Coal’s Dominance is Coming to an End. A New Era of Clean Energy

Utility Withdraws New Coal Financing, Following National Trend of Coal Losing Market Share to Clean Energy

Atlanta, GA – In another strike against coal, a local utility near Atlanta voted late Tuesday to cancel funding for two proposed new coal-fired power plant projects. Over the past decade three coal plants have been proposed in Georgia. With yesterday’s announcement, the remaining two projects have lost their primary source of funding and will likely be abandoned. The third project, the LSPower Longleaf project, was abandoned late last year as part of a nationwide settlement with the Sierra Club.

Yesterday in a closed meeting, the Cobb Electric Membership Corporation (EMC) board of directors voted to stop funding the Power4Georgians proposed coal plant projects, Plant Washington and Plant Ben Hill, in Central Georgia. Each 850 megawatt coal plant would have cost more than $2 billion to build and would have added deadly new sources of toxic mercury and carbon pollution in Georgia and downwind states.

“Coal’s dominance is coming to an end,” said Bruce Nilles,Senior Director of Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign.

Today’s news from Georgia fits into a strong national trend of clean energy displacing coal. Forthe past decade we have successfully blocked the construction of now 164 proposed coal-fired power plants. With the cost of coal rising and clean energy prices plummeting, coal’s market share is shrinking and shrinking fast. At the same time, over the past three years the United States has installed records amount of wind and solar, and in the process has created thousands of new jobs.

For the past four years Sierra Club and the Georgians for SmartEnergy Coalition have been campaigning to persuade Cobb EMC and its partners to abandon the coal plants and instead to invest in clean, home-grown energy sources like wind and solar. The proposed coal plants would have required Georgians to ship millions of dollars out of Georgia annually to buy imported coal.

“I am proud that since 2008, the Sierra Club and our partner organizations have been actively organizing and challenging these coal plant proposals, and working with cooperative members to highlight the risky nature of coal-fired power plants,” said Seth Gunning, Georgia Organizer with the Beyond Coal Campaign and Cobb EMCmember.

A report released this week by the U.S.Energy Information Administration highlighted a predicted drop in coal’s marketshare, from 44 to 39 percent, between 2010 and 2035. The EIA reports traditionally underestimate coal’s decline, and the Georgia board vote seems tosuggest an even steeper drop for coal power in the United States. The EIAreport also predicted that no new coal plants would be constructed in thisperiod, aside from those already under construction. Bruce Nilles’s recent writing on the EIA report can be found at http://sc.org/w9SrLV.

No new coal plants have broken ground since 2008, except for a highly-subsidized Department of Energy demonstration project in Kemper County, Mississippi. Even with federal and state subsidies,the project is expected to increase consumers’ electric bills by more than 40%,according to the Mississippi Business Journal. The Great River Energy Spiritwood Plant in North Dakota, which came online in 2010, now sits idle because it is too expensive to run. The plant cost $400,000,000 to build.

New federal health protections finalized in 2011 will require existing coal plants to reduce their pollution,including toxic mercury pollution, and new plants will have to plan for scrubber technology, which will increase the projected price of construction.

The Sierra Club’sBeyond Coal campaign works in partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies and a nationwide coalition of allies to retire one-third of the nation’s aging coalplants by 2020, replacing them with clean energy like wind and solar by 2030.Coal plants are the largest sources of climate disruption and toxic airpollution like mercury, soot and carbon pollution. Once finalized, Plant Washington and Plant Ben Hill would be the 163rd and 164th plants defeated or abandoned since the Sierra Club beganits Beyond Coal campaign in 2002.

Source: Sierra Club Press Release

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Posted by admin on Jan 29 2012. Filed under Moving Beyond Big Coal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry