by Zachary Rybarczyk

For almost 50 years, the Moapa Piaute Band has been living near one of the dirtiest coal plants in the nation, getting exposed to dangerous levels of noxious gases, coal ash, and water pollution. However, they haven’t seen the economic benefits they were promised – or any of the electricity.

In the 60’s, when the project developer needed support from the local Piautes to build the Reid Gardner power plant, a contract was drafted promising to hire members of the tribe. But today, no Piautes are employed at the plant, even while asthma rates, thyroid problems and cancer rates increase, according to the tribe.

A local television station, KLAS recently investigated the dispute:

The agreement only obligates the company to “try” to find spots for Paiutes. Some have worked at the plant over the years, yet today, no one from the reservation is employed by NV Energy.

“We apply for a lot of jobs down there but they deny us, and all that. Too high class to hire a bunch of Indians, you know,” said Paiute elder Elliot Bushead. “They don’t hire no Indians.”

Now, the plant owner NV Energy wants to extend the life of the aging facility. And the Moapa Piutes are partnering with environmental organizations to prevent the company from continuing operation, saying that the tribe is a victim of “environmental racism.”

“I think it is absolutely environmental racism. Communities of color are always targeted for these kinds of projects,” said Vinny Spotleson with the Sierra Club. “There’s a reason it’s not in Summerlin or Green Valley and it’s in Moapa.”

“It’s an old dinosaur. Coal is dirty, it’s always going to be dirty. We need to do things better here in southern Nevada,” said Jane Feldman with the Sierra Club.

The Sierra Club says that the Reid Garnder plant is the perfect illustration of the true cost of coal – particularly for economically distressed communities that often bear the burden of hosting dirty energy facilities.

In 2008, the Bureau of Land Management ordered Reid Gardner to install over $90 million in pollution controls in order to reduce dangerous emissions.  However, these improvements have not controlled the stench of evaporation ponds and blowing coal ash that still plague the Reservation.

The plant’s impact on the local water supply is another major issue. The Reid Gardner facility sucks up 3 billion gallons of water annually, and seven of the 10 water quality monitoring wells have found  “significant levels for heavy metals [and] various toxic substances.”

Watch the video below to see how this struggle is unfolding:

Stephen Lacey contributed to this story.

Hundreds of thousands of people have stated their opposition to a proposed big expansion of a coal strip mine in Utah that would harm Bryce Canyon National Park and the recreation economy associated with the southern Utah attraction that has enjoyed federal protection for nearly 90 years.

Known for its slot canyons and ghostly red rock spires called hoodoos, Bryce is threatened by a plan to greatly expand the nearby existing Coal Hollow Mine from 635 acres to 3,576 acres, with a majority of the expansion taking place on public lands. If completed, the mine would then include areas just 10 miles from Bryce.

The National Park Service, Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have all weighed in with serious concerns about the mine proposal, as has the Hopi Tribe, which estimates up to 74 archaeological sites could be harmed or ruined. Park Service objections are particularly strong, and that agency has recommended the project not go forward, saying:

The park has determined that [the mine expansion would have] adverse effects on surrounding comunities, the tourism industry of southern Utah, air quality standards, dark skies conservation, and regional wildlife

In a letter last week, Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), the ranking minority member of the House Committee on Natural Resources, urged Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to “consider the signal this decision sends regarding the future of our parks, forests, monuments, and wildlife areas and reject the call for expanding coal mining.”

Repeating concerns raised by other federal agencies about air quality, the park’s well-known night skies, natural quiet and wetlands and wildlife, Markey also reminded Salazar of the Obama administration’s commitment to clean energy development on public lands:

Proceeding with the expansion of coal mining in a sensitive area so close to a national park calls in question our dedication to promoting renewable energy development both on and off public lands

More than 210,000 comments have been been submitted to public land managers in opposition to the strip mine expansion.

Interior’s Bureau of Land Management has issued a draft environmental analysis of the coal mine, with a proposed action that would allow the expansion to go forward.

As it has in regard to several new coal mining leases in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, the BLM has closed its eyes to the Utah mine’s impact on climate change, contending that existing climate prediction models cannot estimate potential climate change impacts from one mine.

In November, two climate scientists called that dodge flawed and scientifically indefensible.

The super PAC Restore Our Future has fundraised $30 million to Romney to the White House. The super PAC spent $800,000 on pro-Romney ads, but it has flooded his Republican opponents with attack ads totaling 17 million. Restore Our Future’s war chest comes from under 200 donors, 85 percent of whom had already donated the maximum amount to the Romney campaign.

Romney’s campaign has raised at least $500,000 from the oil and gas industry, according to Open Secrets. But his super PAC allows special interests another chance to exert their influence. While many of the super PAC’s donors come from the financial sector, coal, oil, and gas have also flocked to Restore Our Future:

Coal mining:
– Oxbow Carbon:$750,000

– Oxbow President Bill Koch: $250,000

– Consol Energy: $150,000

Oil and Gas:
– Ballard Exploration: $25,000

– Bassoe Offshore President Jonathan Fairbanks: $25,000

– Murphy Wade of Murphy Oil Corporation: $15,000

– Joseph Grigg of American Energy Operations: $5,000

– Total for oil, gas, and coal: $1,220,000

In total, coal, oil, and gas companies contributed at least $1.2 million to Restore Our Future’s $18 million haul in the last half of 2011. The coal company Oxbow Carbon, alone, contributed $1 million, including a $250,000 donation from billionaire Oxbow CEO Bill Koch — the brother of oil billionaires Charles and David of Koch Industries.

