Check out Clean Up Dynegy, the brand new website for the Sierra Club’s campaign against the company Sierra calls “America’s Coal-Fired Polluter Number 1.” The campaign is significant in that it represents the first attempt by anti-coal forces to single out a single company on a nationwide basis.
It kicked off in late February with mass call-ins to Dynegy headquarters originating from twenty states — “thousands of calls,” according to the Sierra Club. Already, the campaign seems to have hit a nerve, with Dynegy’s CEO, Bruce Williamson, lashing out that his company is being unfairly picked on. It probably didn’t help Williamson’s morale that he was also just picked as one of five executives to receive 2008 “Fossil Fool of the Year” awards.
Dynegy (which merged with LS Power in Mar. 2007) will celebrate its tenth anniversary this June. In its first decade, the company had at least one near-death experience, getting caught up in charges of price fixing and other fraudulent practices during the California electricity crisis of 2000 and again in the wake of the Enron debacle in 2002.
Williamson, who came on board to replace founder Charles Watson, is credited with saving the foundering company by exiting natural gas and moving into coal. Unfortunately, Dynegy can’t seem to get its timing right. Compared to the current hornets’ nest of coal opposition he finds himself in, Williamson may already be feeling nostalgic for the good old days of natural gas.
Prior to the launching of the Sierra club campaign, five Dynegy and LS Power projects had already hit the dust:
- Baldwin Energy Complex (Illinois)
- LS Power Sequoyah Plant (Oklahoma)
- LS Power Sussex proposal (Virginia)
- Marion City Project (South Carolina)
- West Deptford Project (New Jersey)
The remaining six, all targeted by the “Clean Up Dynegy” campaign, are as follows:
- Longleaf (Georgia)
- LS Power Elk Run Energy Station (Iowa)
- Midland Power Plant (Michigan)
- Plum Point Energy Station (Arkansas)
- Sandy Creek Plant (Texas)
- White Pine Energy Station (Nevada)
