Pro Tempore Glenn McConnell said he hoped to get the bills through the Legislature this year.

Among the measures:

• A sales tax exemption and a $750 rebate would be offered for the purchase of an energy-efficient mobile home. Mobile homes are much less efficient, and their owners tend not to have the money to make improvements.

• A nonprofit organization would gather funds from private grants and donations to help poor residents improve the energy efficiency of their homes.

• State agencies would be required to reduce their energy consumption by 20 percent by 2020 and get 10 percent of their energy from renewable resources.

These all strike me as valuable pieces of a broad energy plan for the state. The nonprofit organization tries to get at one of the tougher issues on energy: how to help low-income people. Mr. Moore points out that because low-income folks spend the highest percentage of their income on energy, “They can’t afford such inefficiency.”

Of course, much of the rest is based on the first tool in every lawmaker’s toolbox: the tax credit or deduction. We use tax breaks for anything that we like and want to encourage, but aren’t really emphatic about enough to actually pay for. Tax credits are the policy version of the free lollipop from the bank.

As my colleague Cindi Ross Scoppe noted recently, South Carolina is ridiculously eager to poke holes in its tax system, so that the official rate and the actual tax paid bear little resemblance to one another. In down years such as this, we feel the pain of this problem.

But what’s missing from this efficiency policy? Well, what about those who are coming to South Carolina and not buying a mobile home? They have been the major drivers of growth — and a main reason cited for Santee Cooper’s need for a new coal plant.

Retrofitting existing homes can and should be encouraged, but there always will be a limited number of folks who take advantage of it.

We can, however, hold new residences to a higher level of efficiency — just as we do for hurricane safety. Would it add to the cost of buying a home? Yes, and that would have to be considered when standards are set. Perhaps bigger, fancier houses would have to be more efficient. But most of the costs would come back to the customers in utility bill savings, especially if energy prices keep their march upward.

Shouldn’t that be one part of an energy policy for South Carolina? If we’re going to address both climate change and the increasing costs of energy we can’t afford, we’ll have to do some things that aren’t easy. Making our new homes more energy-efficient should be one not-so-easy thing.

Mercury Rising, Cont.

2008-02-28T21:32:00.000-05:00

Mercury continues to make headlines around the Southeast following the Federal Court's decision to scrap the Bush Administration's lax mercury rules for utilities. As a result, the draft air permit for Santee Cooper's Pee Dee plant is now explicitly illegal, and Federal Courts agree that our state owned utility is not doing enough to control its mercury emissions. As the below article from from Wednesday's Myrtle Beach Sun News indicates this is making building a coal plant difficult for another SC utility:

Environmentalists look at mercury emissions to derail coal plants

By MITCH WEISS
Associated Press Writer

Duke Energy Corp.'s newest coal-fired power generator will pump 5 1/2 million tons of carbon dioxide into the North Carolina sky every year, outraging environmentalists worried about the threat of global warming.

But for now, as lawmakers wrestle with how best to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, the plant's opponents are focused instead on a few dozen pounds of mercury as they fight to keep it from ever coming online.

Backed in part by a recent court ruling, environmentalists and others see the toxic metal - a powerful neurotoxin that can damage developing brains of fetuses and very young children - as an undisputed threat to the public's health. If successful, they hope mercury could become a new front in their efforts to halt the rapid growth of coal-fired power plants.

"It does give environmentalists another tool, another hook to use when arguing that it's time to phase these things out," said Scott Edwards, a lawyer for the New York-based environmental group Waterkeeper Alliance. "And the law gives us that argument. And public health gives us that argument. And ecological and aquatic health gives us that argument."

Duke's new $2.4 billion generator, at its existing Cliffside Steam Station about 50 miles west of Charlotte, is among more than 20 coal-fired plants now under construction nationwide.

While the rate of construction is the most in more that two decades, environmentalist say they have already helped delay or completely block nearly 60 other projects.

Coal plants provide about 50 percent of the nation's electricity, and a third of the country's carbon dioxide emissions - 2 billion tons annually. While there is talk about a carbon tax or other limits, Edwards said there are not yet any hard regulations on carbon emissions that environmentalists can tap to stop a plant's construction.

Work on Duke's new 800-megawatt unit began last month, the day after state regulators granted the Charlotte-based utility a final air quality permit.

Opponents plan to appeal that decision as early as this week, citing a ruling issued this month by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The court found that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency violated the Clean Air Act when it scrapped a policy that required utilities to install the best available
technology to capture mercury.

Duke spokeswoman Marilyn Lineberger said the company plans to use controls, including using wet and dry scrubbers and filters, that will reduce mercury emissions by 90 percent at the new Cliffside unit. Environmentalists argue technology exists that can reduce emissions by up to 98 percent.

"Before Duke can build this plant, it has to demonstrate it is achieving the highest level of mercury pollution control that is possible with available technology," said John Suttles, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center.

Duke initially proposed in a draft air quality permit to limit the new generator's mercury emissions to 294 pounds a year. That's almost double the 157 pounds currently emitted by five older coal-fire generators now operating at Cliffside, four of which will be shut down when the new generator comes online.

"They came up with a number that was shocking," Suttles said. "I was more than a little agitated when I saw that number. It totally astounded me."

Keith Overcash, director of the N.C. Division of Air Quality, admits regulators didn't object to that increase until environmentalists protested, and opponents are still upset the permit doesn't include a hard cap on mercury emissions.

The 101-page permit includes a promise from Duke to burn a combination of Western and Appalachian coal at a lower emissions rate to keep mercury levels low. Lineberger said the company will have no trouble keeping mercury emissions under 100 pounds per year.

"For them to say the plant won't ever produce more than 100 pounds annually is ridiculous," said Donna Lisenby, director of Catawba Riverkeeper, a group that monitors water quality along the 225-mile Catawba River system. "If the state is serious about protecting the public from the harms of mercury, they would have put an average total pound limit in the permit."

Overcash said the limit was reasonable.

"If they don't meet that on an annual basis, they can be fined," Overcash said. "If they meet that number, the amount of mercury emissions will be in that range we're talking about."

Hans Daniels, executive director of Global Energy Decisions, a private consulting firm that tracks power plants for the U.S. Department of Energy, said the threat of a carbon tax or other emission regulation remains the greatest potential threat to coal-fired plants. While mercury controls add cost to a plant, they are still a known cost.

"That cost can be incorporated in all the other costs. They are added up. And they can determine whether that plant should be built," Daniels said. "For mercury, right now, it probably won't be as big an issue as the uncertainty associated with CO2."

Still, environmentalists aren't alone in their focus on mercury. The metal is among the substances listed in North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper's pending lawsuit against the Tennessee Valley Authority, which accused the nation's largest utility of causing a "public nuisance" in the Smoky Mountains by failing to reduce pollution from its coal-fired power plants. "It's a tremendous irony," said Suttles, the environmental attorney. "In this case, North Carolina has allowed this new facility without forcing Duke to demonstrate what impact this plant would have on the Smoky Mountains. It's within an area that would be expected to - and does, in fact - affect air quality in the Smoky Mountains."

Public (Self-)Service Authority

2008-02-27T10:00:00.004-05:00

Santee Cooper, otherwise known as the South Caroilna Public Serivce Authority, is fond of pointing out that it is a "non profit" organization, "serving" the people of South Carolina.

Its also true that it is a state-sanctioned monopoly -- meaning it faces no competition from other businesses, it sets its own prices, it pays no taxes, it is exempt from many laws that apply to private utilities in our state. As many conservatives in our state have pointed out, Santee Cooper's situation is not unlike the way things are done in communist countries.

All of this raises the question, why would such an organization need to advertise?

Small business owners know that advertising can be an expensive necessity; a way to differentiate a business from competitors in a cutthroat marketplace.

But none of those conditions apply to Santee Cooper. Instead of "serving" the people of South Carolina, it is wasting their money on advertising.

And what are they advertising?

Their ill-considered coal plant idea.

That's right. Instead of spending money on creating the best energy efficiency program money can buy, or on renewable energy technologies, or on a public process to determine the best way to meet South Carolina's energy needs -- or even lowering residential rates -- this state-sponsored organization is spending dollars trying to pull the wool over the public's eyes with misleading ad's designed to scare us into submission.

They're trying to buy support for this coal plant with OUR money.

Don't believe me?

$650K campaign included coal plant poll

SC BIZ NEWS
Monday, 18 February 2008
By Molly Parker, Staff Writer

Last fall, Santee Cooper paid a Charleston public relations firm more than $650,000 to promote its green initiatives and sell the need for a new coal-fired power plant in rural Florence County.

Under the umbrella of creative development and consultation services, that price tag included creation of a new Web site, and execution of a survey, which cost $57,000, to gather opinions on such topics as global warming, coal-fired power, energy demand, conservation efforts, utilities and environmental organizations.

It also tested the weight of commonly echoed arguments both for and against the coal plant.

“It looks like the goal of this survey is to figure out what messages are going to be most persuasive in convincing people that Santee Cooper needs to build a new coal plant,” said John Beasley, an assistant professor at the University of South Carolina’s School of Journalism and Mass Communications.

At the end of the survey, 45% of respondents said they would need more information before deciding whether to support the plant, though 57% of Florence County voters favored it. At the time the poll was conducted, from Aug. 17-21, only 27% of those surveyed had heard about the utility’s plans to build the $1 billion plant.
The Charleston Regional Business Journal obtained the survey questions and results and marketing-related expense reports through a request under the Freedom of Information Act.

In total, Santee Cooper paid $658,157 between Aug. 30 and Dec. 18 to Rawle Murdy, a marketing firm in downtown Charleston. The expenses also went toward the reation of Santee Cooper Green, an initiative the utility rolled out in December to brand the 21 existing conservation and renewable-energy programs offered by the
utility, as well as any future initiatives. The main component is the new Web site.

Santee Cooper said the cost was in line with what the state-owned utility has spent on outside marketing and advertising services for projects in the past.“We brought them on board to help us with the most critical issue facing South Carolina, and that is the issue of how do we meet the future energy needs of the state,” said Laura Varn, Santee Cooper’s vice president of corporate communications. “Are we not to communicate on such vital topics that impact the quality of life for the state?”

Mountaintop Removal

2008-02-26T21:43:00.000-05:00

Santee Cooper gets all of its coal thru a practice called "mountaintop removal" -- essentially using dynamite to blow up mountains to quickly and cheaply get at the coal underneath.

We've written about this state of affairs before, pointing out that this practice is destroying the South's natural hertiage (i.e. the Appalachians). To be clear: backing the Pee Dee "energy campus" is a vote AGAINST our mountains.

For those of you with the stomach to learn more about this morally unjustifiable practice, I encourage you to read this in-depth article recently published in the Toronto Star. As it turns out Ontario's coal plants are hooked on Appalachian coal as well. Fortunately, like many U.S. states, Ontario is taking steps to move away from coal, even shutting plants down.

Coal mining ravages Appalachia mountains

By Catherine Porter, Environment
Toronto Star
February 23, 2008

They're ripping the tops off mountains in West Virginia coal country to feed our insatiable appetite for power. It's cheaper that way. And the trees and the animals and the flooding? It may not be pretty, but we've got all those dishwashers to run.
CHARLESTON, WEST VIRGINIA-When you flick on the lights this evening, think of Kayford Mountain. Or what was Kayford Mountain, but now is a sprawling, muddy, trembling construction site 100 metres below Larry Gibson's home.
Three years ago, Gibson hunted wild boar here, picked gooseberries and peaches, and sat under the shade of white oaks and hickories so thick he couldn't see the sky.

"Now, you can see the sky below your feet," Gibson says.

The boars have long scurried away. The trees have been reduced to a heap of pulp. The gooseberries have been bulldozed, replaced by rows of explosives. Just past the "Do Not Enter" sign, the mountain has been brought to its knees -- cut down like a giant tree. Instead of gazing 200 metres up to its peak, as Gibson once did, you peer down at its rubbly remains, clawed at by giant shovels and trundled off by bucking yellow dump trucks.

There are no birdsong or rustling leaves -- just beeping and grinding, and sounds like a 747 taking off.

A small sliver of the former mountain slumps to one side of the construction, like the last piece of Black Forest cake left amid the deflated balloons and streamers. On top are the trees and soil, then sandstone and shale, and at the bottom, a thick chocolate layer - coal.

"They say they can make the land better than it originally was," says Chuck Nelson, gazing down sorrowfully from his friend's property, hands in his pockets. "Who can do a better job than God? This land will never be no good for nothing."

Except of course, electricity.

Which is why all this is happening.

This is the new face of coal mining in Central Appalachia. It is called mountaintop removal. Instead of extracting coal the old- fashioned way, by burrowing, the mountain is extracted from the coal - blown up sequentially to reveal each black seam. Everything left over- trees, soil, plants and rock -- is considered "overburden." It's dumped into the valleys below, filling them up.

Some say as many as 470 mountains in West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia have been flattened this way. For the industry, it's a financial jackpot -- fast, cheap and thorough. But for the mountains, and the communities nestled between them, it's war.

Their homes have been flooded, walls cracked, wells poisoned, streams polluted; their jobs have been forfeited, cemeteries unearthed and communities abandoned. Many suffer from early-onset dementia and kidney stones. And they've lost their ancestral home.

"We're mountain people. You don't understand our connection with the land," says Gibson, who traces his heritage back 120 years to this very spot. He had never ventured beyond the company store, halfway down the mountain, until he was 11. "We didn't live on the land, we lived with it."

People who live here think of themselves as collateral damage - accidental victims of a war to feed the nation's insatiable demand for energy.

Read more.

Another Bad Week for Coal

2008-02-25T16:30:00.003-05:00

David Roberts, regulator contributor to Grist.org recently posted this blog at The Nation:

Regular readers of Grist know that coal is the enemy of the human race. They may also know that coal is on the ropes and, despite its recent PR blitz, in something of panic. Let's take a look at some news from just the past week or so.
A new report from gas, coal, and power consulting firm Wood MacKensie says that "the rate of coal plant cancellations accelerated during 2007 to the point that more than 50% of the new coal capacity announced since 2000 has now been canceled." That the trend will likely continue, especially given that fact that the cost of building a power plant has gone up by 130% since 2000.
Among the blocked coal plants is the infamous Sunflower plant in Kansas, which had its air permit denied late last year based on its projected CO2 emissions. Since then, Sunflower has done everything it can to get around the decision, including jingoistic
attacks on Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius and a laughable coal-friendly compromise" offered by its buddies in the legislature. (That bill passed today, but Sebelius says she'll veto and there aren't enough votes to override her.) Now, it appears, they've resorted to outright bribery: Sunflower says it will give $2.5 million over 10 years to Kansas State University ... but only if the plant is approved. Classy.

Then there's the dirty coal plant planned for Ohio by American Municipal Power. The NRDC made a public records request and got a hold of an internal AMP report (PDF)
which is, to put it lightly, embarrassing. According to AMP's own numbers, the cost of construction has risen 180% in just over two years. The initial estimate put it at $1.2 billion -- it's now at $3.3 billion and rising.
Thanks to the 50-year contract AMP will sign with the state, Ohio ratepayers will be on the hook for any costs that arise from dealing with CO2 -- costs that are all but inevitable given pending legislation. AMP estimates the costs at $73 million a year, but a report (PDF) from independent research firm Synapse Energy Economics puts the costs at between $287 and $500 million a year. Oops!

In short: ratepayers in Ohio are going to get screwed 10 ways to Sunday by politically connected coal barons who haven't bothered to assess the renewable alternatives. Think Ohioans will sit still for it?

(If you'd like to read much, much more about coal plant cancellations, check this Sourcewatch article or Coal Moratorium Now.)

Maybe coal can survive if it's "clean"? Maybe. But an official at Royal Dutch Shell said last week that carbon prices would have to reach about $100/tonne -- three times current levels -- before investment in carbon capture and storage would make economic sense. Ah well.