With Perry out of the race, Romney has received more money from mining and oil than any other presidential candidate. The pro-Perry super PAC “Make Us Great Again” took in an outstanding $1.3 million from oil companies and executives during the last six months of his run.

Although Restore Our Future has no “formal” ties to the candidate, the donations reflect Romney’s right pivot on energy and climate concerns. The Massachusetts governor that once supported regulations on coal pollution, has since questioned whether carbon is even dangerous. In addition to becoming a climate denier, he now blasts government support for cleaner energy — despite creating a state green fund as governor.

You can expect Romney to sound suspiciously like his rich polluting backers, as dirty money continues to flood Restore Our Future and Romney’s campaign stash.

Dr. Michael Mann

On the webpage, CSM/SEAPAC accuses Mann of “manipulating scientific data to align with his extreme political views on global warming”:

On February 9th, the Penn State Forum Speaker’s Series is featuring Professor Michael Mann in a speech regarding global warming. This is the same professor who is at the center of the ‘Climategate’ controversy for allegedly manipulating scientific data to align with his extreme political views on global warming. Join us in calling on the administrators of Penn State to end its support of Michael Mann and his radical agenda.

The suggested text for the letter to editor says Mann is “conspiring with his left-wing cronies to intimidate and silence those who would dare to question his intentions,” tarring Mann with “questionable ethics” and “extreme political activism.”

Michael Mann, one of the most most respected scientists in the field of paleoclimatology, has been the victim of a long-running harassment and intimidation campaign by right-wing ideologues and conspiracy theorists, including political and legal threats by Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. After hackers stole emails from a climate unit in Great Britain, climate deniers renewed their attacks on Mann, forcing several academic inquiries, all of which debunked the slanderous charges.

SEAPAC is a wing of the Pittsburgh-based astroturf group Common Sense Movement, which is running the “I Am Coal” campaign. Contributors include James Clifford Forrest III, president of coal company Rosebud Mining, David Young, president of the Bituminous Coal Operators’ Association, and the top executives of Swanson Industries, a West Virginia mining equipment company.

Read SEAPAC’s suggested letter to the editor for its harrassment campaign against Mann:

On February 9th, the Penn State Forum Speaker’s Series is featuring Professor Michael Mann in a speech regarding global warming. Let’s remember that this is the same Michael Mann who is at the center of the Climategate controversy for allegedly manipulating scientific data to align with his extreme political views on global warming.

Mann’s own emails, which have now become public, show him admitting that the science on global warming is still in question and, even worse, conspiring with his left-wing cronies to intimidate and silence those who would dare to question his intentions.

At a time when Penn State should be doing everything possible to regain its status as a bastion of truth and integrity, the last thing they should be doing is supporting someone of such questionable ethics and motives with our tax dollars.

There is no place for this brand of extreme political activism, disguised as academics, at Penn State now or in the future. University leadership should be ashamed for continuing to provide Mann with such high visibility – at our expense.

The dirtiest and oldest coal plants are being shut down in greater numbers because of

• cheap natural gas
• rising coal prices
• strengthening environmental standards
• more utilities embracing energy efficiency and demand response
• improving cost-competitiveness of solar and wind and other renewables

At the same time, a strong movement against coal is preventing new facilities from going forward.

The latest round of closures started last week when FirstEnergy said it would close six plants in its portfolio totaling 2,689 MW of capacity. The plants are getting very old, making them some of the dirtiest in the country. The average age of the six units is 55 years, with the oldest facility built in 1947. Five out of six of the plants had been relegated to reserve plants, FirstEnergy spokesman Mark Durbin told Politico:

“The bottom line,” Durbin said, “is the plants haven’t run all that much in the last three years,” and the company doesn’t “think they’re going to be running much” in the years to come, so it “didn’t make business sense” to keep them open. Now that they know the plants have no future, “we couldn’t justify spending any additional money.”

Rather than clean up the plants to meet new standards for mercury and other air pollutants, FirstEnergy made the business decision to close the facilities.

And this week, the power company Dominion made an equally big announcement, saying it would close one of the oldest coal plants in America — an 80-year old facility (constructed in the 20′s and updated in the 60′s) worth 515 MW of capacity. Dominion spokesman Dan Genest told the Indianapolis Star than the price of gas and improved mercury standards didn’t make it feasible to keep such an old plant running:

“When we looked at the projected cost of installing environmental controls to continue to operate State Line, it did not make economic sense to do so because of expected market prices, primarily driven by the low cost of natural gas,” he said.

The plant’s current owner, Richmond, Va.-based Dominion Resources Services, warned Wall Street last year that the plant with its 1950s and 1960s technology would be just too expensive to keep open if the Obama Administration pushed tougher air pollution standards.

