coal
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>this is a tag; see also coal2</b></font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">http://ecowatch.com/2015/08/11/carl-pope-clean-power-plan/</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><h1 id="pf-title" style="margin: 1em 0px; clear: both; direction: ltr; page-break-inside: avoid !important; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Untold Story Behind the Clean Power Plan</font></h1><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span id="pf_author" style="display: block; margin: -1em 0px 1em; float: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Carl Pope</font></span></p><div id="pf-content" style="clear: both; line-height: 19.0400009155273px; direction: ltr; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="pf-content" data-twttr-id="twttr-sandbox-0"><div class="eco_subscribe hide-for-medium-down"><div class="eco_subscribe_cell eco_subscribe_box"><h2 style="margin: 1em 0px 0.67em; page-break-inside: avoid !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></h2><div class="gf_browser_ie gform_wrapper" id="gform_wrapper_21"><p class="" style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;" /></div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;" /></div></div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://ecowatch.com/author/carl-pope/" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; word-wrap: break-word;"><span class="image-container alignleft size-full wp-image-366383" /></a>The media missed the real story on the <a href="http://ecowatch.com/2015/08/04/clean-power-plan-carbon-free-economy/" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Obama Clean Power Plan</a> (CPP). Most outlets, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/03/us/politics/obama-policy-could-force-robust-climate-discussion-from-2016-candidates.html?r=0" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; word-wrap: break-word;"><span class="text-node">like the </span><em><span class="text-node">New York Times</span></em><span class="text-node">,</span></a> hail it as a ground-breaking major new initiative, which “could lead to the closing of hundreds of polluting coal-fired power plants, freeze future construction of such plants and lead to an explosion in production of wind and <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/energy-environment/solar-energy/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="More articles about solar power." target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; word-wrap: break-word;">solar energy</a>,” while Republicans blasted it as a huge example of Presidential hubris —precisely because it would accomplish those goals.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;" /><div id="div-gpt-ad-1433512244421-0" class="unit"><div id="google_ads_iframe/33540210/EW_ARTICLE_INJECT_0container"><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Political insiders like <a href="http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2015/08/why-obamas-epic-climate-plan-isnt-such-a-big-deal-000183" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Politico</a> and <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/08/02/obama_climate_change_plan_the_clean_power_plan_is_supposed_to_be_bold_but.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Slate</a> claim it isn’t such a big deal. And at first blush the numbers seem to support the skeptics.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The new rule will require reductions in carbon pollution from the power sector by 770 million tons—32 percent against a 2005 baseline. But by the end of 2014 utilities had already cleaned up 350 million tons, and <a href="http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec12_9.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; word-wrap: break-word;">emissions were cut by another 15 percent in the first four months of 2015</a>. As of last week power companies had also announced the future shut-down of additional plants which should lead to another 120 million tons—for a pre-CPP rule total of more than 470 out of the 770 million<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">. So most of the cuts required have already taken place or been announced. Even Kentucky, the state whose Senior Sen. Mitch McConnell, seems willing to restart the Civil War over the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations, <a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/news/26052015/kentucky-may-accidentally-comply-epa-clean-power-plan-coal" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; word-wrap: break-word;">was already retiring</a> or had retired 14 coal boilers—and these retirements will provide most of the emission cuts required under the CPP. What’s the big deal?</span></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s true that the announcement of the final version of the CPP is more in the nature of a mopping up operation than the initial invasion of Normandy. But armies engage in mopping up operations only after they secure victory, and the CPP did not spring like Venus from the brow of President Obama last week—<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">there’s a long history here. The CPP is the keystone of one of the most dramatic and fundamental economic restructurings in history.</span></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">To understand what’s happened, look back to the summer of 2008. Coal was generating more than half of U.S. electricity, Peabody stock was headed towards $84.05/share, up two-fold since its 2001 IPO. Export coal from Australia was selling for close to $200/ton on the back of Chinese demand. The U.S. utilities had proposed to add 150 new coal fired power plants to the 500 coal boilers the country already relied upon.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">President George Bush <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/07/business/energy-environment/coal-industry-wobbles-as-market-forces-slug-away.html?r=0" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; word-wrap: break-word;">had declared</a> “clean coal” the key to American “energy independence” and had designated the 150 new coal plants as the key ingredient in the nation’s energy strategy.</font></p><div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Now look. As the <em>New York Times </em><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/07/business/energy-environment/coal-industry-wobbles-as-market-forces-slug-away.html?r=0" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; word-wrap: break-word;">headlined this week</a>, “King Coal, Long Besieged, Is Deposed by the Market.”</span> <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In April, coal<a href="http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_1_01" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; word-wrap: break-word;">generated only 30 percent</a> of U.S. electricity (less than gas). By August two of the nation’s biggest coal companies, Alpha and Murray had declared bankruptcy. Peabody stock closed at $1.10, and rumors of bankruptcy circulated widely. Indeed for the past three years one U.S. coal company announced for bankruptcy every month.