Does all this churn amount to a necessary and laudable transition? No sir ... it's a crisis! At least that's what the CEO of American Electric Power -- a coal-heavy utility -- says.

Other utilities, however, are getting on the energy-efficiency stick. And it's a good thing: Internationally renowned environmental analyst Lester Brown says that coal's time is up and that Wall Street will increasingly turn against it. (In this he agrees with notorious lefty enviro rag the Wall Street Journal.)

Coal disagrees:
The coal industry shot back, accusing Brown of exaggerating coal's contribution to climate change and ignoring the economic necessity of power generation.
"We're economically necessary." Is that the kind of argument people should have to make? Shouldn't it be self-evident if it's true? Isn't it contradicted by coal's ongoing economic failures? And should it really come coupled with a request for massive government subsidies?

So there you have it: just in the past week, elite opinion against coal has accelerated, two major coal projects have run into embarrassments, and an independent report has confirmed that things are only going to get worse. Now you know why Big Coal has been sponsoring presidential debates, putting Santas on corners around D.C., and pouring millions of dollars into a PR campaign. It knows its time has passed.

A Penny for Your Thoughts

2008-02-25T09:54:00.004-05:00

A number of opinion pieces on the coal plant have run recently, including this one from Sunday's Florence Morning News:

Decisions made today affect economic growth

Sunday, Feb 24, 2008 - 04:00 AM
By Responsible Economic Development Board of Directors

The Pee Dee needs economic development.Our local work force needs jobs, our children need education, our homes need electricity, and our businesses need opportunity.

The decisions that we make today, however, will affect the lives of our children and grandchildren, our natural and urban landscape, and the economic growth and development of our region. Investing in a coal fired power plant is not good for the Pee Dee.

Energy conservation and renewables are the cleaner, safer, cheaper and more responsible way to meet our energy needs. Energy conservation, or efficiency, is the practice of saving energy by switching to CFC or LED light bulbs, making homes that are energy efficient, conducting energy audits, and installing Energy Star power saving products.

Renewable means energy produced by a natural resource that comes from an endless or repeating source like: the sun, wind, water or plants (biomass). According to a study done by the Tellus Institute, the net job impact of investing in both renewable power and energy efficiency in South Carolina would result in 11,500 jobs by 2010 and 20,000 new jobs in 2020. These jobs would be spread across all sectors of the community, including: construction, agriculture, transportation, motor vehicles, manufacturing and services. In short, investment in energy efficiency and renewables will create many more jobs than a highly automated and technical coal plant.

Fortunately, South Carolina has huge energy conservation potential. According to a recent study done by the Electric Cooperatives, modest efficiency investments would generate 980 megawatts of electricity in the next decade.

Additionally, our state’s renewable energy resources, including biomass and small hydro, would realize another 655 megawatts of electricity. The combination of these programs would generate more than 200 megawatts more than Santee Cooper’s proposed plant.

Opting for green energy over coal power has the added benefit of being an environmentally sound economic decision. Coal-fired plants are responsible for producing large amounts of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxide and mercury into the air that we breathe and the water that we drink.

Mercury, a coal plant emission, is a poison that causes severe mental retardation in children, stunts brain development and causes cerebral palsy in newborns. It takes only 1/70th of a teaspoon of mercury to contaminate 20 acres of fresh water.

The proposed Santee Cooper coal fired power plant is projected to release 138 pounds of mercury every year, for 50 years. Our local rivers and streams already have severe mercury advisories.

Particulate matter (PM), sulfur dioxide, and carbon dioxide (C02) are also coal plant emissions that are extremely harmful to children and the elderly. These poisons are known to cause asthma, respiratory distress, heart attacks and lung cancer.

Our community needs economic development. But we need energy sources that do not destroy our fish and wildlife communities or threaten the health of our families, friends and neighbors.

The Board of Responsible Economic Development (RED) strongly supports the implementation of energy alternatives, such as energy efficiency and renewables.

Read a response opinion by the Chairman of the Board of Santee Cooper. Not surprisingly, it trots out all the old and discredited arguments that the coal plant is a good thing.

Finally, a piece by Dan Abel, a marine scientists at Coastal Carolina University -- it suggests that we can expect indepth coverage of the coal debate in future editions of the Myrtle Beach Sun News.

2008-02-25T09:29:00.001-05:00

Ely, Nevada's situation is eerily similar to ours.

Where the real jobs are

2008-02-21T06:43:00.004-05:00

Santee Cooper and its allies creatively tout their coal plant as a jobs program, even resorting to using rediculously inflated jobs numbers. Of course, such a project will only employ 100 people or less long term. Given the price tag of the plant, that means were getting 1 job per $10,000,000 dollar investment. So much for fiscal responsibility....

Now, as for actual job creation, the notion of "green collar" jobs has been getting a lot of attention lately, both in the local and national press. Despite studies showing the massive potential for such employment in South Carolina, some remain skeptical.

Nevertheless, General Electric's plant in Greenville just announced that it will add 200 new engineering jobs this year (after adding 300 last year).

What does GE build at the Greenville plant? Wind and gas turbines. The former is, of course, greenhouse gas and pollution free renewable energy; the latter burns the cleanest fossil fuel we know, yielding substantial pollution reductions relative to coal.

I think we already have enough evidence to conclude that if its jobs we want (or reliable, cost effective energy for that matter), the Pee Dee plant will fail our state miserably.

S-C Responsible for "Non-hazardous" Spill at Coal Plant

2008-02-20T07:51:00.003-05:00

The latest news from our environmental heroes at Santee Cooper (who recently submitted to the largest consent decree in our state's history after gettign caught red handed attempting to build the coal plants in Cross, South Carolina without a permit):

Santee Cooper detects spill
Nonhazardous wastewater leaks into swampy area

By Tony Bartelme

The Post and Courier

Saturday, February 16, 2008

GEORGETOWN — A broken pipe in a slurry pond at Santee Cooper's Winyah power plant caused as much as 200,000 gallons of limestone-laced water to spill into a swampy area next to the sprawling facility before crews contained the breach.

Santee Cooper officials said the wastewater in the pond isn't hazardous, and late Friday the area around the spill didn't appear to be affected. State health investigators took water samples but hadn't determined whether the spill caused any environmental damage.

Santee Cooper crews noticed a leak in the pond dike Thursday morning during a routine inspection of the dike system, said Phil Pierce, Santee Cooper vice president of fossil fuel and hydro generation.

The pond collects limestone slurry from the plant's sulfur dioxide air pollution scrubbers, Pierce said. A private company next to the plant uses the same material to make wallboard.

A 30-inch pipe used in the dike's construction during the 1980s apparently failed, he said. Once crews noticed water leaking from the dike, they contained most of it by piling rocks on it and diverting it into a ditched area. They pumped the spilled water back into the pond.

Nancy Cave of the Coastal Conservation League said the leak stands as a warning for the potential environmental damage that could occur from leaks from other, more dangerous waste-containment areas at coal-fired power plants.

Santee Cooper feels "this incident and its swift containment are proof that the utility's environmental policies and procedures are effective," said Mollie Gore, a public relations specialist with the utility.

Point / Counterpoint

2008-02-19T09:15:00.006-05:00

The Spartanburg Herald printed opposing perspectives on the Pee Dee coal plant over the weekend. You can read the "pro-coal" piece here (complete with gross misrepresentations of the job impacts of the project). Below you will find the "anti-coal" piece. Read both; make up your own mind.

Efficiency upgrades, demand reduction are alternatives to these polluting plants
By BLAN HOLMAN
Published: Sunday, February 17, 2008

The coal plant that Santee Cooper wants to build on the Great Pee Dee River is no longer just an expensive, polluting idea. The plant has become a symbol of how different Santee Cooper is compared to privately owned utilities.

One might guess this contrast is flattering to state-owned Santee Cooper. In fact, the opposite is true. Duke and Progress Energy, although owned by private investors, have abandoned new coal plants in South Carolina. And both have proposed programs to boost energy conservation and efficiency.

The initiatives are related. Programs that reduce electrical demand also reduce the need for new polluting power plants.

If demand reduction and efficiency upgrades were not a dependable and inexpensive way to produce power, Duke and Progress wouldn't pursue them. Neither would South Carolina's electrical cooperatives, which commissioned a study showing that
efficiency upgrades in their service areas could produce most of the power promised by Santee Cooper's plant. Extended to Santee Cooper's total service area, that conservation could displace need for the plant entirely.

Is Santee Cooper taking notice? Not yet. It continues to chug along with a 1,320-megawatt coal plant comprised of two units that will supposedly cost about a billion
dollars each. In reality, the units will cost far more. Rising concrete and steel prices have boosted the price of a single unit in North Carolina past $2 billion.

And that's before the balloon payment. From Wall Street to Main Street, everyone knows that some form of carbon controls are coming - controls that will exact a cost. According to the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control, this plant would emit some 11.6 million tons of carbon dioxide every year. With a middle-range carbon tax of $15 per ton, this coal plant will cost ratepayers $174 million more per year.

But Hindenburg-sized balloon payments are not the only problem. DHEC wants to let the plant belch 138 pounds of mercury every year. That sounds like a little, but mercury is so toxic that it's usually measured in ounces - not pounds. Mercury in fish gets into the people who eat them. Babies and breast-fed infants and children exposed to mercury are at risk for lowered intelligence and learning disabilities.

South Carolina already has one of the country's worst mercury problems. Our entire coast and all our major rivers and lakes have health advisories due to high mercury levels in fish. Recent testing of citizens in the Pee Dee region showed mercury levels eight times higher than EPA health standards.

Given all this, how can Santee Cooper claim that this plant will be one of the cleanest "in the country"? It can't. The Intermountain coal unit in Utah will emit one-fourth as much mercury as the Pee Dee plant.
Similarly, while the Pee Dee plant will emit 7,489 tons per year of sulfur dioxide - a substance that forms fine particle pollution that aggravates existing heart and lung diseases, particularly for children and the elderly - other plants produce half as much. Likewise, the Pee Dee plant will emit 3,495 tons of nitric oxides (NOx), which react with other compounds to form ozone smog, a pollutant that is linked to asthma and lung disease. Its removal rate (59 percent to 74 percent) is far less than other plants (90 percent to 95 percent).

This plant is not the "least-dirty" option available, and no coal plant could be called clean." Every day it will slurp millions of gallons of water from the stressed Pee DeeRiver and ingest a mile-long train's worth of coal stripped from Appalachian mountaintops. What comes out the other end will fill hundreds of acres of ash ponds and landfills.

In light of the plant's serious effects and growing costs, the time has come for Santee Cooper to pursue Plan B: an aggressive efficiency and conservation project that will
delay the need for this plant or displace it entirely.

Privately owned utilities have launched these initiatives already. Our state-owned utility should do the same. Alternatively, it should explain why it cannot keep up with the private sector to provide us with reliable power without salvaging our health and environment, not to mention our budget.

We all want to keep the lights on, but some ideas are brighter than others. Santee Cooper has better options than coal. It just hasn't looked at them.

Blan Holman is senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center.

Kentucky legislators try to curb mountaintop removal mining

2008-02-18T09:16:00.004-05:00

A group of Kentucky legislators have written legislation to end the economically and environmentally destructive practice of mountaintop removal mining. More than 1200 miles of mountain streams have have been impacted from mountaintop removal mining that coal mining companies are pursuing. With the destruction of these streams, people's homes are put at risk, and the water quality is severely impaired by runoff from the mine waste deposited when the mountains are blown away. Mountaintop removal mining is just another of the ways that the coal to be used in Santee Cooper's proposed plant dirties our beautiful South and hurts working families in our fellow southern states. Let's hope those Kentucky folks can get the support they need for this legislation.

Check out the article here.

Energy Efficiency Thought of the Day

2008-02-15T10:53:00.005-05:00

California has been pursuing energy efficiency for 20 years; its demand has barely increased over that time. South Carolina does very little. California spends the least on electricity per capita in the nation; South Carolina residents spend more than 45 other states. Still think a little energy efficiency can't obviate the need for another coal plant in South Carolina? (If so, maybe you don't like saving money).

(click on for larger image)

Mercury Poses Problems for Duke Energy, Nation's Children

2008-02-15T10:23:00.008-05:00

In the wake of the Federal Court's rejection of Bush era Mercury rules, coal plants in the permitting process across the country are likely to hit significant speed bumps. See this article on the financial news website TradingMarkets.com for how this judicial decision might affect Duke Energy's plan to move forward with a new coal plant near Charlotte. Duke's plant recently received a final air permit from the North Carolina Department of the Environment and Natural Resources. The permit must be revised to comply with the law. (Note how much more mercury Santee Cooper's plant, which would be smaller than Duke's, will be permitted to emit: over 130 pounds vs. 40 pounds).

This re-evaluation of how these plants will control their mercury emissions is in the best interest of of the health of everyone in the nation, since Mercury is such a potent neurotoxin. From the autism website, AutismConnect.org, a 2006 story from the Los Angeles Times reporting on a study linking mercury contamination with autism, here.

Carolina Utility Turns Back on Coal

2008-02-13T10:58:00.003-05:00

From the Charlotte News and Observer:

Coal's future not in Carolinas
Duke CEO says Midwest
better-suited for coal-fired plants
CHRISTOPHER D. KIRKPATRICK
ckirkpatrick@charlotteobserver.com

RALEIGH -- At a global warming
conference Monday, Duke Energy chief executive Jim Rogers said he wouldn't build another coal-fired power plant in the Carolinas because of its geology.

Any future plants would have to offer technology that could capture and store carbon dioxide underground. Geography in the Carolinas isn't suitable the way it is in Indiana, where Duke has a new coal-gasification plant under way, he said.

That technology -- which turns coal into a gas rather than burning it directly -- might allow Duke to pump the gas underground for storage, he said.

Duke has researched building pipelines to send the gas for storage to the Midwest. But it's too expensive, he said. So the CEO said Duke's Cliffside power plant project in the Blue Ridge foothills would be the Charlotte utility's last in the Carolinas.

Instead, the CEO envisions boosting major transmission capabilities so Duke could build its future coal plants in its three Midwest states and nuclear power plants in the South and then zap the electricity back and forth, as needed.

Ideas to reduce carbon dioxide emissions floated around the annual Emerging Issues Forum on Monday at the McKimmon Center at N.C. State University in Raleigh.

A lineup of speakers, including New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, traded ideas and delivered speeches about global warming and green energy. Rogers was on one of the panels Monday afternoon.

Coal-fired power plants are among the largest sources of carbon dioxide, blamed as a cause of global warming. Scientists say the rising temperature is hurting the environment and threatening mankind, including melting polar ice caps that could cause coastal flooding and massive hurricanes.

The forum featured leaders from the energy, governmental and academic worlds, including U.S. Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Nobel Prize winner Rajendra Pachauri, an N.C. State graduate who runs the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The annual conference this year is focused on global warming and how the state can or should economically benefit from it. The forum continues today and features Bank of America Corp. chief executive Ken Lewis.

Opponents of the Cliffside project and the use of fossil fuels say energy efficiency and renewable energy, such as wind and solar, should replace old-fashioned power plants.
Rogers told the crowd at the forum that the $2.4 billion Cliffside project was needed to bridge the gap to a noncarbon world. Energy demand requires it, he said.

The morning began with a dozen protesters outside the conference center.

The small group from N.C. WARN held a banner criticizing the 800-megawatt, coal-fired Cliffside project. The protesters said Rogers' commitment to energy efficiency and clean energy is hypocritical.

Friedman, the Monday morning headliner and author of the bestselling "The World is Flat," had his own take on how to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

He said the country needs a "massive carbon tax" to jolt industry into pushing the green movement beyond the pop culture stage.

Former Duke CEO Paul Anderson has said a tax on carbon emissions, as long as it was economy-wide, would be a good idea.

But Rogers said he supports a different approach called cap-and-trade.

The complicated method involves trading pollution credits. It would give utilities time to meet a national emissions cap that would be slowly lowered over time.

But Rogers on Monday also proposed a national tax on electricity that everyone who used power would have to pay. That money could then be funneled into research and development to find alternative ways to produce clean energy, he said.