These “new” air pollution rules established by the EPA have actually been in the works for the last decade — and they are far from the only reason causing plant closures. According to the utility industry’s advocacy organization, the Edison Electric Institute, “retirements [for old coal power plants] are taking place for a variety of reasons, including plant age, fuel price drop from low natural gas prices, and decreased demand, among other reasons.”

While a variety of forces are causing a phase out of old coal plants across the country, it is getting extraordinarily difficult — if not almost impossible — to build new coal in America. A combination of rising fuel costs, less expensive alternatives, and increasing legal challenges from environmental groups is putting “coal on the ropes,” according to Bruce Nilles, senior director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign.

This confluence of factors came together in Kansas yesterday, when a U.S. district judge ruled that an 895-MW coal plant planned for the state should not go forward without more environmental and health impact assessments. Environmental groups challenged the expansion project because the U.S. Department of Agriculture had skipped such a study before allowing the project to move forward. The environmental law firm Earth Justice responded to the decision:

In his decision, Judge Emmett Sullivan emphasized that the expansion will need additional approval from the federal government as a result of changes to the project from earlier configurations. He enjoined the government from issuing any additional approvals pending a full “environmental impact statement” (“EIS”) disclosing all of the environmental and human health impacts of the project, which includes harm to human health as well as contribution to climate change. An EIS must also discuss “alternatives” to a proposed project, such as renewable energy projects and energy conservation.

“From a public health and environmental perspective, coal-fired power is the most expensive option available,” said Scott Allegrucci of Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign. “We are confident that once the environmental impacts of this plant are considered in light of alternatives, the project’s impacts will be unacceptable and it will be rejected.”

The environmental and economic forces working against American coal generation appear to be getting stronger. And this week was a sign of things to come.

Related Posts:

• Economics Stunner: “Oil and Coal-Fired Power Plants Have Air Pollution Damages Larger Than Their Value Added.”
• Under Clean Air Standards, the Lights Will Stay On

After a poorly publicized hearing last week, the Port of St. Helens on the Oregon coast approved a secretive deal to lease space to two dirty coal companies, paving the way for the port to become the largest coal terminal on the U.S. West Coast.

In an interview with The Oregonian last summer, Gov. John Kitzhaber (D-OR) said the approval of coal export facilities “should not happen in the dead of night” and that “we must have an open, vigorous public debate before any projects move forward.”

But that’s not what happened last week.

At Wednesday’s hearing, a large majority of those who testified were strongly opposed to the lease options moving forward. But that apparently didn’t matter to the Port of St. Helens Commissioners, who voted 4-1 and 5-0 to approve the two deals.

Vance Fraser, a Clatskanie resident who testified last week, wasn’t pleased with the outcome. “It’s clear that the commissioners were just going through the motions and had their minds made up,” he said. “The worst of it is that people who are impacted didn’t even know that a decision was going to be made.”

If the big coal companies get their way, up to 38 million tons of coal per year could soon be shipped through Oregon on uncovered trains and exported through the Port of St. Helens, leaving a cloud of dangerous coal dust and diesel fumes throughout the state. It would also rapidly escalate climate pollution by supplying coal to overseas markets.

As an elected official concerned about public health — and as a doctor who understands the health risks massive coal export projects pose — Governor Kitzhaber needs to take a strong stand by doing everything in his power to stop these projects before they start.

As the third-largest coal producer, Kentucky generates about 94% of its electricity from the resource. As a result, the state has some of the lowest electricity prices in the country. But that’s not the true cost of energy.

According to a health impact assessment by the Kentucky Environmental Foundation that examines research on the impact of coal in Kentucky, the health costs came in at more than $62 million in 2007 — and that’s just for asthma, which inflicts 1 in 10 Kentuckians and kills about 50 people in the state per year. Asthma rates for African Americans of high school age in Kentucky are at 22%.

More than 3.3 million residents in the state live within 30 miles of a coal fired power plant.

The report examines costs along the coal value chain, including mining, transportation and electricity generation. KEF cites a study from Public Health Reports that finds 2,347 – 2,889 yearly excess deaths from coal mining in Appalachia, costing the region an estimated $10 billion each year.

Data reviewed for this health impact assessment clearly indicates that coal poses significant health risks to people working at or living near coal facilities at each phase of its cycle – mining, processing, transportation, combustion, and waste disposal. Accidents in underground mines, and at or near surface coal mines can injure or kill workers or people living nearby. Pollution including soot, smog-forming chemicals, greenhouse gases and heavy metals travels through the air or water and can impact the health of people living close to coal-related activities, and the general public living hundreds of miles from the pollution source.

In fact, a recent report from some of the leading economists in the country found that accounting for these and other environmental harms would add “close to 17.8¢/kWh of electricity generated” from coal.

The health impact assessment was put together by KEF, a Kentucky-based environmental group, in order to raise awareness for policies supporting clean energy in the state. Kentucky currently has no requirement for efficiency or renewable energy generation. However, there is currently a bill in the legislature that would increase renewable energy targets to 12.5% of generation by 2022, increase efficiency by 10.25% by 2022, and create a feed-in tariff program as a support mechanism.