</span></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><a href="http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=coal-australian&months=60" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Asian coal prices</a> had fallen to $62.86, and one sixth of Australia’s coal fields were in the red, with <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-31/the-600-million-mine-sold-for-a-dollar-underscores-ruin-of-coal" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; word-wrap: break-word;">the Isaac Plains mine</a> fire-selling for $1 after being valued at $624 million only three years ago. In the U.S., not only had 90 percent of those 150 new coal plants being proposed in 2008 been cancelled, but 200 of the 500 legacy plants in operating in 2008 had either closed down or had their shuttering dates announced. Brand new German coal generation facilities <a href="http://www.renewablesinternational.net/new-german-coal-plant-worth-one-euro/150/537/89142/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; word-wrap: break-word;">were being sold for one hundred Euros.</a></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So in seven years the fuel that launched the industrial revolution went from the height of its magnificence to a tottering finale. How did it happen, and what is the role of the Clean Power Plant rule in the saga?</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; line-height: 25.2000007629395px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Coal’s customers dug its grave and sealed its fate in 1990. Faced with revisions to the Clean Air Act designed to clean up acid rain, coal dependent electric utilities faced a choice. They could agree to modernize</b> their aging coal burners by installing scrubbers and other pollution control equipment, thus removing not only the sulfur which caused acid rain but also a variety of other toxic pollutants like mercury and particulates. Or they could cling to the clean up exemption they had crafted for coal plants in the last revision of the Clean Air Act in 1977, and do the bare minimum clean up required to reduce acidification problems by shifting from local, but higher sulfur Appalachian coal to remote, but lower sulfur Wyoming coal stocks.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; line-height: 25.2000007629395px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">West Virginia Sen. Robert <font color="#ff0000">Byrd</font></b><font color="#ff0000"> </font>fought desperately to require scrubbers, battling to save the economic future of the higher sulfur Northern Appalachian coal fields, joined by his allies in the labor movement. Environmentalists divided; the Sierra Club supported Byrd’s plan, which would have significantly improved air quality, but the Environmental Defense Fund and Natural Resource Defense Council sided with Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell who wanted to compromise with the utilities and allow them to get by with fuel switching. Mitchell won on the Senate floor by one vote. Utilities switched from Appalachian to Wyoming Coal, sulfur emissions were significantly reduced at what turned out to be a bargain cost.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; line-height: 25.2000007629395px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But America’s coal fleet, once again, avoided modernization.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; line-height: 25.2000007629395px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As the fleet aged, and concerns over both pollution and <a href="http://ecowatch.com/climate-change-news/" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">climate</a> grew, pressures mounted for clean up. George W. Bush, when he ran for President in 2000, <a href="http://ecowatch.com/2014/07/29/obama-clean-power-plant-rule/" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">promised to clean up pollution</a> from these “grandfathered” coal power plants, including carbon dioxide</span>. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Once in office, his EPA Administration, Christy Todd Whitman prepared to fulfill the pledge. But in the first salvo of Big Carbon’s climate stonewall, <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB984011368437778756" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">the right wing of the Republican Party made it</a> clear to Bush that action on climate pollution meant a serious renomination battle for a second term. Bush caved, allowed Vice President Cheney to put new coal plants at the center of his energy strategy, as coal and its customers doubled down on the past.</span></font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; line-height: 25.2000007629395px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But if coal would not find the future, the future would find coal. Citizen resistance first flared up against the air pollution impacts of proposed new coal plants, and then <a href="http://patch.com/georgia/cartersville/report-plant-bowen-10th-most-toxic" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.2s linear; background: transparent;">mercury pollution</a> became a hot button issue with fishing groups. Alliances were forged with beleaguered but deep-rooted movements in the coal fields against mountaintop removal mining.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; line-height: 25.2000007629395px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A new president, Barack Obama, took on the climate challenge. Thwarted by coal and oil interests in their efforts to move national climate legislation, environmentalists did persuade a majority of the states to carve out guaranteed markets for wind and solar. As <a href="http://ecowatch.com/business/renewables/" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">renewables</a> scaled, their costs began to plummet. And beginning in 2005 new supplies of tight natural gas from shale fields brought prices down to the point where almost every state had some combination of wind, solar and gas which was cheaper than the proposed new coal plants<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">. <b>The Sierra Club aided by support from coal’s natural gas competitors,</b> scaled up its <a href="http://content.sierraclub.org/coal/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Beyond Coal</a> campaign and began to knock of proposed new power plants with stunning speed.</span></font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; line-height: 25.2000007629395px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As Obama’s first EPA Administrator, <b>Lisa Jackson,</b> took on George Bush’s unfulfilled promise to clean up coal plants, beginning with mercury, particulates and sulfur,</span>markets concluded that new coal made no sense. Only a dozen of the 150 modern coal burners that were to have been the black rock’s future were built; all turned out to be, in one way or another, white elephants—bankrupting their developers, triggering crippling rate increases, <a href="http://midwestenergynews.com/2014/05/13/prospects-turning-around-for-embattled-spiritwood-coal-plant/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">or being shuttered immediately</a> on completion.