Profit, or not, from global warming?

The annual conference this year is focusing on how the state can or should conomically benefit from global warming.

Speakers said that the state could benefit from money that would flow to research institutions trying to come up with energy innovations. And new companies might also locate in the state because of those research universities.

A clean energy revolution will also require traditional manufacturing infrastructure.

For example, a study said the Carolinas would benefit economically from a coming wind energy boon because the state has the capability to produce gears, blades and other parts needed to build a windmill.

PPG Industries near Shelby was able to retool some of its operations to manufacture windmill blades. And General Electric also recently moved its windmill turbine manufacturing headquarters to its Greenville, S.C.

Keep in mind: Duke's CEO's position is certainly laudable and rational, but don't forget that his statement comes only a couple weeks after Duke received a permit for its 800 MW coal plant at Cliffside. So Cliffside is Duke's last hurrah.

Santee Cooper recently finished a new 600 MW coal plant at Cross, SC last year and will finish a second 600 MW plant there in 2009. Why isn't Cross Santee Cooper's last hurrah?

Do they disagree w/ Rogers that coal's future is not in the Carolina's? What does Duke Energy know that Santee Cooper doesn't?

SCE&G recently announced in the Post and Courier that new coal is a last resort and Progress Energy has a long-standing moratorium on new coal.

Our state-owned utility is out of step with the times.

NC Lt. Governor: No New Coal

2008-02-11T17:04:00.001-05:00

From the Florence Morning News:

Perdue: No more coal-fired power plants should be licensed in NC

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- North Carolina shouldn't license any more coal-fired
plants because they pollute too much and don't move the state to greater use of alternative energy and conservation, Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue said Friday.

Releasing her energy platform in her run for governor, Perdue said if elected she would work to require utilities to create half of its future power generation needs through efficiencies. North Carolina should be a national leader in helping to reduce dramatically U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, she said.

"In North Carolina, changing our energy strategy energy is about more than protecting our environment - it's an opportunity to build a green economy and a 21st century green work force," Perdue said in a news release.

Her leading Democratic opponent - State Treasurer Richard Moore - released an energy platform last week. Perdue said issues surrounding last month's licensing of a coal-fired power generator in Rutherford County for Duke Energy Corp. "must represent the end of an era for North Carolina."

Future technology may capture all pollutants from coal-fired plants, but "until such a day arrives, we should table any discussion about licensing" similar plants, she said.

Perdue also would expand the number of alternative fuel vehicles in the state's motor fleet and improve efficiency standards for government buildings. She's also interested in creating a sales tax holiday on purchases of high-efficiency appliances similar to the weekend-long exemption on school supplies and clothing.

If elected, Perdue would explore whether the state should enter a cap-and-trade system to limit carbon emissions by polluters.

Such a system, already in place in the U.S. to limit sulfur dioxide emissions, would give companies "credits" equal to the amount of carbon dioxide they could emit. Firms with excess credits could sell the credits on a commodities market to others that exceed their limit.

A "Green Business Fund" approved by the Legislature to encourage clean-energy industries also should be expanded, according to Perdue.

Read more here. See what the fellow running for lieutenant governor thinks here.

What does our Governor think?

Mercury Rising on Santee Cooper

2008-02-09T11:17:00.000-05:00

Please see more coverage of the Federal Court's decision to nix the Bush Administration mercury regulations, which excused utilities from using the toughest pollution controls, and aided and abetted the mercury crisis in our state, below.

The State – front page story
Charleston P&C – lead story
Florence Morning News

Santee Cooper's Pee Dee coal plant proposal contains no controls specifically designed to protect us from Mercury, despite repeated "claims" in the press that their plant will be the "cleanest in the nation." The Federal Court decision exposes such statements for the shamless falsehoods that they are.

Thankfully, after this court decision, DHEC and Santee Cooper will be forced to go back to the drawing board and figure out how to really control the large amounts of mercury this plant would admit.

In the meantime, we have a nice opportunity to consider whether we need this plant anyway, especially when its being promoted by an agency that appears to have been playing fast and loose with our health.

Federal Court Sends DHEC Permit Back to the Drawing Board

2008-02-08T15:21:00.000-05:00

A federal court ruling today will mean that the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) must re-evaluate Santee Cooper’s plans to control mercury at the utility’s proposed Pee Dee coal plant near Pamplico, SC. The D.C Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today that EPA violated the Clean Air Act when it removed oil- and coal-fired power plants from the list of hazardous air pollution sources that are subject to the Act’s most stringent air pollution controls. As a result, air permits for new coal plants such as the Pee Dee plant must be based on a case-by-case analysis of the maximum available control technology for mercury and other hazardous air pollutants.

"We warned DHEC that the mercury standard it was using for the Pee Dee permit was too weak and would get tossed out in federal court. And that is exactly what happened. Now DHEC and Santee Cooper need to start over and examine all alternatives with lower mercury emissions. It's too bad they didn't do that in the beginning, but now they have no choice," said Blan Holman, SELC attorney. "This decision is very good news for South Carolinians."

In December, DHEC issued a draft air permit for the Pee Dee plant would allow the Pee Dee plant unit to emit 138 pounds of toxic mercury each year in an area of the state that is already known as the “Mercury Triangle” because of high levels of mercury contamination. In developing the permit, DHEC did not conduct a case-specific analysis of maximum available control technology (MACT) for mercury, and the permit does not require Santee Cooper to install mercury-specific pollution control equipment.

In comments filed on January 22, SELC notified DHEC of the anticipated federal decision and urged the agency to consider these expected mercury regulations when developing its final permit. The D.C. Circuit’s ruling means that DHEC must withdraw the draft air permit for the Pee Dee plant, go back to the drawing board to conduct a case-specific MACT analysis, and issue a revised draft permit for public comment before finalizing a new permit.

Because mercury is classified as “hazardous,” the Clean Air Act requires EPA to identify its sources and develop the most stringent standards to control emissions from those sources. The court ruled today that EPA acted illegally when it took power plants off the list of hazardous pollution sources when issuing its Clean Air Mercury Rule.

Released in May 2005, the federal Clean Air Mercury Rule exempted power plants from the most stringent Clean Air Act requirements to control mercury and instead instituted a flawed “cap and trade” scheme, which allows facilities to trade mercury pollution credits with other less-polluting power plants. As a result of the D.C. Circuit’s ruling today, EPA and the states must now develop tougher regulations to control mercury and other toxic pollutants from new and existing power plants, the leading source of mercury pollution in the country. Today’s ruling could result in a 95 percent or greater reduction of mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants

Mercury emitted from power plants deposits in water bodies, where it is converted to its most toxic form, methylmercury. Methylmercury exposure from eating contaminated fish is linked to permanent damage to the central nervous system. Developing fetuses, breast-fed infants and children exposed to methylmercury are at risk for lowered intelligence and learning disabilities. Adults exposed to even low amounts of methylmercury also may be at higher risk for altered sensation, impaired hearing and vision, and motor disturbances. EPA estimates that as many as than 600,000 children are born each year with unhealthy levels of methylmercury in their bodies. Despite this figure, EPA adopted the flawed mercury rule ignoring the counsel of its own Children’s Health Public Advisory Committee and thousands of health professionals nationwide.

Connecting the Dots

2008-02-07T17:01:00.000-05:00

Hear about environmental impact of 'mountaintop removal' tonight
By David Quick
The Post and Courier
Thursday, February 7, 2008

Name the worst environmental disaster in United States history.

I bet you guessed the 1989 wreck of the Exxon Valdez, which spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska's pristine Prince William Sound and beyond. It was a national tragedy that even the most ardent of anti-environmentalists couldn't deny.

But I bet you didn't know, or perhaps didn't remember, another tragedy that took place just over seven years ago in Martin County in Kentucky.

It involved 300 million gallons of coal slurry — a thick, puddinglike waste from mining operations — spilling out of a reservoir and flooding the land, polluting rivers, killing everything in streams for 100 miles and destroying property in Eastern Kentucky and Southwestern West Virginia.

The slurry, which contains hazardous chemicals such as arsenic and mercury, is the byproduct of yet another multifaceted environmental tragedy that's been taking place since the 1970s and continues into this era of energy volatility.

It's called mountaintop removal.

The process involves a clear-cut of diverse, hardwood forests. Coal companies then blow up the top 600 to 800 feet of mountains to get to seams of coal. Leftover rock and debris are scraped into valleys and fill streams. Barren land, usually covered in grass seed native to Asia, then is prone to flooding and erosion. So far, about 300,000 acres of forest have been turned into barren grassland. And then there's the coal slurry.

So what does this have to do with Charleston?

According to ilovemountains.org, we get coal from some mines that use mountaintop removal. And at 7 p.m. today in Charleston, one man hopes to expose locals to the full cost of the process.

Coal, which we already tap to run power plants, has made headlines lately as Santee Cooper, citing a potential power shortage by 2013, proposes building a $1 billion coal-fired plant in the Pee Dee. Conservation groups oppose it, noting that coal plants are among the largest contributors of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Dave Cooper, a retired engineer who travels the country talking about mountaintop removal, will bring his "Mountaintop Removal Road Show" to the local Sierra Club. The event, which is free and open to the public, will be at the Medical University of South Carolina's Baruch Auditorium, 284 Calhoun St., Charleston.

Cooper does not want to abandon use of coal, but rather just stop the practice of mountaintop removal. As you may imagine, he's been called an "ecoterroist" who wants to take away jobs from people in some of the poorest counties in the United States.

"I'm not against jobs," says Cooper. "I just think mountaintop removal is incredibly short-sighted. ... Underground mining is less damaging and involves more manpower."

He noted that since the increase of mechanization and mountaintop removal, mining jobs in West Virginia have gone from about 120,000 in 1960 to fewer than 15,000 now.

So what are we supposed to do?

First, Cooper urges people to take energy conservation seriously, from buying compact fluorescent bulbs to replacing appliances with ones that save the most energy. Second, contact Rep. Henry Brown, R-S.C., and ask him to support the Clean Water Protection Act (H.R. 2169) that would ban mountaintop removal.

I think most people who love to be active and outdoors care, to varying degrees, about the quality of the environment. But in our busy lives, we just don't connect all the dots. And sometimes we need sobering reminders of our impact on this special planet and what we can do to lessen that impact.

Sun News Steps Out

2008-02-04T13:01:00.000-05:00

Yesterday the Sun News in Myrtle Beach published an editorial asking for what those opposed to the coal plant have long been asking for:

A public conversation about the need for this coal plant, its true costs and benefits to South Carolina, and the real alternatives available to us.

There are strong feelings on both sides of this issue, but no one should shy away from an independent review of this project. Tough questions need to be asked and answered before we commit ourselves to 50 years of coal in the Pee Dee.

Hopefully this is the beginning of that necessary process.

Coal Plant Conundrum
'We have met the enemy and they are us'

On Jan. 22, seven attorneys general from across the nation asked the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control to shoot down Santee Cooper's plan to build a 600-megawatt coal-fire power plant in Florence County. The attorneys general in question may know how things work in their home venues: California, New York, Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington, D.C. But they obviously don't understand how things work in South Carolina.

DHEC is conducting an environmental review of the Santee Cooper proposal to erect the plant on the banks of the Pee Dee River. But DHEC doesn't have the authority to accept or reject any Santee Cooper project.

No one except the Santee Cooper board has that power, and its members have already approved the plant. Were Santee Cooper an investor-owned utility like Duke Energy or SCANA, it would have to obtain permission to expand its generating capacity from the S.C. Public Utilities Commission. But because Santee Cooper is a state-owned utility started with a $1 million federal grant in the 1930s, it is exempt from Public Utilities Commission oversight.

The attorneys general argue that Santee Cooper's planned "Pee Dee Energy Campus" would issue 9 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere per year. Carbon dioxide, as any middle-school science student could tell you, is no respecter of political boundaries. Emissions that originate in South Carolina really could taint the air in their states and the District of Columbia, and other states as well.

The Santee Cooper leadership, however, argues that without the new plant, brownouts - electric-service lapses at times of peak customer demand - could become commonplace in its service area within five years. That service area includes the most populous parts of Horry, Georgetown and Berkeley counties. The service area also includes most of the rural and small-town parts of South Carolina because Santee Cooper's biggest customer is electric cooperatives - such as the Horry Electric Cooperative.

Here's what makes judging this project really hard: The main force driving Santee Cooper's decision to build the plant is rampant growth on the Grand Strand. (As Walt Kelly's famous cartoon character Pogo once observed: "We have met the enemy and they are us.")

The S.C. conservation community argues, persuasively, that a combination of energy-savings strategies and alternative generation technologies - solar, wind, etc. - could eliminate the need for the plant. Or, failing that, Santee Cooper could redesign the plant to run on gasified coal or to include sequestration technology that keeps carbon from reaching the atmosphere.

Santee Cooper argues, equally persuasively, that it is touting energy conservation and exploring alternative-generation technologies. Utility leadership also promises to use the best coal-fired technology available to minimize carbon and mercury emissions, but adds that coal-gasification and carbon-sequestration are unreliable and cost too much.

Who's right? Who knows? That's why Gov. Mark Sanford, as a born-again environmentalist and chief state executive, should conduct - top to bottom - an independent review of the Santee Cooper proposal and report his findings to the people of South Carolina. No other state official or entity can do this. Better he than the outside attorneys general to tell us whether we can get by without Santee Cooper's Pee Dee Energy Campus.

"Virginia is for Lovers (of the Truth)"

2008-01-31T18:32:00.000-05:00

Officials in Virginia aren't buying what the utility, Dominion, and their regulators (i.e. their version of DHEC) are telling them about a coal plant proposal in their state.

We need smart government official like Virginia's Mr. Moore to stand up in our state and demand that DHEC and Santee Cooper justify this dirty coal plant proposal.

We can't take Santee Cooper/DHEC's word for it that this plant will use the cleanest technology available (it won't), that other options won't work (they will), that this plant is good for the economy (it isn't), etc., etc.

Our state officials need to stand up and make Santee Cooper and DHEC prove these claims (they can't).

From the Sun News:

Virginia air officials not satisfied with Dominion proposal
By SUE LINDSEY
Associated Press Writer

Virginia officials decided Friday to explore whether Dominion Virginia Power can reduce air pollution at its plant proposed in southwest Virginia by using different technology or by burning another type of coal.

The Virginia Air Pollution Control Board voted Friday in Alexandria to seek more information from the state Department of Environmental Quality, the utility and the public about other options for the plant proposed for Wise County.

The decision came after board member Hullihen Moore said he was dissatisfied with Dominion's presentation explaining why its plan for the plant was the best option, DEQ spokesman Bill Hayden said. The utility plans to burn coal produced in southwest Virginia, including waste coal, and wood products.

Don Shepherd, a National Park Service environmental engineer, told the board that use of a coal-gasification process would result in lower emissions at the plant and better protect the environment, Hayden said.

A draft DEQ permit would allow the plant to emit 5.3 million tons of carbon dioxide and 12,500 tons of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide into the air every year.

A Park Service spokeswoman did not immediately return a telephone message left by The Associated Press. U.S. Forest Service officials earlier expressed concern about air pollution reaching federal wilderness areas in western North Carolina.

The air board's role is to gather information and provide guidance to DEQ, but Hayden said the body could decide itself whether it will issue a permit for the plant.

The DEQ has scheduled a hearing Feb. 11 in St. Paul on the proposal, and Hayden said the agency has extended it to Feb. 12 as well to take public comment.

A coalition of environmental groups asked the agency also to hold hearings in Richmond, Hampton Roads and northern Virginia, but Hayden said no decision has been made on that request.

The opponents also asked DEQ to extend the Feb. 26 deadline for public comment on the air emissions by 90 to 120 days. Hayden said the deadline will be Feb. 27 because of the second hearing, but no decision had been made on a further extension.