The Institute for Energy Research — an anti-clean energy free-market think tank — has praised Kentucky’s failure to embrace clean energy, saying it “has thus far avoided many of the costly energy policies.”

Or rather, it has pushed the costs elsewhere in society.

• Economics Stunner: “Oil and Coal-Fired Power Plants Have Air Pollution Damages Larger Than Their Value Added.”

In association with the State of the Union address, the White House released “A Blueprint for An America Built to Last.” Within it, “A Blueprint to Make the Most of America’s Energy Resources,” from which we learn that “nuclear power, efficient natural gas, and clean coal” are “renewable energy” sources:

The President called on Congress to build on our success in positioning America to be the world’s leading manufacturer in high-tech batteries and reiterated his call for action on clean energy tax credits and a national goal of moving toward clean sources of electricity by setting a standard for utility companies, so that by 2035, 80% of the nation’s electricity will come from clean sources, including renewable energy sources like wind, solar, biomass, hydropower, nuclear power, efficient natural gas, and clean coal.

This is, almost certainly an issue of poor writing. It could have read “nuclear power, efficient natural gas, clean coal, and renewable energy sources like wind, solar, biomass, and hydropower.” That rewrite, however, would have put renewables at the back of the line and hurt the President among those strongly supportive of greater investment in renewable energy deployment and research — that is to say, the majority of Americans. Yet, in last year’s State of the Union address the President said that “clean energy jobs” meant nuclear power, offshore oil and gas drilling, and “clean coal.”

All the uranium on planet Earth was formed 6.6 billion years ago and is not “renewable.” Now, if we wish to speak in terms of tens of millions of years, one could argue that coal, natural gas, and oil are renewable. Today’s biomass will, over that sort of geologic time, create (renew, one might say) new fossil fuel supplies. However, in any rational discussion, these are not “renewable” fuels within any context of human civilization.

This section, however, has far more serious problems — most importantly, the President’s whole-sale throwing in the hat with the “natural gas is good for the environment and economy” propaganda that is a Potemkin village when it comes to addressing the nation’s real challenges.

Current proposed and forecasted coal-fired capacity in the U.S., as projected by the Energy Information Administration’s scenario in 2011.

In 2010, the U.S. Energy Information Administration projected that coal would drop to 44% of America’s electrical generation by 2035. Actual generation dropped to that level in 2011.

This week, the agency again adjusted its long-term figures for coal in the U.S., projecting that generation will fall to 39% by 2035. But groups on the front lines of fighting coal plants say those figures are still far too conservative.

Due to a combination of cheap natural gas, higher coal prices, increasingly cost-competitive renewable energy, and an aggressive community of activists working to prevent the build of new coal plants, the coal sector is facing an unprecedented decline in generation. At least, that’s what leaders of Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign are saying.

“The pipeline has essentially dried up,” said Bruce Nilles, the senior director of the Beyond Coal campaign, to Climate Progress. “Our view is that the rush is almost over.”

Here are some of the top indicators for coal’s future that Sierra Club pointed to after this week’s release of the EIA’s figures:

• At least 33,000 megawatts worth of existing coal-fired power plants are expected to retire in the coming decades, not including any retirements due to the recently-finalized mercury and air toxics standard from the Environmental Protection Agency. For reference, an average-sized coal-burning power plant is approximately 500 megawatts.
• The biggest difference from last year’s EIA projection is that more coal retirements will be driven by rising coal prices, state renewable energy standards and EPA clean air standards. All these signs point to reduced market share for coal and expanded market share for clean energy.
• No new coal plants are predicted to be constructed in the time period, beyond those few that are already under construction.
• The share of electricity production from clean energy sources (including hydropower and biomass) should increase from 10 to 16 percent during the time period.
• Overall electricity demand growth is expected to remain below one percent annually.

Certainly, the outlook for coal isn’t good. But there’s a common misconception that coal is completely dead.

A look at the pipeline for projects in the top chart shows that there are still a fair amount of projects underway. EIA projects the portfolio of plants in various stages of development will actually increase coal generation after 2015.

But the EIA reference case assumes no change to existing policy — meaning it doesn’t factor in a price on carbon or any upcoming Environmental Protection Agency standards for power plant emissions. The combination of those two policies could dramatically change the prospects for coal.

“I’d say that coal is on the ropes,” says Nilles. “Many of the plants you see in development are rural electric cooperatives and municipal projects — no merchant projects because of sticker shock. Our view is that the rush is basically over.”

There’s one other factor being ignored by current conservative analysis: the dramatic changes in cost of renewable energy versus the increase in cost for constructing coal plants. For example, In Mississippi, the $2.4 billion, 500-MW Kemper County coal plant is expected to raise rates by more than 45% — increasing the average monthly bill by roughly $60.

Compare that to the stunning drop in the price and installed cost of solar technologies. According to some estimates, the changing economics for coal plants — assuming a new one actually gets built — makes the resource less competitive than solar photovoltaics in many areas of the country over the next few years.