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; line-height: 25.2000007629395px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The window to modernize coal power, it turned out, had closed. The one vote lobbying victory of 1990 over the Byrd Amendment had been an unnoticed death knell for coal. Producers were left utterly dependent selling to the 500 legacy boilers, half more than 50 years old, most lacking modern pollution controls, all facing EPA’s new health requirements. And behind everything loomed Barack Obama’s determination to fulfill “W”s campaign promise—to clean up all the pollution from power plants, including carbon.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; line-height: 25.2000007629395px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Bloomberg </b>Philanthropies, impressed by the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal success at blocking the new generation of coal plants, and appalled by the death and health costs of the outmoded legacy fleet, stepped in with a $50 million contribution to enable the Sierra Club and its allies to ensure the retirement of the first one-third of coal generators; and an <a href="http://ecowatch.com/2015/04/08/bloomberg-philanthropies-sierra-club/" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">additional $30 million</a>to secure the retirement of a full half the U.S. coal fleet by 2017.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; line-height: 25.2000007629395px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As utilities and their regulators looked at the costs of modernizing 50 year old boilers, the likelihood that President Obama would implement a clean up mandate for carbon pollution as well, and the increasingly cheap option of using wind, solar or natural gas, the option of modernizing no longer seemed appealing. In New Mexico, for example<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">, PNM, the local utility,<a href="http://www.newenergyeconomy.org/pnm_responds_to_criticism_with_new_ad_on_coal_replacement_plan" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">is seeking to spend hundreds of millions of dollars</a> to install pollution control equipment on the San Juan Power Plant even though solar power is available at a much lower cost, </span>a decision a hearing examiner determined it “is not fair, just and reasonable and in the public interest.”<em style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> </em>The primary cities consuming the power <a href="http://ecowatch.com/2015/07/28/burn-coal-or-switch-renewables/" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">oppose retrofitting the San Juan Plant</a> because it will require huge increases in consumer rates.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; line-height: 25.2000007629395px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Beyond Coal began racking up retirements—more than 200 in just four years. But the knowledge that the Clean Power Plant rule was coming framed and influenced many of these 200 decisions—just as the knowledge that communities would not tolerate being poisoned, that ratepayers would not accept being ripped-off and that wind and solar were just getting cheaper and cheaper informed these decisions, and the fact that so many power plants had already closed for health reasons made it easier for the president to be so ambitious.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; line-height: 25.2000007629395px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That is the essence of the future—it changes everything. You can’t pick on one moment and one marker, and call it “the cause.” Once the coal industry and its customers decided to maximize their short term profits, they had, unknowingly, sealed their long term fate.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; line-height: 25.2000007629395px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So, looking back, am I glad that George Mitchell beat Robert Byrd in 1990 by one vote that the Sierra Club (I was then leading) lost?</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; line-height: 25.2000007629395px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Not really. Because the <b>defeat of the Byrd amendment changed a lot of the American political landscape. Without it, Al Gore would, almost certainly, have won the election of 2000—and other pathways to a better future would have opened.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; line-height: 25.2000007629395px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But there is a lesson in that defeat, and this summer’s collapse of King Coal.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; line-height: 25.2000007629395px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The future happens. We are better off if we embrace it.</font></p></div></div></div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></p></div></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">epa will regulate</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">coates</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">America’s Second-Biggest Form Of Waste Is About To Be Federally Regulated For The First Time</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The EPA has confirmed that on Friday, it will release its first-ever regulations on the second-largest form of waste generated in the United States: coal ash.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">EPA spokesperson Rachel Dietz told ThinkProgress that the new rule will be likely be released in the early afternoon. When it is finalized, the rule is expected to include requirements on how coal ash should be disposed, how existing coal ash pits should be cleaned up, whether coal ash should be designated as a hazardous material, and who should be responsible for enforcing the rules.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Coal ash is a byproduct of coal burning, and often contains chemicals like arsenic, chromium, mercury, and lead. After producing it, coal companies sometimes dispose of it by dumping it into ditches, and filling those ditches with water. Those ditches, called coal ash ponds or lagoons, are often unlined, meaning the coal ash comes in direct contact with the environment. Right now, the Sierra Club estimates there are more than 1,400 coal ash sites in the United States, most of which are located in close proximity to lakes and rivers due to the vast quantity of water needed to burn coal for power....</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><a href="http://www.globalpossibilities.org/americas-second-biggest-form-of-waste-is-about-to-be-federally-regulated-for-the-first-time/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.globalpossibilities.org/americas-second-biggest-form-of-waste-is-about-to-be-federally-regulated-for-the-first-time/</font></a></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">==</font></div>