Don't forget to check out the folks fighting this coal plant in Virginia, and the local VA Sierra Club recently released a report showing how that state could meet its energy needs and reduce its greenhouse gas emissions using clean energy.

Is this our future?

2008-01-31T18:23:00.000-05:00

Click on the photo above for more of what a coal plant might do to the air quality (and scenic value) of our state. This plant is in Charleston, West Virginia.

The Coal Truth

2008-01-30T20:27:00.000-05:00

Ever wonder where all that dirty coal comes from? Where Santee Cooper gets its coal? Where the coal that will be burned in the proposed Pee Dee plant will come from?

The answer is something Santee Cooper would rather you not know.

The answer is something that we, as Southerners, proud of our history and our region, as Americans, who love our country and its natural splendors, should be shocked and appalled by.

The answer is mountain top removal.

You can find out more about where Santee Cooper get its coal here.

You can find out more about mountain top removal by watching ETV tomorrow night at 10 PM. Then you'll have a chance to see an award-winning documentary titled, simply, "Mountain Top Removal."

It as simply as that really.

We are destroying our Appalachian mountains in order to power coal plants of the sort Santee Cooper is busy trying to convince us we need.

Those of you out there thinking there is nothing wrong with coal, who think there is nothing wrong with a state-owned utility proposing that we use more of it in the 21st century, you need to watch this film and others like it. You need to learn about mountain top removal mining and consider the consequences of choosing coal very well.

Santee Cooper is not telling us the whole truth about their coal plant.

Stop Coal

2008-01-30T09:57:00.000-05:00

Architect Ed Mazria of Architecture 2030 issued a webcast this morning persuasively outlining the threat of global warming to our coasts, the need for a coal moratorium to stop runaway greenhouse gas emissions, and the potential in the building sector to save massive amounts of energy.

Take a look at the webcast here and see if you are not convinced.

Click on this map of Savannah, Georgia to see how it would be affected by sea level rise driven by carbon dioxide emissions from coal plants.

North Carolina Gov. Candidates Say No To Coal

2008-01-29T17:24:00.000-05:00

Y'all might have heard, but our neighbor North Carolina recently had its leading candidates for governor urge clean energy options that create more local jobs and protect the state's valuable tourism industry instead of building a coal plant. South Carolina would do well to follow this lead.

Asheville CITIZEN-TIMES.com
Democrat gubernatorial candidates oppose new Rutherford coal plant

By Jordan Schrader

January 24, 2008 12:15 am

The Democrats vying for the governor’s job agree on something: Now is not the time for a new power plant in Rutherford County.

Duke Energy wants to build a new coal-fired unit at its Cliffside plant, saying the growing state needs more electricity and must harness traditional fuels as well as renewable sources.

On Wednesday, first State Treasurer Richard Moore and then Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue expressed their opposition to that plan.

Moore, echoed by Perdue, called for state regulators at the Division of Air Quality to wait to approve a permit for the plant.

“North Carolina should focus on new, efficient energy choices and conservation rather than building more high-polluting, coal-fired power plants,” Moore said in a statement. “This type of plant should be a last resort, not a first option.”

Environmentalists have opposed the plant, saying it would contribute to climate change and pollute the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

The statements encouraged the N.C. Sierra Club, said state director Molly Diggins.

She said the authority over the permit ultimately falls to the secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, appointed by the governor.

Perdue said as governor “a particular emphasis of mine will be developing a green economy” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Energy Film Fest in Florence

2008-01-29T16:55:00.000-05:00

The National Stage

2008-01-29T09:11:00.000-05:00

Heard this on the radio this morning. Will DHEC and Santee Cooper just ignore these folks? It would take a rare kind of arrogance and disregard for the good of our state and of America.

Attorneys general oppose coal plant

8 top prosecutors want Santee Cooper to be denied permit
By Tony Bartelme
The Post and Courier
Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Eight attorneys general want South Carolina to nix Santee Cooper's plan for a new coal-fired power generator in the Pee Dee, saying the plant would pump millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the air and undermine their efforts to reduce greenhouse gases.

Opposition from these top government prosecutors shows how the high-stakes debate over Santee Cooper's Pee Dee project has landed firmly on the national stage.

In a letter dated Jan. 22, to the state Department of Health and Environmental Control, the eight attorneys general urged the agency to deny Santee Cooper a permit and focus instead on cleaner technologies to produce electricity.

Citing a compact by 10 Northeastern states to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the prosecutors said the Pee Dee plant would release 9 million tons of carbon dioxide into the air every year, effectively canceling reductions planned in their states.

Attorneys general from California, New York, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont signed the letter.

"I think it's extraordinary that they have written this letter," said Blan Holman, a lawyer with the Southern Environmental Law Center. "It shows the plant doesn't just have significance in the Pee Dee and in South Carolina, but that it's part of a national debate."
Related stories

Read previous stories on mercury.

Santee Cooper wants to build a $1 billion coal plant on the banks of the Great Pee Dee River in Florence County. The state-owned utility says if it doesn't move forward with the generators, parts of South Carolina could face blackouts and brownouts by 2013. The utility's plan enjoys wide support from the state's manufacturing community.

Laura Varn, Santee Cooper vice president of corporate communications, said DHEC doesn't have any legal authority to order the utility to reduce carbon dioxide emissions for the Pee Dee project.

Lawmakers are pushing new laws that would tax carbon-based emissions. But Varn said that Santee Cooper has to operate under existing laws, and that its Pee Dee plan meets or does better than current pollution rules require.
Attorneys General letter

The letter urging DHEC to deny Santee Cooper a permit for a new coal-powered power generator.

In their letter, the attorneys general, including aggressive prosecutors such as Andrew Cuomo of New York and Jerry Brown of California, said that "climate change is the single greatest environmental challenge facing the world today," and that state and federal laws require Santee Cooper to use the "best available technology" to reduce greenhouse gases.

The prosecutors said Santee Cooper should consider a plant fueled by natural gas, biomass or gasified coal — technologies that produce less carbon dioxide than traditional plants. Santee Cooper has said that these technologies are either unproven or too expensive, and that it plans to use state-of-the-art technology in the Pee Dee complex.

In 2007, 53 coal-fired plants across the nation were canceled or delayed in 2007, according to Global Energy Decisions, a company that tracks power plants for the Department of Energy.

As concerns mount about global warming, states are taking aggressive stands on pollution from their neighbors. In recent years, North Carolina's attorney general cited South Carolina and 12 other states as contributing to North Carolina's air pollution. New Jersey sued a utility in Pennsylvania last month over its air emissions.

Last year, the eight government prosecutors opposed to Santee Cooper's plant urged Kansas health officials to deny a permit for a new plant there. They did so, citing concerns about global warming.

"Those attorneys general letters were very influential in Kansas, and my hope is that they'll be very influential in South Carolina," said Nancy Cave of the Coastal Conservation League. "I hope they won't shrug it off."

Engineers with DHEC received more than 700 comments about the plant but have set no timetable for their decision whether to allow its construction.

Reach Tony Bartelme at tbartelme@postandcourier.com or 937-5554.

SELC, state and national environmental groups, attack Pee Dee coal plant proposal

2008-01-23T08:41:00.000-05:00

The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Controls has issued a draft permit for a proposed two unity 1320 megawatt pulverized coal-fired power plant on the banks of the Great Pee Dee River in Florence County. The period for the public to comment on the permit close[d yesterdsay].

SELC, on behalf of a host of environmental organizations including the Sierra Club and the Coastal Conservation League, contends that Santee Cooper has not established a need for the plant, that a new coal unit is not the best way to meet any energy needs, and that the plant as proposed does use the cleanest technology available as the law requires.

Gudrun Thompson: “DHEC’s proposal to allow a new, dirty coal plant at a time when the State of South Carolina faces unprecedented air quality-related challenges, including mercury pollution that damages the brains of our most vulnerable citizens, global warming pollution that threatens our fragile coastline with rising sea levels, and soot and smog pollution that contribute to asthma attacks is irresponsible and flies in the face of the agency’s responsibility to protect public health.

“Santee Cooper hasn’t proposed and DHEC isn’t requiring the use of the cleanest technology available at the Pee Dee plant. Not only is this dangerous, it’s illegal and in clear violation of the Clean Air Act. As it stands, any final permit based on this half-baked draft permit is vulnerable to a legal challenge.”

So goes the press release from the Southern Environmental Law Center. Santee Cooper is fond of claiming that it's proposed plant will be among the cleanest power plants in the nation. SELC's comments on DHEC's draft air quality permit gives the lie to that spurious claim many, many times over. In fact, by the time it would be built (IF it is ever built), Santee Cooper's plant will be dirtier than many plants that already exist today. In some instances, it will be dirtier than the coal plant they just finished building last year. In an election year, its more obvious than usual that we need more than empty promises from our leaders -- that includes DHEC and Santee Cooper.

Carolinians on Coal

2008-01-22T11:19:00.000-05:00

More video from the recent Republican debates, plus a take from "the other side" here (at the Myrtle Beach Sun News website).

It's cold out there for coal

2008-01-21T07:21:00.000-05:00

Seems like there are a lot of articles along these lines lately. Take notice. Another from the Los Angeles Times. (The unspoken message here is that our country needs a commitment to efficiency -- the cheapest, fastest and cleanest way to meet our energy needs. South Carolina lags behind the nation in efficiency; utilities like Santee Cooper have never agressively pursued ways to help its customers save money as other public power utilities have done with great success for many years. With a commitment to achieve cost-effective efficiency goals, Santee Cooper could dispense with its coal plant plans entirely, and still provide cheap, reliable power):

Coal is no longer on front burner
The rush to build power plants slows as worries grow over global warming, building costs and transportation.

By Judy Pasternak, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
January 18, 2008

WASHINGTON -- America's headlong rush to tap its enormous coal reserves for electricity has slowed abruptly, with more than 50 proposed coal-fired power plants in 20 states canceled or delayed in 2007 because of concerns about climate change, construction costs and transportation problems.

Coal, touted as cheap and plentiful, has been a cornerstone of President Bush's plans to meet America's energy needs with dozens of new power plants. Burned in about 600 facilities, coal produces more than half of the nation's electricity.

But urgent questions are emerging about a fuel once thought to be the most reliable of all. Utilities are confronting rising costs and a lack of transportation routes from coal fields to generators, opposition from state regulators and environmental groups, and uncertainty over climate-change policies in Washington.

"Coal projects need more regulatory certainty before any new ones are going to get built in the near future," said David Eskelsen, a spokesman for PacifiCorp, which serves more than 1.6 million customers in six Western states. "The current situation does make utility planning very challenging."

Just a few weeks ago, PacifiCorp dropped plans for two coal-fired power plants in Utah, citing the many unknowns in assessing the costs and objections on global warming grounds from a major customer: the city of Los Angeles. PacifiCorp said in filings with the state of Utah that it hadn't found a substitute for production that it will need to bring online in 2012 and 2014.

Shortages are feared

The setbacks have energy regulators jittery about the prospects for meeting America's ever-increasing hunger for electricity. They say that any delays in building new capacity -- coal-fired or otherwise -- add pressure to an already strained electricity infrastructure, raising the prospect of shortages or sharply higher prices.

Energy planners say coal needs to be in the mix because the other mainstay fuels for generating electricity also have serious drawbacks. Natural gas has proved volatile in both price and supply. Nuclear power plants are costly and take much longer to build -- and the problem of radioactive-waste disposal remains unsolved.

Second thoughts"We're very close to the edge," said Rick Sergel, who keeps a close eye on the grid as chief executive of the quasi-governmental North American Electric Reliability Corp. "We operate under tight conditions more often than ever. We need action in the next year or two to start on the path to having enough electricity 10 years from now."

This fall, regulators in Kansas and Washington state denied applications for coal plant permits because of concerns about carbon dioxide emissions.

After Republican Florida Gov. Charlie Crist said in October that he wasn't a "fan" of coal, utilities postponed plans to build coal plants in Tampa and Orlando.

Xcel Energy has told Colorado officials that it plans to close two coal plants and add 1,000 megawatts of wind and solar power, in addition to a new natural-gas plant. The company wants to cut its carbon dioxide emissions 10% by 2015.

In Nevada, Sierra Pacific Resources delayed construction of a coal plant and moved up the schedule for a natural-gas-powered plant instead.

The Tennessee Valley Authority decided in August to add a $2.5-billion unit to a nuclear power plant rather than construct a new coal facility -- the other main option -- because of the uncertain economics.

Altogether, 53 coal-fired plants were canceled or delayed in 2007, according to Global Energy Decisions, a private consulting firm that tracks power plants for the Department of Energy.

In the near term, coal clearly will remain a part of the American energy picture. Even as the postponements and terminations pile up, plans for new coal-fired power plants continue to advance in New Mexico, Mississippi and Indiana.

Although TXU Energy canceled eight coal-fired power plants it had proposed in Texas, the utility is going ahead with three others.

Last month, an energy industry consortium announced plans to build a government-subsidized power plant in southern Illinois to demonstrate low-emissions coal technology. But the ballooning cost of the FutureGen plant -- now projected to be about $1.8 billion, nearly double its original estimated price tag -- has drawn criticism from the Department of Energy, which could delay or kill the project by withholding funds.

The growing push in Washington to do something about global warming is a major factor that affects the cost of burning chunks of solid carbon, by far the dirtiest way to manufacture power.

A recent study by the industry-funded Electric Power Research Institute projects that coal power will cost more than nuclear power or natural gas by 2030 if coal's carbon dioxide problem is solved the way most experts envision. Still unproven, that method involves separating carbon dioxide from the gas stream before it heads out of the stacks, collecting the vapors and then storing them underground. That would also require a new network of pipelines to move carbon dioxide from the power plant to a geologically sound site.

Another industry analysis predicts that wholesale electricity prices will rise 35% to 65% by 2015 if the Warner-Lieberman climate change bill -- one of the more conservative plans put forward in the Senate -- is enacted.

A more immediate challenge is transportation, from missing links in the rail routes to silted-up Great Lakes shipping channels, which raise concerns that coal may not be so simple to get at after all.

"Can coal deliver?" asked Gary Hunt, president of Global Energy Advisors, a Sacramento-based unit of Global Energy Decisions. "The answer is no," he said -- not without "billions and billions" spent on improvements for mining capacity, railroads and shipping.

Powder River Basin

About 40% of the coal that America burns comes from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana. Sought after for its low sulfur content, the product is sent all over the country on trains more than 100 cars long. But only two rail companies serve the basin, and for 100 miles they share one set of tracks.

That caused trouble in spring 2005, when coal dust built up between the ties, snow and rain fell on the tracks, and the resulting slush caused two derailments. The ensuing bottleneck delayed coal deliveries for months. Utilities started hoarding the coal they had on hand, and ran their more expensive natural-gas plants more often. They filed for rate hikes, and at least two sued their rail carriers.

Railroads are investing about $200 million to improve and expand the tracks leading out of the Powder River Basin, and they point to record cargoes this year. But the National Mining Assn. still has concerns about the future, spokesman Luke Popovich said. "Capacity is adequate now, but it's close to being inadequate," he said.

In the coal fields of southern Illinois and Indiana, a mining renaissance is hoped for -- but no north-south rail line connects them with Chicago and the Great Lakes.

Purdue University recommends building a 300-mile "Indiana coal corridor" -- at a cost of about $1 million a mile.

Overall, the Assn. of American Railroads estimates that $148 billion needs to be invested in freight infrastructure over the next 28 years. The industry says it needs federal assistance to help it cover about $39 billion of that cost.

We Energies, which provides electricity in Wisconsin and Michigan, said it had faced at least $45 million in higher fuel costs as a result of rail disruptions. Like other producers in the Upper Midwest, the company tried to find relief by shipping coal across the Great Lakes. But lake channels have silted up, creating a "dredging crisis," in the words of James H.I. Weakley, president of the Lake Carriers' Assn.