Charts from Adam Browning, Tom Dinwoodie and Dan Shugar using data from Lazard. Click on the chart for the story featuring the data.

• Why America Needs to Move Beyond Coal: Five Economic Indicators

• Solar is Ready Now: ‘Ferocious Cost Reductions’ Make Solar PV Competitive

Coal Industry Losing Steam

This year’s outlook is grim for the U.S coal industry, which after two years of rising profits has begun closing mines, signaling a new wave of production cutbacks and, possibly, another round of industry consolidation.

The country’s biggest coal producers, which begin reporting fourth-quarter results on Tuesday with St. Louis-based Peabody Energy Corp., should provide insight into how bad this year could be. Most should meet Wall Street’s earnings expectations for the last quarter of 2011 on export gains over a year ago, while tempering investor expectations for 2012, say analysts.

The two biggest threats facing U.S. coal companies are the low price of domestic natural gas, which is making thermal coal a less-attractive fuel for their utility-customers, and the shaky economic picture in Europe, which is damping exports of metallurgical coal.

Demand among European steelmakers has fallen off, pushing down the benchmark price for the highest grades of coal by nearly 30% over the past year. Also damping prices is tougher federal emissions rules for U.S. utilities, resulting in more planned closures of coal-fired generating plants and eroding the market for thermal coal.

We Don’t Need More Foreign Oil and Gas, America is poised to be the world’s clean energy leader

In the hubbub around the president’s decision not to approve the proposed Keystone XL pipeline between Canada and the United States, Americans missed the big picture. While conservatives have been fighting to build a pipeline to import more foreign oil and deepen U.S. dependence, the U.S. is poised to transform its energy portfolio by developing domestic resources—renewable and mineral—that will let it become a net exporter of clean energy and energy technology in this decade.

Under President Obama’s leadership, we appear to be at the beginning of a domestic gas and oil boom. After a four-decade decline in oil production, the U.S. is now producing more than half of our oil domestically. This can free us from our addiction to foreign-sourced barrels, particularly if we utilize our dramatically larger and cheaper natural gas reserves. Natural gas now costs the equivalent of less than $15 per barrel, versus the $100-plus barrels we import from the Middle East.

There are critical environmental questions associated with developing these resources, particularly concerning methane leakage and water pollution. Yet as long as we ensure high regulatory standards and stay away from the riskiest and most polluting of these activities, we can safely assemble a collection of lower-carbon, affordable and abundant domestic-energy assets that will dramatically improve our economy and our environment. Under President Obama’s watch, increased domestic production from developing these reserves has already created 75,000 new gas and oil-production jobs since 2009. And we have much further to go.

Obama to tout natural gas benefits in State of Union

President Barack Obama will encourage the country’s booming natural gas output in his State of the Union address on Tuesday, while defending his administration’s energy record, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Obama was expected to devote a significant portion of his speech slated for 9 p.m. EST Tuesday calling for a “new era for American energy,” which will include promoting domestic natural gas production, according to documents provided to Democratic party sources.

U.S. natural gas output has grown sharply in recent years thanks to advances in drilling techniques that have unlocked massive shale reserves.

Obama has repeatedly stressed the importance of domestic natural gas output, pointing to natural gas as a possible area of compromise for Democrats and Republicans.

Chesapeake to Cut Number of Gas Rigs

Chesapeake Energy, the nation’s second biggest natural gas producer, announced Monday that it would cut production of gas in response to plummeting prices.

The announcement was not unexpected, and it followed a trend that has been under way for several months: oil and gas companies have been transferring drilling rigs to oil fields from natural gas fields. But given that Chesapeake has been the industry’s most public champion of natural gas, its announcement of an 8 percent cut in daily production led to a substantial rally in gas prices that had fallen last week to their lowest level in a decade.

Natural gas prices have been steadily falling over the last two years because of a glut stemming from mushrooming production in shale fields like the Haynesville in Louisiana, the Barnett in Texas and the Marcellus in Pennsylvania. Warm weather so far this winter has also cut normal seasonal demand significantly.

Aubrey K. McClendon, Chesapeake’s chief executive, said in a statement, “We have committed to cut our dry gas drilling to bare minimum levels.”

EIA: U.S. using less foreign oil, carbon emissions flatlining

The U.S. Energy Information Administration just released its Annual Energy Outlook 2012 report, and three things stick out: The United States is dramatically curbing its oil imports, carbon emissions are flatlining and we have less shale gas than once thought. Here’s a rundown:

1) The United States is reducing its dependence on foreign oil. According to EIA forecasts (which, do note, are far from perfect), Americans will likely continue restraining their gasoline consumption, thanks, in part, to the Obama administration’s new fuel-economy standards for cars and lights trucks. Meanwhile, oil and gas production in places such as North Dakota has been booming, thanks to higher prices and new drilling technology. Put those together, the EIA calculates, and the United States is set to import just 36 percent of its petroleum by 2035, down from 60 percent in 2005.

