Illinois
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Middle school teacher responds on real energy education for kids
The Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity runs an annual Coal Calendar Art & Essay Contest for middle schoolers, asking students to shill for the coal industry, no doubt in response to a biased classroom lesson about coal. See the comment thread on the coal coloring book story. This comment from reader LILACWINE seems […]
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15 green-leaning mayors
Climate change is a global problem — but as of yet, there’s no global solution. That’s why mayors across the U.S. are taking action, from building green to organizing bike rides, from redeveloping downtowns to cutting emissions. Here are just a few of the municipal leaders who have worked to take our collective future into […]
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More on Illinois' Clean Coal Portfolio Standard
Now that I've had time to review the legislation [PDF] that begat Illinois' Clean Coal Portfolio Standard, I offer a few tidbits.
Short version: We're not even going to pretend that coal is clean or cheap anymore. The bill actually defines "clean coal" as high-sulfur coal, and defines "cheap" as being that which doesn't raise electricity rates too fast.
Specifics:
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Legislature approves 'Clean Coal Portfolio Standards,' green-lights new coal plant
OK, we've got Obama in the plus column for the state of Illinois. But in addition to the gubernatorial craziness going on in my home state, we've now got this: Tenaska, an independent power company, has been seeking to build a coal plant in Illinois. The problem being of course, that new, coal-fired power plants are really, really, really, really lousy investments. Tenaska tried to change government rules to ensure they made money.
That in and of itself isn't inherently bad. Every company has a vested interest in tweaking laws to benefit their shareholders. But to ask is nobler than to receive. I wouldn't be a bad person if I asked the state to give me $1 million a year to support my crack habit, but if the state gave me that money and I accepted, we would both be complicit.
So how did the Illinois legislature respond? "Clean Coal Portfolio Standards." Seriously.
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Illinois leg. and gov. hoodwinked by 'clean coal'; will Obama be as susceptible?
Impeachment notwithstanding, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich (D) signed a bill this week that will send another $18 million down the "clean coal" rabbit hole in Illinois.
The delusional symbolism couldn't be more obvious. In fact, the Chicago Tribune captured the carbon truth of the story:
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Three nuke-dependent communities vote for a nuclear phase-out
Illinois — home state of our new president-elect — is the most nuclear-reliant state in the nation, with 11 operating reactors. The Illinois communities of Oak Park, Berwyn, and Riverside are particularly reliant on nuclear power: it’s 75 percent of their juice, purchased from Commonwealth Edison, a local subsidiary of Exelon, the nation’s largest nuclear […]
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Senate slips life support for ‘clean coal’ boondoggle into war supplemental package
Remember FutureGen, the pilot program that was supposed to yield the nation’s first zero-emissions, “clean coal” power plant? The one that even the Bush administration realized was a bad idea, after the price tag on the project ballooned to $1.8 billion? Well, some senators just don’t want to see it die ($ub req’d). Yesterday, the […]
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Biggers to Obama: Free Appalachia from coal
Jeff Biggers suggests an ambitious and risky Appalachian strategy for Barack Obama: By the 1920s, plundered for their coal and unable to compete with the non-union labor in Kentucky and West Virginia, the southern Illinois coal towns had turned into deforested and eroded wastelands, and were depicted by one government report as a “picture, almost […]