The Lake Erie port of Dunkirk, N.Y. -- site of a coal-fired power plant -- closed to shipping in 2005. A freighter ran aground at the Lake Huron port of Saginaw, Mich., last year. With ships loading 6,000 to 9,000 pounds less than their capacity in order to stay afloat in the shallower channels, coal-cargo totals on the lakes this year are down 8% from a year ago, the carriers' group said.

The domestic transport problem has led some coal customers to look overseas for supplies. Despite the promotion of coal as crucial to energy independence, imports have been rising since 2003. For example, Southern Co., the largest power supplier in the Southeast, brings in nearly 19% of its supply through East Coast ports from Colombia, Venezuela and Russia, said W. Paul Bowers, president of generation and energy marketing.

Coal's advocates say they are still optimistic about the future, because America has 200 years' worth of reserves -- and growing electricity needs. "If you don't want to use coal," asks Janet Gellici, executive director of the American Coal Council, "which 12 hours of the day don't you want electricity?"

Decisions up in the air

In any case, coal producers say, surging worldwide demand, especially from China and India, indicates there will be a healthy global market for their product. Indeed, that demand has helped drive up the cost of coal, which has been at record levels for much of 2007, which in turn drives up the potential cost of coal-fired energy.

The changing coal picture is making it hard for America's energy planners. Decisions about where power plants are located and when they are built can also determine where -- and whether -- new transmission corridors are built. And that could create spillover effects that hurt the availability of cleaner sources, like wind, that would use the same lines.

With power plant decisions up in the air, there's been a lag in seeking new transmission lines, said Suedeen Kelly, who sits on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. And because the transmission lines -- like power plants -- take years to move from the proposal stage to operations, "ideally, you should be starting to build these transmissions lines today," Kelly said.

It's tough for those who would build power plants to make billion-dollar commitments that will last for the next 50 years while trying to guess what's going to happen in Washington. The White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives are sharply divided over versions of global warming legislation that could provide answers.

The president's threat to veto the energy bill forced congressional Democrats to drop a requirement for utilities to meet targets for use of renewable energy, such as solar and wind power.

Bush has also signaled that he'll reject any global warming legislation that includes mandatory carbon limits. The proposals are controversial in Congress as well.

This could mean at least another year of jousting -- and another year of indecision.

For environmentalists, a pause in the rush to coal is a good thing.

"It's the silver lining" in an otherwise clouded energy picture, said Bruce Nilles, who heads the Sierra Club's National Coal Campaign.

More important is which energy sources utilities turn to in its place, he said.

"That's what this is all about: whether they stick with the old way or we transition to a new, clean way of making energy."

"Advertising is legalized lying."

2008-01-18T17:54:00.000-05:00

-- H.G. Wells, quoted in Michael Jackman, Crown's Book of Political Quotations, 1982, New York: Crown Publishing Inc., p. 2.

From today's Washington Post:

Coal Industry Plugs Into the Campaign
By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 18, 2008; D01

A group backed by the coal industry and its utility allies is waging a $35 million campaign in primary and caucus states to rally public support for coal-fired electricity and to fuel opposition to legislation that Congress is crafting to slow climate change.

The group, called Americans for Balanced Energy Choices, has spent $1.3 million on billboard, newspaper, television and radio ads in Iowa, Nevada and South Carolina.

One of its television ads shows a power cord being plugged into a lump of coal, which it calls "an American resource that will help us with vital energy security" and "the fuel that powers our way of life." The ads note that half of U.S. electricity comes from coal-fired plants.

The group has also deployed teams on the campaign trail; about 50 people, many of them paid, walked around as human billboards and handed out leaflets outside Tuesday's Democratic debate in Nevada with questions for voters to ask the candidates.

"In Iowa, there is a saying that you don't get to be president unless you go through Iowa. We'd like to say that you don't get to be president unless you understand how complicated this issue is," Joe Lucas, the group's executive director, said Wednesday night during a stopover en route from Nevada to South Carolina.

The group's message -- that coal-fired power plants can be clean, and that more of them are needed to meet the growing demand for electricity -- comes when opposition to new coal plants is mounting because they generate greenhouse gases. In Kansas, where a state agency rejected a permit for two proposed coal plants, opinion polls show that roughly two out of three people opposed the plants. That sentiment, plus soaring construction costs and uncertainty about federal climate change legislation, last year prompted U.S. companies to abandon or postpone plans to build dozens of new coal plants.

The coal mining industry is fighting back. It increased the budget of the National Mining Association, the industry's main lobbying group, by 20 percent this year, to $19.7 million. Last September, the industry also boosted the budget of Americans for Balanced Energy Choices more than fourfold. The roster of backers includes 28 companies and trade associations such as Peabody Energy, Arch Coal, Duke Energy, Southern Co. and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association.

The controversy over coal has been especially heated in Nevada, where environmental groups and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid, who represents the state, have opposed construction of three new coal-fired power plants. "They're all dirty," Reid said last fall. He urged utilities to rely on energy efficiency and solar and wind power. (Last year, according to a report issued yesterday by the American Wind Energy Association, wind made up 30 percent of all new electricity generating capacity.)

On Tuesday night, the issue came up during the debate among the three leading Democratic presidential candidates.
Former senator John Edwards said, "I believe we need a moratorium on the building of any more coal-fired power plants unless and until we have the ability to capture and sequester the carbon in the ground."

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) said, "I have said we should not be siting any more coal-powered plants unless they can have the most modern, clean technology. And I want big demonstration projects to figure out how we would capture and sequester carbon."

Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) did not commit himself on coal plants but said Americans had to make their buildings, lighting and appliances "more efficient."

"Yes, we do need to be more energy efficient," Lucas said. "But even as we become more efficient, we're plugging more things into the wall."

The ads being run by Americans for Balanced Energy Choices talk about "clean coal." New power plants are cleaner than they used to be because they must meet more stringent federal regulations limiting such pollutants as nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide. But climate change is linked to carbon dioxide emissions, which are not yet regulated; those emissions have dropped more modestly as plants have become more efficient.

The group's newspaper ads avoid that distinction. They say that today's carbon-fired plants are "70 percent cleaner based on regulated emissions per unit of energy produced." That does not refer to carbon dioxide.

New coal-plant technologies that might capture carbon dioxide and store, or sequester, it underground are expensive, experimental and not in commercial use. But Lucas says carbon capture and storage "is no longer a pipe dream. It's nearing a point where it's real." Many environmentalists argue that until that time, the United States should focus on renewable energy such as solar and wind. Coal advocates say those energy sources cannot be relied on 24 hours a day and, so far, the energy they produce cannot be easily stored.

ABEC's ads, produced by the same firm that made "what happens here stays here" ads to promote Las Vegas to tourists, also talk about "affordable" energy. The group says in a TV ad that the price of coal is one-third that of other fuels. But coal prices have risen, albeit not as much as oil. And environmentalists and economists argue that the price of coal does not include substantial environmental costs.

"We welcome a vigorous debate about our energy future and solving global warming. Unfortunately ABEC is spending millions of dollars on misinformation about our energy choices . . . instead of engaging in a real debate about the true costs of coal and clean energy alternatives," said Bruce Nilles, director of Sierra Club's national coal campaign.

Environmentalists are also worried that the ads aired by ABEC so far are just the beginning of what could be a much bigger offensive once Congress gets down to work on a climate change bill sponsored by Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John W. Warner (R-Va.). An ad targeting that bill is currently being shown on video monitors at the baggage carousels at Dulles International Airport.

In 1993, an ad campaign by the health-care industry featuring a fictional couple named Harry and Louise helped torpedo the Clinton administration's health-care proposal. Now, some supporters of the Lieberman-Warner bill fear that the coal industry may use a similar strategy to kill legislation aimed at slowing climate change by stressing potential consumer costs and not the societal benefits.

"Big coal may launch a 'Harry and Louise'-style disinformation campaign to sink global warming solutions in Congress," said Daniel J. Weiss, senior fellow and director of climate strategy for the Center for American Progress.

One of the coal industry group's radio ads hints at those themes. A woman asks: "How can we become less dependent on foreign resources? What fuels will keep power bills reasonable and be environmentally responsible?" A man responds, "We have many questions for our candidates, and coal has to be part of the discussion."

Lucas is working on that. Last year, he wrote letters that appeared in a dozen newspapers. On Tuesday, he appeared on Nevada public radio. On Wednesday, the group's views were quoted approvingly in an editorial in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "We're getting the message out," Lucas said.

Hemingway Weekly Observer says "NO"

2008-01-18T09:51:00.000-05:00

More and more folks are seeing through the smoke screen that is Santee Cooper's proposed coal burning facility in the Pee Dee.

The true costs are too high; the alternatives are too good to ignore.

This is a rough approximation of the Hemingway Weekly Observer's opinion, expressed wonderfully in print yesterday. We applaud this publication for joining journalists in Georgetown, Beaufort, and Hilton Head in courageously speaking out against this terrible investment for our state.

Much of the supposed benefit of the coal plant is illusionary
Thursday, Jan 17, 2008 - 10:33 AM Updated: 11:12 AM
By DAVID L. GREEN, Editor
The Weekly Observer, Hemingway, SC

While I am a strong supporter of bringing jobs and economic stability to the area, a lot of research and thoughtful reflection has led me to oppose the building of the coal plant.

I believe the true costs are being glossed over, and the benefits are exaggerated. One issue that has been ignored is that almost all of South Carolina’s energy dollars - about 18 billion dollars - are going out of state, which is a huge drain on our economy. Hydroelectric is only about 3% of our energy and that is reduced during drought years. The rest goes to purchase coal, gas and other fuels from out of state. The development of more energy sources from within the state, such as wind and solar power, would help us keep those dollars circulating at home.

An interview by Walter Edgar of the State Energy Officer, John Clark last weekend gave these figures and clarified many of the issues and problems with coal plants, as well as outlining some of the alternative energy sources.

Further, the real cost of the energy production from coal is not being paid by the generating agencies, or the users.

While technology has somewhat reduced the pollution, it has not removed it, and some pollutants like mercury are almost impossible to clean up. Mercury has already made it risky to eat fresh water fish from most of our state’s rivers. Acid rain degrades all our environment by weakening and killing plants, and by corroding metals and dissolving mortar and concrete. And carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere creates climate changes that could flood our coastline and create more superstorms.

Added to that are the thousands of acres of some of the most beautiful land in our nation being turned into a wasteland that is almost useless for anything. As a former resident of Kentucky, I’ve seen the barren piles of mine waste, the mountaintops that are chopped off, and the streams that are poisoned by strip mining. I’ve seen the people who are displaced, others whose lives are shortened by exposure to coal dust.

Whenever we are able to slough off the real costs of our actions to others or to a faceless public, it requires a strong moral sense to do the right thing.

Perhaps it would be easier to consider the moral import of our actions when we realize that, in effect, we are passing on the full costs of our cheap energy to our children and grandchildren.

To be truly moral, we must design our systems to be sustainable - if our descendants will be impoverished by what we do, it is wrong.

There is enough wind power along our coastline to produce, in an environmentally benign way, the equivalent of the entire electrical production of either of our state’s largest utilities, said Clark.

Clark noted that there are state and federal tax breaks, so that anyone who installs solar panels can have 55% of the installation cost paid for. Once installed, there is little further cost for many years.

Some critics say that if solar power needs subsidies to compete, it’s not a good idea, but what is not well known is that coal has had a lot of subsidies for many years.

Finally Clark noted the cost of two new coal plants would run about 2 billion dollars, with another 8-10 billion to buy fuel and maintain the plants for their life span. The same amount of money invested in energy savings through more efficient use, could more than match the production of these plants.

My own experience tends to confirm this. Replacing our outdated home heating and air system with an energy efficient unit halved the electric bill.

Over a year ago I discovered a brand-new type of light bulb that cuts energy use by about three quarters to produce the same amount of light. We’ve been replacing our home lights with these bulbs. The best part is that they last for many years - a big help when it comes to replacing bulbs in hard-to-get-at places. These bulbs were hardly known a year ago; now there is a move to federally mandate them.

Another help is the move toward “green” homes, which are engineered for energy efficiency. The cost of a new green building runs about 3% more, but the savings in energy over its life span runs 15% or more.

We need to think of the earth as an island. A study of island cultures showed that some people learned how to live within the resources that were available and these cultures lasted. Others did not plan their lives as well. When they used up their resources, they died out.

If we expect to continue our culture, we must learn to live within our means. One small part of this is NOT to build another coal plant. We must seek sustainable alternatives.

Moratorium in the Heartland

2008-01-17T10:11:00.001-05:00

A news roundup as the notion of a coal moratorium gains salience nationally and regionally:

Of course, this week, Democratic Candidate John Edwards announced that he would support a moratorium on new coal plants (even going so far as to oppose Santee Cooper's Pee Dee coal plant).

It is worth noting that the Black Hawk County Board of Health has also backed a coal moratorium in response to a proposal for a new coal plant in Waterloo, Iowa. The health board cited air pollution, most notably particulate matter, as their rationale for supporting the ban. Breathing particulate matter, or extremely fine soot, leads to asthma, bronchitis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, decreased lung function in children, heart attacks, inflammation of lung tissue, lung cancer, and premature deaths. They also cited carbon dioxide pollution, which drives global warming, and mercury as reasons for their decision.

In opting to voice their support for a coal moratorium in Iowa, the health board was following the recommendations of an independent, statewide study conducted at the University of Northern Iowa. There report is available here (part I) and here (part II).

South Carolinians interested in the facts should reqeust an independent, academic-quality study of Santee Cooper's proposal too.

Finally, Iowans have been responding to a poll on KWWL TV that poses the question: "Do you support a statewide ban on coal plants?" Click here and scroll down the page to view the poll and its results. They may surprise you.

Momentum

2008-01-16T18:10:00.000-05:00

From Reuters:

Coalitions geared to block U.S. coal development
Tue Jan 15, 2008 1:08pm EST

By Eileen O'Grady

HOUSTON, Jan 15 (Reuters) - Environmentally-minded coalitions are working overtime to block construction of all new coal-fired power plants in the United States after a "watershed" year in 2007 when plans for dozens of coal units were delayed or scrapped, said one environmentalist.

After years of limited success against power-plant construction, concerned groups were buoyed last year by action in California and Florida to restrict imports of power produced from coal. Coal generators release about 40 percent of U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide, a gas blamed for global warming.

Even more supportive was a Kansas ruling that denied permits to build new coal units by Sunflower Electric.

"Kansas was a major, major victory," said Bruce Nilles, director of the Sierra Club's national effort to block coal plants. "In 2008, we will really begin to act on stopping the majority of these coal plants."

State regulators in Montana Friday rejected a request from environmentalists to require a cooperative to install the same controls on CO2 - which is not regulated in the U.S. - as it plans to use on regulated pollutants at a new coal plant, but the fight is far from over, said Abigail Dillen, an attorney with Earthjustice.

Dillen said the group will appeal a decision by the Montana Board of Environmental Review in favor of the 250-megawatt Highwood plant proposed by Southern Montana Electric. Highwood is also being challenged in federal court over its long-term funding source, the U.S. Rural Utilities Service, Dillen said.

In Georgia, an environmental group said it would appeal last week's ruling to uphold issuance of an air permit for Dynegy's (DYN.N: Quote, Profile, Research) 1,200-MW Longleaf coal plant.

While opponents said developers did not thoroughly evaluate the plant's impact on air quality, Dynegy spokesman David Byford said its joint venture with LS Power builds generation based on the needs of utilities that will buy the power.

"We're going with the technology that we believe our customers are asking us for," said Byford.

In Arkansas, local landowners plan to appeal last month's regulatory ruling to grant a certificate of need to a unit of American Electric Power Co (AEP.N: Quote, Profile, Research) to build a 600-MW coal plant in Hempstead County. An appeal will be filed this month at the Arkansas Court of Appeals, said Little Rock attorney Chuck Nestrud.

In Kentucky, a coalition, including the Sierra Club, the National Parks Conservation Association and others, has notified the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that it may file a lawsuit after that agency failed to act on a petition opposing Peabody Energy's (BTU.N: Quote, Profile, Research) 1,500-MW Thoroughbred coal plant in Muhlenberg County.