David vs. Goliath or even money? Greens weigh their election-year matchup

After a week that saw President Obama and a conservative group backed by the Koch brothers trade multimillion-dollar jabs over energy jobs on the airwaves of six states, one thing is clear: The 2012 election’s environmental narrative is taking shape fast.

Less certain is the kind of conservationist cavalry that Obama’s re-election campaign can count on as it sells his record to voters in the face of a likely onslaught from business groups irate at his rejection of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. As the XL project and bankrupt solar firm Solyndra migrate from Capitol hearing rooms to TVs across the nation, greens are counting on their grass-roots to fill the fundraising gap.

“We can’t compete with Big Oil in terms of campaign cash — we don’t have tens of millions of dollars to throw into TV ads — but we can outcompete Big Oil in terms of people,” Sierra Club chief Michael Brune said in an interview.

But Brune acknowledged that “of course we’re worried” about the financial muscle that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Petroleum Institute (API) and other groups can bring to the table this year to pitch the benefits of Keystone XL to the public.

Unlocking Seaweed’s Next-Gen Crude: Sugar

Seaweed often brings to mind thoughts of surf and sushi, not fuel. But that could change if a biotechnology start-up called Bio Architecture Lab succeeds in building a new kind of energy company from designer bacteria and a low-cost process for harvesting seaweed.

The key is a genetically modified strain of Escherichia coli bacterium, which can break down the sugars in brown seaweed, or macro-algae, to produce ethanol, according to new research published in the peer-reviewed journal Science.

As one of the 14 study authors, BAL’s co-founder and chief science officer, Yasuo Yoshikuni, explained in an interview by phone, “Sugar is the next-generation crude oil — it can go to fuels and chemicals.” BAL’s breakthrough, he says, is about finding a way to “unlock the sugars in seaweed.”

Sun’s changes unlikely to slow global warming, scientists say

A reduction in the Sun’s activity is expected this century, but is unlikely to do much to slow global warming due to greenhouse gases, scientists said on Monday.

Research by the Met Office and the University of Reading looked at the most likely changes in the Sun’s activity and found that its output was likely to decrease up to 2100, from the “grand maximum” seen in the 20th century.

But this would only cause a reduction in global temperatures of about 0.08C over that time, in comparison to projected rises of 2.5C by 2100 as a result of rising greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Even if solar activity fell to levels seen in the so-called Maunder minimum, between 1645 and 1715, when the Sun’s output was at its lowest recorded level, the reduction in temperature would only be 0.13C.

The study looked at a range of possible projections of solar activity over the coming century and then applied them to one climate model, taken from the middle of the range of models, to see how it might affect temperatures.

Less than three months later, the “paramount importance” of mine safety seems to have disappeared. When Beshear unveiled his two-year budget proposal last week, the agency that oversees mine safety was slapped with a 4.2 percent budget cut, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported. Though the cut is smaller than those faced by other state agencies, the budget for the mine permitting agency, tasked with approving new mining sites (including those used for mountaintop removal), went untouched.

Mine safety, and the enforcement of mine safety regulations, has repeatedly taken a backseat to expanded mining under Beshear, despite repeated accidents in Kentucky mines that had been cited for safety violations. The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) cited Armstrong Coal, the operator of the Equality Boot Mine, with 15 safety violations between its 2010 opening and the October deaths. In 16 months preceding a deadly accident at the Dotiki Mine in Providence, Kentucky, MSHA issued 840 safety violations to its operator, Alliance Resource Partners.

Days after the Dotiki Mine disaster, Beshear appeared at the opening of another Alliance-owned mine and made no mention of mine safety. In 2011, Beshear appointed one of Alliance’s top safety officials to the Kentucky Mining Board, even though at least nine miners have died at Alliance-owned mines since 2005.

During his 2011 re-election campaign, Beshear took more than half a million dollars in campaign contributions from the coal industry, begging the question ThinkProgress has asked of his state’s elected officials before: Is Beshear putting the interests of his Big Coal campaign contributors ahead of actual human lives?

Tom Donohue

We have 1.4 trillion barrels of oil, enough to last at least 200 years. We have 2.7 quadrillion cubic feet of natural gas, enough to last 120 years. We have 486 billion tons of coal, enough to last more than 450 years—and we need to use more of this strategic resource cleanly and wisely here at home while selling it around the world.

Burning that amount of fossil fuel would generate 444 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide from the oil, 135 billion tons from the natural gas, and 1.258 trillion tons from the coal. To maintain a climate compatible with civilization all of humanity needs to limit future greenhouse pollution to less than 650 billion tons.

Far from “keeping the American Dream alive for generation after generation,” as Donohue claims, his promotion of catastrophic global warming would grant a diminished, deadly world to future generations.

Read Donohue’s remarks promoting the destruction of civilization:

Let’s start with a big one—energy.

Our nation is on the cusp of an energy boom that is already creating hundreds of thousands of jobs, revitalizing entire communities, and reinvigorating American manufacturing.

Unconventional oil and natural gas development is on pace to create more than 300,000 jobs by 2015 in Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia alone. Take a look at what’s happening in North Dakota. The state is booming. Unemployment is at 3.4%. Oil production just surpassed that of Ecuador—one of the members of OPEC.

