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A big train wreck leaves it all over the place

Gristmill reader Grevangelical was in Ukraine when this happened, and he says people there are nervous about it. Wonder why? Deputy Prime Minister Olexander Kuzmuk, who on Tuesday compared the spill to the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, has since insisted there is no health risk to surrounding villages … By the way, the highly toxic […]

New coal-fired plants are unlikely

This from the Wall Street Journal today:

From coast to coast, plans for a new generation of coal-fired power plants are falling by the wayside as states conclude that conventional coal plants are too dirty to build and the cost of cleaner plants is too high.

If significant numbers of new coal plants don't get built in the U.S. in coming years, it will put pressure on officials to clear the path for other power sources, including nuclear power, or trim the nation's electricity demand, which is expected to grow 1.8% this year. In a time of rising energy costs, officials also worry about the long-term consequences of their decisions, including higher prices or the potential for shortages.

As recently as May, U.S. power companies had announced intentions to build as many as 150 new generating plants fueled by coal, which currently supplies about half the nation's electricity. One reason for the surge of interest in coal was concern over the higher price of natural gas, which has driven up electricity prices in many places. Coal appeared capable of softening the impact since the U.S. has deep coal reserves and prices are low.

But as plans for this fleet of new coal-powered plants move forward, an increasing number are being canceled or development slowed. Coal plants have come under fire because coal is a big source of carbon dioxide, the main gas blamed for global warming, in a time when climate change has become a hot-button political issue.

For the full text, click here (and click soon, as the WSJ only gives free access for a few days).

This is more fodder in support of earlier Grist posts here and here.

It is also worth noting that -- notwithstanding WSJ's reportage -- this isn't really driven by new environmental considerations as much as by 30-year-old environmental considerations, when we effectively stopped building new coal plants but still had enough reserve margin in the system to keep increasing coal use without new construction.

Current increases in capital costs are largely to comply with the Clean Air Act -- which the old grandfathered plants were exempted from. Carbon control is clearly a big uncertainty moving forward, only likely to increase the costs further, but it is striking that we're seeing so much price increase and uncertainty in coal-derived power even without it.

This points out a larger issue with power plant regulation. Namely, these plants last a long time. The Clean Air Act was well intended, but it took three decades for it to start to impact the use of dirty coal, by virtue of the fact that it only impacted new facilities. Compare this to new vehicle regs, where the much shorter lifetime of cars means that we can get a quicker phase-out. Thus, we can eliminate leaded gasoline quickly, but can't really impact SOx and NOx from central plants for much longer.

This is precisely why the auction vs. allocation issue is so important for greenhouse-gas control. Every carbon cap-and-trade system that grandfathers in the old plants' right to pollute (witness Kyoto & RGGI as examples thereof) is going to face similar delays in carbon reduction -- delays that we cannot afford.

The worst good news/bad news tale ever told

The bad news is that we're doing it by eating the fish that are eating the concentrated mercury in the food chain, further concentrating it in ... us. Mad as hatters we are!

This could also have been titled, "Another reason that coal is the enemy of the human race (or at least those members of it that like to eat)."

Grist gets results

When I interviewed Richard Louv — author of Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder — back in 2006, he jokingly said, "If we were really interested in education reform we’d have a ‘No Child Left Inside’ movement." Well lookee here: John Sarbanes (D-Md.) has just introduced the No Child Left […]

Moderate senators are ready to get on board

As Joe mentioned yesterday, four moderate-to-conservative senators — John Warner (R-Va.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Mary Landrieu (D-La.), and Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) — just proposed a measure to achieve "Cost-Containment for the Carbon Market." I wanted to spend a bit of time on what’s in it and what it means. You might think, given the business-friendly […]

Umbra on tidal power

Dear Umbra, Much is made of wind, solar, geothermal, and even wave power, but why doesn’t anyone talk about tidal power? It has more power than wind for the same turbine, without the eyesore of turbines, is totally renewable, and is predictable hundreds of years in advance. Yet nobody talks about it. What’s wrong with […]

A gender fender mind-bender

For the last few weeks, my fella and I have been staying with a male friend during a monthlong gap between homes. Fella and Friend work at the same company, about 30 minutes away. Every morning, Fella and Friend get up, go about their morning routines, get in their cars, and leave — all within […]

Why Do I Still Feel So Hollow?

GE unveils carbon-offset credit card, other companies pondering same move Some people say you can’t shop your way to happiness, but they haven’t met the new GE credit card. Yes, the company that brought us “ecomagination” has imagined a way into wallets everywhere. The GE Money Earth Rewards Platinum MasterCard — hang on, have to […]

Pimp My Shrimp

Wal-Mart environmental practices changing shrimp farming in Thailand Latest practice impacted by omnipresent Wal-Mart: Thai shrimp farming. Crustacean aquaculture, long demonized for destroying mangrove trees and polluting waterways, is the focus of new standards penned by the Global Aquaculture Alliance and backed by Wal-Mart, Red Lobster, and other big seafood purveyors. To make the grade […]

Twenty-two Hours of Darkness and Two of Light

California utility commits to massive solar buy, B.C. deals with oil spill Call it the light and dark sides of the energy industry: yesterday, as news spread that a major California utility will make a ginormous solar buy, a British Columbia neighborhood was drenched in crude oil spewing from a broken pipe. Related? Only in […]