While the strategy differs from state to state, the groundswell of opposition to coal projects grew steadily in 2007, said the Sierra Club's Nilles.

"We're seeing a lot of action on the state level on a scale we've never seen before that is really taking the market away from the coal industry by requiring a certain amount of generation to be from renewables," such as wind and solar power, Nilles said.

New coalitions combine traditional environmentalists, local landowners, religious groups and elected officials.

"It is now a broad cross-section of people who say we need urgent action on global warming," Nilles said. "The first thing we need to do is not dig the hole any deeper" with new coal plants.

Building new coal plants locks the country into a supply of carbon-intensive power and may hurt investment in renewable technology and efforts to increase efficient use of power which can slow the growth in demand for new generation, he said.

Utilities and the coal industry argue that new coal plants can operate with lower emissions than are needed to guarantee a reliable source of future power generation. (Editing by Marguerita Choy)

Now we know who Santee Cooper will not vote for

2008-01-15T13:32:00.000-05:00

SC: Edwards Calls for Ban on Coal Plants
By PAGE IVEY 01.14.08, 4:54 PM ET
PAWLEYS ISLAND, S.C. -

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards on Monday said a proposed coal-fired power plant shouldn't be built in northeastern South Carolina, continuing his call for a ban on those facilities.

"My view is that needs to stop," Edwards said of the $1 billion, 600-megawatt plant set to be built along the Pee Dee River in this early voting state. Santee Cooper officials are awaiting a final permit from state environmental regulators.

The utility's officials say they need the plant to meet energy demands, and can't wait for newer or cleaner energy to be developed, but have said the plant will be
environmentally responsible. They hope to have it running about 2012.

Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, told about 150 people at a campus of Coastal Carolina University that coal-fired plants are "taking a bad situation and
making it worse."

He also said he was opposed to new nuclear power plants and that the U.S. has no credibility in global warming discussions. "We are the worst polluter on the planet," Edwards said.

He took a swipe at rival Hillary Rodham Clinton, saying the New York senator takes more money from power industry interests than any other presidential candidate.

"We have to have a president willing to stand up to the oil and gas industry," Edwards said.

Despite poll numbers that show him consistently in third place in South Carolina, Edwards has contended he can win over voters when people hear his message.

"That was the reason we extended the tour here because we were getting such a positive response," Edwards told reporters after the town hall meeting.

A CBS (nyse: CBS - news - people ) News poll last month showed Edwards with just 13 percent of the vote compared with Barack Obama's 35 percent and Clinton's 34 percent. Edwards, a South Carolina native, won the 2004 Democratic primary win here and hopes to repeat that victory Jan. 26.

His focus on reducing pollution won over at least one undecided voter Monday.

"I liked what he had to say, particularly about environmental issues,"said Suzer Sachs, 59, of Myrtle Beach, who came to the town hall meeting at a friend's invitation. "He addressed them more seriously than other candidates."

Nationwide

2008-01-15T13:20:00.000-05:00

From today's Post and Courier, and AP article on the national coal fight (with reference to our very own contest, here in SC).

Fight against coal plants heating up

Environmentalists see more success battling powerful coal interests, but the need for this reliable fuel unlikely to disappear soon
By MATTHEW BROWN
Associated Press
Tuesday, January 15, 2008

BILLINGS, Mont.

In federal and state courtrooms across the country, environmental groups are putting coal-fueled power plants on trial in a bid to slow the industry's biggest construction boom in decades.

At least four dozen coal plants are being contested in 29 states, according to a recent Associated Press tally. The targeted utilities include giants like Peabody Energy and American Electric Power down to small rural cooperatives. It also includes a proposed coal-fired plant that state-owned Santee Cooper wants to build in Florence County, S.C.

From lawsuits and administrative appeals against the companies, to lobbying pressure on federal and state regulators, the coordinated offensive against coal is emerging as a pivotal front in the debate over global warming.

"Our goal is to oppose these projects at each and every stage, from zoning and air and water permits to their mining permits and new coal railroads," said Bruce Nilles, a Sierra Club attorney who directs the group's national coal campaign. "They know they don't have an answer to global warming, so they're fighting for their life."

Industry representatives say the environmentalists' actions threaten to undermine the country's fragile power grid, setting the stage for a future of high-priced electricity and uncontrollable blackouts.

"These projects won't be denied, but they can be delayed by those who oppose any new energy projects," said Vic Svec, vice president of the mining and power company Peabody Energy.

While observers say forecasts of power grid doom are exaggerated, the importance of coal — one of the country's cheapest and most abundant fuels — is undeniable.

Coal plants provide slightly more than 50 percent of U.S. electricity. They also are the largest domestic source of carbon dioxide, emitting 2 billion tons annually, about a third of the country's total.

Environmental groups cite 59 canceled, delayed or blocked plants as evidence they are turning back the "coal rush." That stacks up against 22 new plants now under construction in 14 states — the most in more than two decades.

Mining companies, utilities and coal-state politicians promote coal in the name of national security, as an alternative to foreign fuels. With hundreds of years of reserves still in the ground, they're also pushing coal-to-diesel plants as a way to sharply increase domestic production.

The outcome of the fight over coal could determine the nation's greenhouse gas emissions for years to come, said Gregory Nemet, assistant professor of public affairs at the University of Wisconsin.

"It's pretty much irreversible," Nemet said. "Once a coal plant is built, it will last 50 years or so."

But in opposing coal projects across the board, environmentalists risk hobbling more advanced coal plants that could rein in at least some of those emissions, Nemet said. He added that rising demand for electricity means more power "has to come from somewhere."

"There's too much pressure — in terms of energy independence and the inexpensiveness of that resource — to not use that coal," Nemet said.

One of the latest challenges to a utility came in the heart of coal country — Montana, which boasts the largest coal reserves in the nation.

On Friday, a state panel refused to rescind an air-quality permit it had granted for a plant proposed for the Great Falls area by Southern Montana Electric, despite concerns about the plant's carbon dioxide emissions. The 250-megawatt plant is projected to emit the equivalent of 2.8 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, as much as a half-million vehicles.

The Montana Environmental Information Center, which had asked the panel to review the permit, vowed to appeal the ruling.

Nilles said the Sierra Club spent about $1 million on such efforts in 2007 and hopes to ratchet that figure up to $10 million this year.

Meanwhile, coal interests are pouring even more into a promotional campaign launched by the industry group Americans for Balanced Energy Choices. It spent $15 million last year and expects to more than double that to $35 million in 2008, said the group's director, Joe Lucas.

Funding for the group comes from coal mining and utility companies such as Peabody and railroads that depend on coal shipments for a large share of their revenues.

Peabody's Svec acknowledged a rush to build new plants, but denied the goal was to beat any of at least seven bills pending before Congress to restrict carbon dioxide emissions — a charge leveled by some environmentalists.

Rather, he said, the construction boom is driven by projections that the country will fall into a power deficit within the next decade if new plants are not built.

Industry attorney Jeffrey Holmstead said that could lead to a future of rolling blackouts as the economy expands and electricity consumption increases. Holmstead was in charge of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's air program during the first five years of the current Bush administration.

The power deficit cited by industry officials is based on projections from the North American Electric Reliability Corp. David Nevius, NERC vice president, said his group is "neutral" on what kind of plants should be built to meet rising demand.

"We're not saying the lights will go out. We're just saying additional resources are needed," Nevius said. "We don't say coal over gas over wind over solar."

Utilities currently burn more than 1 billion tons of coal annually in more than 600 plants. Over the next two decades, the Bush administration projects coal's share of electricity generation will increase to almost 60 percent.

That projection held steady in recent months even as courts and regulators turned back, delayed or asked for changes to plants in at least nine states.

Other projects in Utah, Texas, Wyoming, Florida and several other states have been abandoned or shelved.

Some were canceled over global warming concerns. Utilities backed off others after their price tags climbed over $1 billion due to rising costs for materials and skilled labor.

Environmental opposition to coal plants was galvanized by a U.S. Supreme Court decision in April that said carbon dioxide is a pollutant open to regulation.

The case, Massachusetts vs. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, involved vehicle emissions. But environmentalists aim to use the decision as a fulcrum to leverage regulators to take a harder line on greenhouse gases in several emerging power plant disputes.

The result could serve as an early barometer of the reach of the Supreme Court ruling.

More tests of the two sides' arguments are certain. Industry groups say at least 15 coal-fired power projects are nearing the end of the approval process and could soon start construction.

Coal , Global Warming, and how SC can Help

2008-01-14T16:54:00.000-05:00

From today's Grist a forceful opinion piece by Ed Mazaria. Mazaria fronts Architecture 2030, an outfit known for its powerful sea-level rise images and aggressive climate change messaging.

There is a silver-bullet solution to global warming

The dialogue between this country's youth and key decision-makers during the important Focus the Nation (FTN) event on January 31st has the potential to become diluted and confused. If it does, another opportunity to move a segment of the country towards seriously addressing climate change will have been wasted.

Shotgun Approach Falls Short

Although every personal effort at reducing energy use and greenhouse-gas emissions is laudable and helps change the way we think about global warming, taking the shotgun approach to emissions reductions is simply not enough. Time is extremely short, and we must act immediately and boldly if we are to avert a climate crisis.

The Silver Bullet

Contrary to what many are saying, there is a "silver bullet" solution to global warming, and it is time we, as a nation, faced up to it.

By calling for "no more coal," we not only immediately cap GHG emissions, but we also meet the reductions needed to avert dangerous climate change. Why? Because coal is the only fossil fuel plentiful and supposedly cheap enough to push the planet to 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere -- the threshold set by the scientific community beyond which we will trigger dangerous tipping points.

What does "no more coal" mean? It means first a U.S. and then a global moratorium on the construction of any new conventional, GHG-emitting coal plants, and the gradual phasing out of existing plants by 2050. This results in an immediate cap on GHG emissions while allowing time to retrain coal workers for other jobs.

Oil and gas consumption will not get us to 450 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere. We are now reaching the peak in global oil and, soon, natural gas production. As oil and gas peak, production and consumption will decline, prices will increase, and alternative fuels will become more economically attractive. After they peak, oil and gas depletion rates will stretch out over many years. To quote NASA's Dr. James Hansen from his recent personal testimony before the Iowa Utilities Board:

It is clear that Congress does not "get it." They stand ready to set a goal of 60% reductions, 80%, 90%! Horse manure. Those are meaningless numbers, serving nothing but their campaign purposes. Before you cast a vote for a politician, ask whether they will support actions that can actually solve the problem.

The most important question, by far, is the moratorium on new coal-fired power plants in the United States and Europe, the places that have created the climate problem. Until we take that action, we have no basis for a successful discussion with China, India, and other developing countries.

Coal will determine whether we continue to increase climate change or slow the human impact. Increased fossil fuel CO2 in the air today, compared to the pre-industrial atmosphere, is due 50% to coal, 35% to oil, and 15% to gas. As oil resources peak, coal will determine future CO2 levels."

If we do not stop coal, we do not make it. It's that simple.

The beauty of a "silver bullet" solution to the climate crisis is that it joins us together around a single, powerful goal, concentrating our efforts and magnifying our effectiveness in solving the problem1.

Face It Webcast on January 30-31, 2008

To get this message out, and to show how we can meet our energy needs without coal, the nonprofit research organization Architecture 2030 will be hosting a nationwide webcast, called Face It: There is a Solution to Global Warming. To help kick off and input the Focus the Nation dialogue, the Face It webcast will be broadcast from Architecture 2030's website, www.architecture2030.org. It can be viewed any time after 9:00 a.m. EST on January 30, making it easy to substitute the half-hour webcast for classes or watch together in an office meeting.

During the webcast, Architecture 2030 will unveil two competitions about the solution to global warming, with $20,000 in prize money. Students will be asked to create something (you'll have to tune in to the webcast to learn what) that will reverberate throughout their campus and society at large.

The Face It webcast will build on the information provided during Architecture 2030's highly successful webcast, The 2010 Imperative Global Emergency Teach-in. The Teach-in, which broadcast live in February 2007, reached a quarter of a million students, design professionals, and government officials worldwide (in 47 countries).

Georgetown Flunks "Energy Campus"

2008-01-14T11:26:00.001-05:00

Late last Fall, the Georgetown City Council voted 5-1 to decline a resolution supporting Santee Cooper's proposed coal-burner on the Great Pee Dee. Georgetown is downstream of the plant and is justifiably concerned about the environmental impact of the project, including its effect on the water quality and availability of water from the river.

Today's Georgetown Times included the following editorial on the cynically-titled "Pee Dee Energy Campus" (that is, the coal plant):

Cost of mercury pollution

Sherod Cooper, 7, caught a 7.5-pound largemouth bass near Socastee in the Intracoastal Waterway a few weeks ago. It must have been a big thrill to reel in such a catch, and his family likely enjoyed a fish dinner soon afterward.

He should have thrown the big bass back. Fish caught in mercury polluted South Carolina waters are unsafe to eat. Largemouth bass and catfish are so contaminated in some rivers that DHEC says people should not eat a single bite.

Such toxins in our region’s waters have moved DHEC to post warning signs at coastal boat landings for people not to eat fish they catch.

Yet, South Carolina is displaying a split personality over this harmful pollution.

DHEC has begun an intensive review of mercury pollution that may include a first-ever study into whether the poisonous metal is harming South Carolinians.

Santee Cooper, the state’s own electric company, is proposing to build a $1 billion coal-fired power plant near Pamplico and Kingsburg south of Florence along the Little Pee Dee River. Though it’s name is a futuristic-sounding Energy Campus, opponents say the new plant will emit a projected 138 pounds of mercury per year.

Santee Cooper has been running a series of newspaper ads hinting that the state could go dark without the new coal plant. The real fear is that the cost of power will rise.

Santee Cooper directs readers to its website where it promises to use the best available environmental control technology and generate power in an environmentally responsible way. It plans to generate 40 percent (more than four times present levels) of its energy from non-greenhouse gas emitting resources, biomass fuels, efficiency and conservation by 2020.

Grace Gifford of the Five Rivers Meeting, Religious Society of Friends, says the new Pee Dee plant does not include Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle or carbon sequestration technologies and does not represent state-of-the-art.

Mercury is a neurotoxin linked to human illnesses like birth defects, nerve disorders and heart failure. Mercury becomes toxic methyl mercury in our rivers.

One pound of mercury is enough to contaminate 500,000 fish. People and particularly children eating contaminated fish are at risk. According to a recent article in the Charleston Post and Courier, there are mercury “hot spots” that form a “Mercury Triangle” of contaminated fish around the proposed coal plant. All three rivers near the proposed site, the Little Pee Dee, the Lynches and the Great Pee Dee are contaminated with mercury according to DHEC.

“Don’t worry; be happy,” is no way think in a state that is among the leaders in infant mortality until some meaningful data is collected on the effects of accumulated mercury in the mothers of those dead babies.

Mercury is only one of the pollutants associated with burning coal. Of the 14 major industries in Florence County, seven emit between 6,900 and 4,271,543 pounds of pollutants annually, according to a toxic releases inventory on the website scorecard.org.

Close to 600 people, many of them in the Kingsburg and Pamplico areas, have signed a petition opposing the plant. Their voices deserve to be heard before a plant is built that will extend coal-burning through this century.

Until the effects of mercury pollution on people are understood more fully, the state should not approve a project that will put more into our air and water. The human cost is too high.

Mercury Saga Continues (and Continues...?) in South Carolina

2008-01-11T14:42:00.000-05:00

DHEC refuses to test people for mercury poisoning, but hints at an interest at doing an epidemiological study -- were the funds to do so available. Meanwhile, its gone ahead and issued a draft permit for a coal plant that would dump over 100 pound of mercury into the atmosphere. Are they doing enough to protect us?