Energy is a game changer for the United States. It is, as the saying goes, “the next big thing.” With the right policies, the oil and natural gas industry could create more than 1 million jobs by 2018. Not only can we create jobs, but we can cut our dependence on overseas imports while adding hundreds of billions of dollars to government coffers in the coming years.

Recent discoveries have confirmed that this nation is truly blessed with energy resources. We have 1.4 trillion barrels of oil, enough to last at least 200 years. We have 2.7 quadrillion cubic feet of natural gas, enough to last 120 years. We have 486 billion tons of coal, enough to last more than 450 years–and we need to use more of this strategic resource cleanly and wisely here at home while selling it around the world.

To tap our energy resources, we must speed up permitting and end many of the restrictions that have put key areas off-limits. Instead of handpicking a few technologies, we must harness all our resources, traditional and alternative—while expanding nuclear power and driving greater efficiency.

Our biggest and most reliable foreign energy supplier is Canada. The proposed Keystone XL pipeline would bring Canadian oil sands down to our Gulf Coast refineries and to other destinations along the way.

This project has passed every environmental test. There is no legitimate reason—none at all—to subject it to further delay. Labor unions and the business community alike are urging President Obama to act in the best interests of our national security and our workers and approve the pipeline. We can put 20,000 Americans to work right away and up to 250,000 over the life of the project.

This comprehensive and well-designed site, developed by the government contractor SAIC, makes it easy to find out facts like:

The top carbon polluter in America is the Scherer mega-coal plant in Juliette, Georgia.

The ten most polluting coal plants produce a combined 188 million tons of greenhouse pollution a year.

Kansas has 103 reporting greenhouse polluters.

There are only two major emitters of highly dangerous HFC pollution in the United States, a Dupont plant in Louisville and a Honeywell plant in Baton Rouge.

People can also download the underlying data set for their own analysis.

The site does not display greenhouse pollution from the transportation or agribusiness sectors. The omission of the pollution from the millions of cars across America makes sense, but the exclusion of industrial agriculture pollution is a loophole inserted by Congress to protect the dangerous business model of Big Ag.

Therefore, it isn’t a surprise that on Monday, Santorum attacked a new Environmental Protection Agency toxics rule that prevents mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants, claiming it represents the EPA’s philosophy of “We hate carbon, we hate fossil fuels, we hate blue-collar Americans who work in those area”:

He specifically took issue with the agency’s cost-benefit analysis, calling it “absolutely ridiculous” and “not based on any kind of science.”

But the EPA’s cost-benefit analysis cites peer-reviewed studies extensively in its 510-page “Regulatory Impact Analysis of the Final Mercury and Air Toxics Standards,” which has been two decades in the making.

What Santorum didn’t mention is how uncontrolled mercury pollution has harmed Americans for decades. The EPA’s peer-reviewed analysis found the mercury rule would prevent 11,000 premature deaths, 4,700 heart attacks, and 130,000 asthma attacks annually. Economically, the health benefits outweigh the costs of a few dozen old plant closures — every dollar spent on reducing the pollution would save up to $9 in health benefits.

His standing is also at odds with faith-based groups, according to Media Matters: “Over 100 evangelical leaders have signed a letter calling for stricter mercury regulations, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has spoken out in favor of tougher emissions standards. Catholics United publicly welcomed the EPA’s rule.” Unlike these groups, Santorum is willing to risk blue-collar Americans’ health to protect the coal industry.

As expected, much of the recent growth in Asia — particularly since 2003 — has come from China. That country’s use of coal has increased 500% since 1980, made up almost three quarters of Asian consumption, and half of global consumption last year.

Clicking on the graphic below will re-direct you to the EIA’s website, where you can watch the animation.

Back in September, the EIA published its International Energy Outlook, which we described as a “denier’s fantasy world.” Under a do-nothing, business-as-usual scenario, the agency predicts China’s continued use of coal will increase carbon emissions so dramatically, the country’s climate pollution levels will double the U.S. in the next 15 years.

China has been deploying renewables at an astonishing pace. But its use of coal has far outpaced any sort of clean technologies being installed. If we want to see the circles in these graphics stop their dramatic ballooning, our current path doesn’t come close to addressing the problem.

Oh. And I forgot to mention that the Canadians are eying China as their biggest customer for tar sands crude.

Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-KY)

“There are already strict regulations relating to mercury emissions,” Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-KY), the chair of the House energy and power subcommittee, falsely claimed in an interview today with Fox News. “Obviously whatever controls the EPA has in place are not working if our fish are tainted,” Fox’s Alisyn Camerota shot back. Whitfield then made the false claim that “there is not going to be any benefit from this new regulation in reducing mercury levels”:

CAMEROTA: As I’m sure you know, for the past years doctors have been advising pregnant women not to eat any fish when they are pregnant because the mercury levels are so high in fish. So what to do about this? Obviously whatever controls the EPA has in place are not working if our fish are tainted.