See the latest in an article from the Post and Courier below:

Mercury pollution goes under DHEC microscope
By Tony Bartelme

The Post and Courier

Friday, January 11, 2008

COLUMBIA — Amid rising concerns over mercury, the state has begun an intensive review of mercury pollution that may include a first-ever study into whether the poisonous metal is harming South Carolinians, the state's top health official said Thursday.

Recent news reports and the debate over a proposed coal-fired power plant in the Pee Dee sparked the agency's new push, said Earl Hunter, commissioner of the state Department of Health and Environmental Control.

"Given that attention, I thought it was time to take a comprehensive look at its prevalence in the environment and its impact on our citizens," Hunter said.

The agency's move comes in the wake of a recent Post and Courier series that identified mercury hot spots in South

Carolina. Last year, the newspaper collected hair samples from people who ate fish from these hot spots and found some had dangerously high levels of mercury in their bodies.

The series also exposed how coal-fired power plants, cement factories and incinerators, many around Charleston, annually emit thousands of pounds of mercury into the air. It showed how DHEC tests more than 1,800 fish every year but had never checked to see whether mercury was harming people.

The series prompted protests in Florence over Santee Cooper's plan to build a coal-fired power plant in the Mercury Triangle, an area bounded by the Great Pee Dee, Little Pee Dee and Lynches rivers that has some of the state's most mercury-contaminated fish. It also prompted a group of physicians to write Hunter in November and urge DHEC to begin testing people immediately for mercury.

During DHEC's monthly board meeting, Hunter acknowledged the physicians' letters but said it would be difficult to set up a large-scale system to test people.

He said a better approach is to do a targeted epidemiological study. His agency also has begun looking at better ways to warn the public of mercury's dangers. By March, for instance, DHEC will begin posting warning signs at boat landings.

Conservation groups applauded DHEC's move.

For years, "there's been a lack of epidemiological studies for pollutants like mercury and port pollution that are having huge impacts on people," said Nancy Vinson of the Coastal Conservation League. "This is great news."

Tiny amounts of mercury can be dangerous. The equivalent of one drop can contaminate fish in a 20-acre lake. The substance builds up in people's tissues when they eat certain species of fish, especially predators such as largemouth bass and catfish. At high-enough levels, it can cause nerve damage, heart disorders and other health problems.

Last year, South Carolina issued warnings for people to avoid or limit consumption of fish in more than 1,700 miles of rivers, mostly in the coastal plain.

Hunter said the agency has worked hard to warn people about mercury, distributing roughly 50,000 pamphlets a year explaining which fish are safe to eat and which ones people should avoid. The agency also worked with the auto industry and Nucor, a major mercury polluter, to encourage auto salvage companies to remove mercury switches from junk cars before they're sent to smelters.

But he said a comprehensive program developed in Louisiana could serve as a model for what might be done here. That state has done extensive studies on fish, people and the sources of mercury pollution. He added that the Louisiana state legislature funded that program, and that his agency so far has no such funding.

Reach Tony Bartelme at 937-5554 or tbartelme@postandcourier.com.

Do you love mountains? (Santee Cooper, ABEC don't)

2008-01-10T09:35:00.000-05:00

I received this letter from the group iLoveMountains.org yesterday. They're a coalition of 7 non profit groups representing five states across Appalachia. They work to protect the southern mountains from coal mining practices known as "mountain top removal" -- a practice that would be considered barbaric if it were practiced, say in South American, but is apparently legal in the good ole USA. Santee Cooper's proposed coal plant will received its coal from Appalachia as a result of mountain top removal mining. More on that topic in future posts:

Dear Rusty,

If you've been watching cable news, you've probably seen the television ads from the coal industry that tout coal as a "clean energy" that provides "America's power."

Why is the coal industry suddenly spending so much money on the airwaves, trying to convince Americans that coal is good for them?

They're doing so because as the public learns the dirty secrets behind so-called "clean" coal" -- from the more than 450 mountains destroyed by mountaintop removal mining to coal's role in contributing to global warming -- they're doubting the coal industry's contention that expanding the use of coal is worth the high costs to our environment.

That's why the coal industry is going on the offense with a full-scale PR blitz featuring media buys and fake "astroturf campaigns" in the early presidential primary states.

For example, in South Carolina -- a state that relies upon mountaintop removal coal to power its coal plants -- an industry front group called Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC) has launched TV and print advertising alongside a new website to influence the debate over coal during this month's presidential primary:

[The ABEC website features an] array of young people, many of whom appear to be under 10 years of age, enlighten visitors about the happy, hunky-dory world of coal. Alicia sets down her book bag to explain how coal and environmentalism go hand in hand, while young Sarah tells how we have more energy in the form of coal than the Middle East has in oil. "I'm doing my homework," she says. "You do yours too."

The website is part of a multimillion dollar campaign by ABEC to promote American coal interests. They estimate they'll spend around $200,000 in S.C. during this election cycle, and they're focusing on newspaper and television advertisements..... ABEC also appears to have a dedicated staff of bloggers and public relations folks — within hours of a recent post about coal on City Paper blogs, their representatives had left comments in favor of the industry.

ABEC doesn't deny that they're funded by power, mining, and shipping industry interests....

But across the country, people like you are standing up to prevent the greenwashing of the coal industry and to get the truth out about the high cost of coal to our nation's environment and the mountains we love.

And in 2007, you made incredible gains:

-More than 25,000 Americans have pledged to end mountaintop removal mining (MTR) on iLoveMountains.org
-An incredible 122 cosponsors in Congress are now supporting the Clean Water Protection Act , which would sharply curtail mountaintop removal coal mining
-More than ten thousand letters have been sent to Congress and the Office of Surface Mining, urging Congress to act to stop MTR and demanding that the Bush administration leave alone rules that protect our mountains and streams from the destructive waste of MTR coal mining.

Your efforts are part of a nationwide movement that is putting pressure on the coal industry to clean up its act on multiple fronts. For example:

-More than 50 proposed coal plants have been defeated in recent years, with more than 60 proposed coal plants being fought around the country
-CARMA (Carbon Monitoring for Action) have unveiled an online campaign that reveals the carbon emissions of more than 50,000 power plants and 4,000 power companies in every country on Earth.
-Our own My Connection campaign is raising awareness of how power companies across the United States are helping to fund mountaintop removal coal mining through the purchase of dirty coal.

These efforts are just the beginning. In 2008, we have a plan to ensure that the debate over coal and mountaintop removal coal mining remains at center stage.

The coal industry may be gearing up for a fight -- but so are we.

In the coming weeks, I'll be writing more about what we have in store for the coming year. But you can help grow the movement today by forwarding this email to five family members or friends. Ask them to join you in pledging to stop mountaintop removal coal mining in 2008. They can join by clicking here:

http://www.ilovemountains.org/take_action/

Thank you for everything you do.

Mary Anne Hitt
iLoveMountains.org

Fun w/ Coal?

2008-01-10T06:38:00.000-05:00

Since unscrupulous groups like Americans for Balanced Energy choices are spending tens of thousands of dollars on advertisements to convince us that coal is the best thing since sliced bread (and not one of the dirtiest things on the planet), and since our state public service authority, Santee Cooper is spending tens of thousands of ratepayers’ dollars on their website, on media consultants, and other efforts to make us think that their “Pee Dee Energy Campus” has nothing to do with coal (when, in fact, it is nothing BUT a coal plant), we thought we’d post a couple slick coal advertisements too:

Here's another one from Kansas, where a coal plant was recently blocked by that state's equivalent of SC DHEC.

(Readers, create & send us your own coal ad's and we'll post 'em on this blog.)

Something New Under the Sun

2008-01-08T13:20:00.000-05:00

Renewable energy will never be able to power a significant portion of South Caroliana's electricity needs because it is too unreliable. The power will go out when the sun isn't shining or the (offshore) wind isn't blowing. Right?

Wrong.

This is just an engineering challenge to be met by SMART engineers. German university researchers recently completed a pilot study indicating that their nation could feasibly generate 100% of its energy needs from renewable energy.

And they made a video about it (in English)! If the Germans can do it, why can't we?

New coal power plant won't help Pee Dee's economy

2008-01-08T09:30:00.000-05:00

And Santee Cooper's customers could get stuck with high bills

Published: Saturday, January 5, 2008 - 2:00 am
The Greenville News

By Nancy Cave

Economic development and jobs are needed for the people of the Pee Dee. Unfortunately, a new coal plant will not make good on promises to deliver prosperity to this region.

Recently, Santee Cooper touted the release of an economic study of the utility's proposed billion-dollar coal plant. Conducted by Francis Marion University economists, the report highlighted the claim that the coal-burner would create more than 9,000 jobs.

Is this claim true?

Santee Cooper's own assessment of the project, completed a little more than a year ago, stated that construction of the plant will create only about 1,000 temporary construction jobs, at least 10 percent of which are expected to be sourced outside of the Pee Dee region. The utility estimated only 100 full-time jobs, at least 20 percent of which will be sourced outside of the Pee Dee.

Why the discrepancy in the job numbers? Surprisingly, the answer comes from Santee Cooper's own press release, in which it acknowledges collapsing the timetable into one year; the result multiplies the reported impacts by as much as a factor of five.

Suppose you started a new business this year and you hired five people. If over the next five years you kept these same five people on your staff and didn't hire any new employees, how many people have you employed? If you are honest, you would say five. Based on the method used in the economic study on Santee Cooper, on the other hand, you could insist you have employed 25 people!

Why must Santee Cooper resort to this kind of accounting to justify the construction of its proposed coal plant?

The truth is that this is not a project that will revitalize a region. For a billion-dollar investment, we ought to do better than 80 long-term jobs for the Pee Dee.

There are at least three reasons why Santee Cooper's coal plant will not deliver significant economic benefits to the Pee Dee or the state.

First, a true accounting of the coal plant would show that its costs outweigh its benefits. Second, rather than increasing the state's prosperity, this coal plant would merely transfer wealth across regions; and third, by building the plant, South Carolina misses the opportunity to invest in projects that would do more for the wealth of the Pee Dee and the state.

Any consideration of the benefits of the proposed coal plant is only half the story. Costs must be considered too. As it turns out, the costs of building a coal plant are high. According to a study conducted by the government of Ontario, when the adverse health and environmental impacts of coal are considered, a coal plant's cost can increase by as much as five times, making nearly any other means of generating electricity a better idea.

Another cost that should not be ignored is the cost of carbon. Polluters do not have to pay for their carbon dioxide emissions today, but most observers agree that the federal government will require them to very soon. When that happens, it could increase the cost of Santee Cooper's coal plant by anywhere from $20 million to $40 million annually, according to the utility's own estimates.

Guess who will get stuck with these steep bills? The answer is the residents of the Pee Dee and Santee Cooper's own electricity customers. Residents of the Pee Dee will pay in the form of higher health-care bills and reduced land values, for example, while Santee Cooper's customers will face rising bills.

Indeed, instead of generating economic benefits, a new coal plant would really just move money from the pockets of some South Carolinians to others. Excluding the cost of carbon, double-digit rate increases have been projected in other states where coal is being considered. This state needs real economic development, not a transfer of wealth.

Finally, committing to a coal plant skips over alternatives that could both meet our need for power and provide greater economic growth. For instance, a recent study conducted by the Renewable Energy Policy Project, in partnership with United Steelworkers, indicated that a 10-year effort to generate electricity from renewable resources could create more than 20,000 long-term manufacturing jobs in our state, nearly 2,000 of which would be sourced in the Pee Dee.

So let's not pretend a coal plant is a tool for economic development -- it's a dirty way of generating electricity, and not much else.

Coal's Bad Year

2008-01-08T09:26:00.000-05:00

As we start a new year, it always good to look back on the year that has passed us by – and it’s been a bad year for coal!

Here’s hoping 2008 is even worse and that Santee Cooper abandons its ill-considered plan to move forward with a massive coal-burning facility.

Meanwhile, take a look at the list of proposed coal plants that were stopped last year (from grist.org):

• Sunflower Electric Power Corporation (Kansas) - proposed 1,400 megawatt (MW) coal plant denied air permit by Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) due to concerns about global warming. The Director of KDHE stated that it would be "irresponsible" to ignore global warming concerns when evaluating whether to build a new plant. October 2007.

• Southwestern Power Group’s Bowie Power Station (Arizona) - proposed 600 MW IGCC coal plant canceled by company in favor of pursuing a natural gas fired plant, in part because of market economics and regulatory uncertainty. September 2007.

• Florida Power & Light’s Glades Power Plant (Florida) - proposed 1,960 MW power plant rejected by Florida Public Service Commission due, in part, to the uncertainty over the cost of future carbon regulations. July 2007.

• American Electric Power and Oklahoma Gas & Electric’s Red Rock Generating Station (Oklahoma) - proposed 950 MW plant rejected by the Oklahoma Corporation Commission for failure to evaluate alternatives such as natural gas. September 2007.

• Tenaska’s Sallisaw Electric Generating Plant (Oklahoma) - company cancelled its plans to build a 660-880 MW plant on the grounds that it is not economically viable. July 2007.

• Peabody Coal Company’s Thoroughbred Generating Station (Kentucky) - air permit for 1500 MW plant reversed by Franklin Circuit Court due to inadequate air pollution control analysis. August 2007.

• Seminole Electric Power Cooperative’s Seminole 3 Generating Station (Florida) - proposed 750 MW plant rejected by Florida Department of Environmental Protection on the grounds that the plant would not minimize environmental and public health impacts, and would not serve the public interest. August 2007.

• Great Northern Power Development’s South Heart Power Project (North Dakota) - applicant withdrew air permit application for 500 MW plant. August 2007.

• Florida Municipal Power Agency’s Taylor Energy Center (Florida) - proposed 800 MW plant withdrawn by applicant shortly after Florida PSC denied application for Glades Power Plant. July 2007.

• TXU Corporation (Texas) (March 2007) - as part of a buyout of TXU Corporation by private equity firms, TXU announced that it would abandon plans for eight out of eleven proposed plants in Texas. July 2007.

• Duke Energy’s Cliffside Steam Station Modernization (North Carolina) - proposal for one of two 800 MW coal-fired plants rejected by North Carolina Utilities Commission, due to increase in estimated construction costs. March 2007.

• Westar Energy’s Coal Plant Project (Kansas) - company deferred plan for new 600 MW plant because of significant increase in estimated construction costs. December 2006.14 Westar later launched a 300 MW wind power project, Kansas’ largest. Wind project is expected to be producing energy by the end of 2008, with possibility of an additional 200 MW available by year end 2010. October 2007.

• Idaho Power (Idaho) - company canceled plans produce 250 MW from coal-fired plants by 2013; adopted new plans to develop a natural gas turbine in Idaho by 2012, and to add 101 MW of wind power and 45.5 MW of geothermal power by 2011. November 2007.

• Avista Utilities (Washington) - company plans to sell more electricity generated by natural gas plants and wind turbines, and not invest in new coal power plants. Avista’s twenty-year plan, as submitted to the state government, includes the sale of some 275 MW available from a natural-gas power plant in Lancaster, WA. September 2007.

• Xcel Energy (Colorado) - company agreed to obtain 775 MW of wind power to supplement power from 750 MW coal plant it is building near Pueblo, CO. July 2007.

• Xcel Energy (Colorado) - company plans to roughly double its renewable generation capacity by 2015 and close two coal-burning plants in the state, the Araphoe Generating Station in Denver and the Cameo Generating Station east of Grand Junction.

DHEC to Consider Human Testing for Mercury

2008-01-07T09:30:00.000-05:00

From yesterday's edition of The State

State health officials will discuss testing mercury levels in people as concerns about growing levels of the pollutant in state waters has led to warning signs at boat landings in South Carolina.

The state Department of Health and Environmental Control has warned people not to eat certain species of fish found in parts of South Carolina’s rivers, mostly along the coast, because of contamination with mercury, a byproduct of coal-fired power plants, factories and natural sources.

The neurotoxin that has been linked to birth defects, heart failure and other health problems ends up in rivers, lakes and streams where it builds up in fish over time. Mercury is particularly dangerous for expectant mothers and young children.

A recent series of stories by The (Charleston) Post and Courier identified people who eat fish from several South Carolina rivers who also have high levels of mercury in their bodies. The newspaper ran tests on the people through hair samples.

Read more in the Post and Courier and the Myrtle Beach Sun News. If DHEC is coming around to the idea that mercury pollution is so bad in South Carolina that people need testing, maybe its not such a good idea to add a bunch more mercury to our lives by building a coal plant...

Resolutions

2008-01-07T08:59:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago we acquainted you with the coal fight going on in Wise County, Virginia. Folks there are fighting a 585 megawatt coal plant tooth and nail, just like folks are here in South Carolina.

As the saying goes, “the truth will out.” Now the Bristol Herald Courier, a local newspaper in the region, is on to it. Initially assured by utility company propaganda about jobs and economic benefits, the paper supported the plant. But a little research was enough to convince it that what the Wise Energy for Virginia folks were saying all along was the real truth: coal is bad for health, bad for the environment, bad for economic development. Now they oppose the plants construction. Read about it here.

Now the same might be happening in South Carolina. On January 1st, a time for new year’s resolutions, the Myrtle Beach Sun News, formerly a supporter of Santee Cooper’s proposed coal plant, printed this:

We … are considering whether to continue our early support of the Santee Cooper coal-fired power plants proposed for the banks of the Pee Dee River in Florence County. Support for atmospheric carbon reduction makes no sense unless you're willing to act locally on the problem - especially when other alternatives may ensure local ratepayers a power supply adequate to their lifestyles.

Just like Dominion Power's proposed coal-burner up in Wise County, Virginia, the Pee Dee coal plant is not a boon to the Pee Dee. We’ve been pointed that out for a while now; and we’re resolved to continue doing so in the new year. Now it looks like others are coming along. The truth will out.

Friends II

2007-12-27T22:34:00.000-05:00

Another week, another group of Southerners fighting the good fight against the national push to saddle folks with dirty coal plants.

This time we return to Georgia, where drought is forcing the state to become more efficient. But I don't have to tell you that the right hand is not always aware of what the left is up to. In this case, http://www.friendsofthechattahoochee.org/">Friends of the Chattahoochee, Environment Georgia, GreenLaw and the Georgia Sierra Club are trying to stop the Georgia Environmental Protection Division from issuing its final permit for the "Longleaf Energy Station," a friendly-sounding euphemism for two profoundly dirty 600 MW coal units planned for southwest Georgia, near the Florida border and the Great Okefenokee swamp . A summary of recent developments in this fight is available from an 11/30/07 article in the Albany Herald.

From the No New Coal for Georgia website:

The project will consume 20 million gallons of water from the Chattahoochee River annually, emit tons of toxic pollutants such as mercury, nitrogen oxice and sulfur into our air, and only employ 100-150 people in the county.

Its the same everywhere, isn't it? Utilities that think they're doing the right thing by building out-dated plants in economically depressed areas, while ignoring new technologies, alternative techniques, and changing times. They're not doing the right thing, and groups like No New Coal for Georgia are working hard to point that out for the benefit of the Peach State.

A Santee Cooper Christmas

2007-12-25T07:07:00.000-05:00

Does a lump of coal in your stocking sound good to you?

2007-12-21T17:54:00.000-05:00

American's for Balanced Energy Choices continue their merry meddling in South Carolina, reportedly going so far as to mail SC press contacts a stocking full of coal-shaped chocolates. This shameless (and frankly, gross) stunt suggests ABEC is hoping "you are what you eat," but fortunately, the integrity of the SC media is thus far intact, and there is indication that they are becoming wise to ABEC's dirty (and factually impoverished) hustle. After all, is this where you want your utility bill dollars going? You might tell, Duke Energy, for example, that you don't. Or you might ask Santee Cooper what their connection is to ABEC. Witness the below piece from the SC Statehouse report. I'm faithful that the vast majority of South Carolinians still don't want to find coal in their stocking on Christmas Day (much less in Florence County), either the chocolate-flavored or mercury-spiked varieties.

Oxymoronic?
Use of term "clean coal" is new war of words

Bill Davis

DEC. 14, 2007 -- Conservationists across the state are treating a "clean coal" advertising campaign being waged in South Carolina with the same disdain comedian George Carlin has for the terms "jumbo shrimp" and "military intelligence."

Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC), an out-of-state lobbying group representing a host of power companies from around the country, has signed up to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in South Carolina on a public relations campaign to recycle coal's image between now and the presidential primaries.

Part of ABEC's mission is to get South Carolinians, as well as residents of other states where its messages are airing and showing up in print ads, to think of coal as an inexpensive substitute to foreign oil. They also want to replace visions of brown-lunged coal miners with those of modern plants producing energy with very little toxins escaping into the environment.

But has the use of the term "clean coal" become a war of words -- a linguistic dodge like a federal "clear skies" initiative that would allow more pollutants into the air than is currently allowed?

Industry says coal much cleaner these days

Not according to ABEC executive director Joe Lucas.

"Since the 1970s, coal plants have become between 70 and 80 percent cleaner per unit of energy produced," he told Statehouse Report. "And that has come despite a tripling of coal use in this country during that same time."

Lucas said new coal processing technologies have already been retrofitted to existing plants across the country, and new, future technologies can be retrofitted to a proposed plant in Florence that Santee Cooper is going through the permitting process for.

It's the combination of the amount of extra pollution that a new Florence plant would produce combined with "disingenuous" language that has concerned Ann Timberlake, executive director of the Conservation Voters of South Carolina.

"This is just out-of-state dirty coal lobbyists trying to sell South Carolina a false bill of goods," said Timberlake. "There is no coal in South Carolina; we don't get to see mountaintops removed so companies can get at the coal."

Timberlake said many of Lucas' arguments, like most mercury in the atmosphere is naturally produced, are merely "distractions" from bigger issues.

Those issues are, according to Timberlake and other conservation groups, increased health costs from a new coal plant. She added that conservation and efficiency programs provide cheaper and quicker solutions to the state's growing energy needs, and with federal "carbon taxation" in the offing, building more coal-burning plants was an unwise business choice.

Conservationists say plant would be least clean type

Dana Beach, executive director of the South Carolina Coastal Conservation League, agreed, but went on to attack the actual technology the proposed plant would employ.

He explained there are two basic ways to introduce coal into the "furnace" of a coal-powered energy plant. In a gasification plant, the dirty black rock is cooked down and processed into a liquid form and fed into the fires. This is considered the cleanest way to burn coal because it allows impurities and other potentially lethal toxins to be more easily removed.

The second way is the tried-and-true method of busting coal up into small pieces and stoking the fires with the aggregate. Pulverized coal is tougher to purify and many plants rely on additional technologies to clean the smoke generated.

Beach pointed out the latter was the greater of two evils, in that pulverized coal, the method slated for the proposed Florence plant, is the least clean. He went on to say that within the pulverized coal category, there were two sets of cleaning technologies -- super-clean and ultra-clean.

The Florence plant being permitted would be a "super-clean" plant, not an ultra-clean one. While much cleaner than past technologies, even ABEC's Lucas admitted that super-clean plants produces many pounds of mercury and large amounts of sulfur dioxide.

"To say coal is clean would be, at best, naïve," Beach said.

Santee Cooper defends proposed plant

Santee Cooper spokesperson Laura Varn defended her company's decision by pointing out that a 1-percent increase in pollution reduction was "a big deal" and that the new Florence plant would be 2.3 percent cleaner.

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Varn said thanks to changes in state health and environmental regulations, the proposed plant would produce 69 pounds of mercury a year, a 46-pound drop over what had been allowed. Considering a single drop of mercury is said to be able to contaminate a 20-acre lake, that is also a big deal, she said.

Varn reiterated an argument she's made before in defending the proposed plant: that efficiency and conservation programs cannot supply the state's future energy needs and that the other "cleaner" coal technologies, while tempting, are too expensive and have proven unreliable.

In this war of words, Sen. Phil Leventis (R-Sumter), fresh from stumping in Iowa for pro-carbon tax Democratic presidential candidate Christopher Dodd, has got some pretty good ones to share:

"If coal companies and energy companies spent as much money on cleaner and alternative energy sources as they do on advertising, we could all breath easier."

ABEC's Lucas argued that "there is no perfect energy source" as he talked with Statehouse Report by phone while standing outside in Nevada. With the sun beating down. From above. For free.

Crystal ball: "Clean coal" is an oxymoron. It's dirty. Florence, smack dab in the middle of what some call the "Mercury Triangle, may get a "super" clean pulverized coal plant. And that would mean it would get more methyl-mercury, the really bad stuff that gets into fish and eventually people, will turn up in South Carolina. Until alternative fuel technologies and research gets real funding, like House Speaker Bobby Harrell (R-Charleston) has fought for, South Carolina's environment will continue to be threatened.

Bill Davis can be reached at: billdavis@statehousereport.com.

Coal Plant Taints S.C. Fish

2007-12-20T11:30:00.000-05:00

Below is an editorial by South Carolina Wildlife Federation Executive Director, Ben Gregg. It appeared in the Tuesday edition of the Myrtle Beach Sun News.

Not only do fishermen like to fish, most like to eat what they catch. For many S.C. families, fish are a staple of their diets. But mercury pollution in South Carolina's rivers and streams is making it dangerous to eat these fish. What gives?

When you consider that a recent U.S. Fish and Wildlife study found that more than 800,000 people in South Carolina fish, it seems decision-makers should be addressing this danger.

Along many of South Carolina's waterways - on some 1,747 miles of state rivers and streams - the stories are much the same: Either you shouldn't eat the fish or you shouldn't eat them regularly.

Why? Mercury, one of the most toxic elements on Earth.

Thanks to recent scrutiny from concerned citizens and the media, a dirty little secret about state waters is out: Mercury pollution is bad in South Carolina - so bad, in fact, that the black water rivers and streams in the Pee Dee and Lowcountry are a national hot spot for high levels of mercury in the environment.

Some mercury pollution is naturally occurring. But scientists say the amount of mercury now being spewed into the air is three times what it was 200 years ago. The main culprit is pollution from manmade sources. At the top of that list are coal-burning power plants, which are responsible for 40 percent of mercury emissions in the United States.

Once toxic mercury gets into the air, it is absorbed in precipitation and then deposited back into rivers and lakes. Micro-organisms then convert mercury into methyl mercury, which becomes part of the food chain as the micro-organisms are consumed: tiny fish eat tiny organisms; bigger fish eat the tiny fish; then the biggest fish, such as largemouth bass, eat the bigger fish. Mercury concentrations increase at every step in the chain, until they end up in the biggest fishers of all - me and you.

Studies have linked methyl mercury to low birth weight, small head circumference, severe mental retardation, cerebral palsy, deafness, blindness and seizures. Adults exposed to methyl mercury experience loss of motor coordination, loss of or decreased sensation, impaired speech and hearing, and mental disturbances. They are also at higher risk for cardiovascular disease and death.

From its existing dirty coal plants, Santee Cooper already emits about a third of all the mercury pollution in South Carolina. Now this state-owned power company is proposing to build yet another old-style dirty coal plant right near the confluence of the Lynches, the Little and the Great Pee Dee Rivers.

This vulnerable area has been labeled as the "Mercury Triangle." Toxin levels in this region already violate federal law and are some of the highest in the state. People fish these waters for subsistence. Just one pound of methyl mercury is enough to contaminate 500,000 pounds of fish tissue. What impact will this plant have on communities that rely on fishing for subsistence? We don't know. Neither the Department of Health and Environmental Control nor Santee Cooper has addressed these concerns.

Instead, DHEC has hastily issued a draft air permit allowing Santee Cooper to emit 138 pounds of toxic mercury into the air every year. This plant will be operational for 50 years. What will be the cumulative impact of these mercury emissions over the next 50 years? Nobody knows.

It's time to remind decision-makers, including state senators, House members and agency officials, about a few things. Our 800,000 S.C. anglers are putting over $1 billion annually into the state's economy, and a considerable part of that money is spent in strapped rural areas. It's also a good time to remember that our air, our water, our wildlife and our fish are owned by the state's citizens, not by elected officials, not by Santee Cooper and not by DHEC.

Fishermen want to be able to catch - and eat - largemouth bass, catfish and a host of other species in South Carolina's waters. But until we stand up and say it's time to clean up our rivers - including not licensing dirty coal-fired power plants - South Carolina's anglers will spend more time dreaming about the good ol' days of fishing than living them.

The writer is executive director of the S.C. Wildlife Federation. Many of the federation's 8,000 members fish in the waters of South Carolina.

A Thirst for Efficiency in Georgia

2007-12-20T07:24:00.000-05:00

Georgia, the state famous for questioning the fact of global warming in an era when the majority of states (including our own) are striving to act to prevent and/or cope with it, is moving forward on energy efficiency.

South Carolina should pay attention. The reason is drought -- a reason our state certainly shares with our southern neighbor.

A recent opinion in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution spelled it out:

Flicking a light switch or turning on the bathroom faucet are daily routines that most Georgians perform without a second thought. But this year's drought is making clear the inextricable relationship between water usage and energy consumption, and why it's so important.

Georgia, like every other state, gets most of its electricity from coal-fired and nuclear power plants that require massive amounts of water to prevent them from overheating.

Most of those plants are owned and operated by Southern Company, an Atlanta-based holding company. In addition to Georgia Power, which is the state's largest utility, Southern Company has subsidiaries in Florida and Alabama, where state officials have been feuding with Gov. Sonny Perdue over water.

The company's power plants draw water — averaging about 3.3 billion gallons a day in 2000 — from Georgia rivers including the Chattahoochee, which is also the principal source of drinking water for millions of homes and businesses. The total amount of water withdrawn for electricity generation comprises more than half of the surface and ground water usage for the entire state.

Utility officials contend they've been responsible stewards of the state's liquid resources. In older plants, they say, water is returned directly to the Chattahoochee and elsewhere, while newer plants are designed to use less water throughout the process.

But the facts are somewhat different. Regardless of the technology used, a considerable amount of water is lost either through evaporation or leakage. In both cases, the water returned to the watershed by power plants isn't always available when and where it's needed most.

Southern Company, like every other business in the state, should be put on notice that wasting water will be met with stiff fines. However, smugly pointing the finger at Southern Company or other water guzzlers won't fix the problem.

While praying for rain to refill our parched reservoirs, the more effective and realistic approach is for state officials to get serious about making Georgia more energy efficient, which will also have the salutary effect of reducing our overall water consumption.

Because of our hot and humid climate, Georgia has historically had a higher per capita energy use than other parts of the country. The hotter it gets, the more energy we use — and the more water we waste.

To break that unsustainable cycle in the short term, our leaders could mandate installation of high-efficiency appliances and lights — in addition to low-flow plumbing fixtures — in all new construction.

In the years and decades ahead, Georgia should also take the lead in developing renewable sources of energy, such as solar power, that are less dependent on already overburdened water supplies.

Georgia may not be able to conserve its way out of the current water crisis. But ignoring the connection between saving water and saving energy is no longer an option.

— Lyle V. Harris, for the editorial board

It really doesn't need to be pointed out, but South Carolina is also experiencing a terrible drought and South Carolina also gets its its electricity from water-guzzling coal and nuclear plants.

Now one of those utilities, who like the Southern Company, claims to be a good steward of the State's resources, will be adding to the problem if their proposed coal plant project is allowed to go forward. Will Santee Cooper use the water of the Great Pee River, where it plans to build another huge coal plant, responsibly? Not if its behavior with respect to pending legislation that would require permits for large water withdrawls in South Carolina is any indication. Santee Cooper has successfully lobbied for an exemption from this legislative proposal that will allow them to withdraw water without restriction.

Like the author of this editorial opines, our state should be focusing on energy efficiency and renewables -- not coal plants. You've heard this before on this blog, that's because efficiency and renewables are better for our health, better for our environment, better for our economy than coal. But now theres another reason: its better for our state's stressed water supplies.