WHITFIELD: Well, let me just say this to you, the scientists that testified before our committee were unanimous in the view that there is not going to be any benefit from this new regulation in reducing mercury levels. All of the benefits were calculated from the reduction of particulate matter, which is already covered under ambient air quality standard regulations. This is about closing coal plants, and that’s precisely what it is about.

Watch it:

Whitfield and energy committee chair Fred Upton (R-MI) have assiduously avoided having medical experts testify about the EPA’s mercury rules, instead parading utility and coal industry officials before their committee to make exaggerated claims about the costs of upgrading power plants to protect children’s health. At one such hearing, Rep. Joe Barton denied the “medical negative” of mercury exposure.

The glimmer of fact in Whitfield’s claims is that the health costs of mercury poisoning of our nation’s children over decades of unlimited coal pollution are difficult to quantify. Mercury poisoning is rarely fatal and hard to detect, but causes undeniable, insidious developmental harm to fetuses and babies.

Cost-benefit analyses conducted by epidemiologists for the new rule emphasize the equally real live-saving impact of cutting the deadly soot pollution from the few dozen ancient coal plants that emit most of the nation’s mercury pollution. By conceding that cutting the particulate matter would save thousands of lives, Whitfield was in effect admitting that current ambient air quality standards are not sufficient to protect American health either.

Economists are beginning to recognize that the costs of coal pollution outweigh the benefits of “cheap” coal electricity. Unless the coal industry cleans up its act, coal power is making the American economy sick.

Each year, protests spring up to counter the construction of dirty coal plants. But this appears to be the biggest yet. Officials now say they will abandon plans to build a new coal plant in the area. Two people were reportedly killed in clashes with police, but the government is denying those reports.

China’s coal use has exploded over the last few decades. Since 1980, coal consumption in China has grown 500%, and now represents three quarters of consumption in Asia. That has coincided with a five-fold increase of lung cancer since 1970, now the leading cause of death in China. (Of course, an increase in smoking is also a huge contributor.)

Watch the protesters gather in the streets throughout Guandong Province protesting coal plants and local land rights:

In Kentucky, a state where mountaintop removal has destroyed more mountains than in any other state, protesters have staged sit-ins at the governor’s office and the statehouse throughout the year. Those activists visited the office of Gov. Steve Beshear (D) again yesterday, this time hoping to deliver a little holiday cheer and a few gifts for the governor who trumpeted his support for mountaintop removal and opposition to the Environmental Protection Agency during his re-election campaign in 2011, public radio station WFPL reports:

Governor Steve Beshear got an early Christmas gift from anti-mountaintop removal activists today. Protesters spent several hours in the governor’s office waiting for a chance to present him with lumps of coal.

The protest was an extension of a weekly event that’s been going on since February, but this time it had a holiday twist. Lexington teacher Martin Mudd dressed up as Santa Claus, and says he brought gifts for the governor.

“Santa brought the governor some lumps of coal and switches because he’s been a naughty boy in not doing everything that he can to protect the people of eastern Kentucky and our mountains and water,” he said.

Beshear’s support for the coal industry, and mountaintop removal in particular, has often placed him at odds with coal activists. In 2009, he angered activists by firing Ron Mills, the head of Kentucky’s mining permit division, after Mills refused multiple permits for Alliance Resource Partners, a Tulsa-based company with multiple mining sites in Kentucky. Beshear signed the permits over Mills’ objections, and Mills told the Lexington Herald-Leader that Alliance executives had lobbied for his firing.

But his support for mountaintop removal has drawn the most ire, and while yesterday’s protesters weren’t able to reach Beshear — both he and Lieutenant Gov. Jerry Abramson (D) were out of the office — they left a list of demands with their gifts. Among them: end mountaintop removal, employ workers left jobless by the coal industry through environmental reclamation projects, and help Eastern Kentucky build a sustainable economy that isn’t built on a destructive mining process clearly linked to cancer, birth defects, and numerous other chronic illnesses.

The average age of the plants that could be sacrificed is 51 years. These plants have been allowed to run for decades without modern pollution controls because it was thought that they were on the verge of being shuttered by the utilities that own them. But that didn’t happen.

The number of plants that will be shuttered, the AP found, is as low as 32 and as high as 68. The survey, “based on interviews with 55 power plant operators and on the Environmental Protection Agency’s own prediction of power plant retirements, rebuts claims by critics of the regulations and some electric power producers.”

These dirtiest coal plants in America are toxic dinosaurs, enjoying loopholes in the original Clean Air Act of 1970 and the updated rules in 1990. Some of the plants were built when Harry S Truman was president.

“We can’t say there isn’t going be an issue. We know there will be some challenges,” John Moura, manager of reliability assessment at the North American Electric Reliability Corp., told AP. “But we don’t think the lights are going to turn off because of this issue.”

In the AP’s survey, “not a single plant operator said the EPA rules were solely to blame for a closure,” because coal prices are going up, natural gas is cheaper, and state clean air rules and existing EPA rules discouraged keeping the dirtiest coal plants open.

Defenders of coal pollution who have raised panic about America’s lights turning off because of the EPA include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), and presidential candidate Jon Huntsman Jr.