South Carolina

Power Past Coal communities host anti-coal events during first 100 days of Obama administration

Appalachia needs no defense: It needs more defenders.

Check out the footage of the bright blast that greeted Bo Webb, a decorated Vietnam veteran, and his community last night and today in Clay's Branch, Peachtree, W. Va. A shower of rock dust mixed with a toxic brew of diesel fuel and ammonium nitrate explosives swept down their hollow, as the Richmond-based Massey Energy behemoth detonated another round of explosives in their haste to bring down the mountain for a thin seam of coal. Nearby, children attended the Marsh Fork Elementary School, the blasting in the distance like a harbinger of Massey's brutal force -- the company is now infamously embroiled in a U.S. Supreme Court case for compromising judicial neutrality in their efforts to contribute their way into the good graces of West Virginia judges -- as 2.8 billion gallons of coal sludge held back by a 385-foot-high earthen dam hover a few football fields above the school like an accident waiting to happen.

Good morning, Appalachia!

Just another day of mountaintop removal; that process of wiping out America's natural landmarks, dumping the waste into waterways and valleys, and effectively removing historic communities from their homeplaces through a campaign of horrific blasting, dusting, poisoning, and harassment.

We've reached a new landmark in the central Appalachian coalfields of West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and southwest Virginia: Over 500 mountains in one of the most diverse forests in the Americas -- the same kind of mountains that garner protection and preservation status in a blink of an eye in other regions -- -have now been eliminated from our American maps.

Five hundred mountains are gone. For what? Less than 5 percent of our nation's supply of coal, while 50 million tons of West Virginia coal are annually exported to CO2-spewing plants in countries like China.

As a new report [PDF] by Quentin Gee, Nicholas Allen and their colleagues at the Associated Students Environmental Affairs Board of UC Santa Barbara recently found, the overlooked external costs of coal further debunk the black diamond's image as a "clean" and "cheap" source of energy.

Gee and Allen write:

South Carolina misses an opportunity for energy efficiency with Duke's Save-A-Watt program

I recently interviewed a guy who explained his approach to long-term contracting to me as follows: "always structure your contracts to ensure that your counter-party makes money, and you'll never have a bad contract negotiation." It's a great point, too often lost by those who are convinced that all negotiations are zero-sum games.

Lest one think that hard-nosed, selfish negotiating is limited to greedy financial types, I bring you this story from South Carolina, where a change in utility regulation to incentivize energy efficiency was blocked by environmentalists and consumer advocates on the grounds that it would give too much money to utilities. It seems to me that they have made a big mistake.

Regulated utilities have no incentive to invest in energy conservation or generation efficiency. Moreover, they have no incentive to encourage their customers to make investments that would save them money, since the standard guaranteed-return + cost-pass-through pricing model doesn't let them keep the gain.

This doesn't make utility managers bad guys; it just means that they are responding to a bad set of signals. If your parents give your big brother a cookie every time he punches you, your big brother is not entirely to blame for the welts on your arm.

Jim Rogers knows this, and proposed his Save-A-Watt program to give his company, Duke Energy, a financial incentive to encourage their customers to conserve. Consumer advocates and environmentalists opposed, broadly on the basis that we shouldn't pay utilities to do things they're supposed to do anyway. The South Carolina utility commission agreed:

... they objected specifically to the heart of the plan: Duke's request to get a financial return for power plants it doesn't have to build.

To be quite clear, Duke has many flaws. They like expensive coal plants. They've tried to do some things that look an awful lot like gaming carbon markets. And they are a card-carrying, dues-paying member of the BS-machine that is ACCCE.

But that doesn't mean we can't give them credit for trying to reform the rules, so that they can sever (however partially) the disconnect between the interests of their shareholders and their customers (not to mention the environment). It seems a shame to me that those efforts were blocked in the name of the environment and consumer.

Ultimately, this issue is much bigger than Save-a-Watt, Duke, and South Carolina. Our regulatory system desperately needs reform, and effective reform will necessarily create massive wealth transfers away from those who benefit from the status quo. It was ever thus, and is why vested interests are always so conservative. Those who seek reform therefore have four choices:

South Carolina governor joins Wisconsin's and Michigan's in pushing back against coal

Yesterday the governor of South Carolina -- yes, South Carolina -- announced that he is opposing construction of a new coal plant in his state.

Why? Because a weak economy has demand down, the cost of coal has nearly tripled, and the prospect of tougher mercury and CO2 regulations from the Obama administration threaten to as much as double the cost of the project.

Because it's an economic turkey, in other words.

The head of the S.C. Department of Natural Resources also came out in opposition, citing worries about mercury pollution in fish and increased CO2 emissions.

This comes a few days after Wisconsin governor Jim Doyle announced that the UW power plant would eliminate coal (replacing it with biomass) by 2012.

And that was about a week after Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm's state of the state address, wherein she outlined a plan to free her state from coal. (Technically, reduce reliance on coal electricity by 45% by 2020.)

Governors in South Carolina, Wisconsin, and Michigan, all working to free their states from the grip of the enemy of the human race.

Dirty friggin' hippies!

Two very un-green candidates compete for South Carolina Senate seat

In the South Carolina Senate race debate over the weekend, the two candidates were asked directly about climate change and energy concerns. Via Think Progress, here’s what Democratic candidate Bob Conley had to say on global warming: Conley: It really is the arrogance of man to think that we are having any effect. I’m an […]

Cheap at any price!

More news from the world of cheap coal: Santee Cooper said Wednesday that the first phase of its proposed Pee Dee coal-fired power plant [in Florence County, South Carolina] will cost $1.25 billion, up from its original estimate of $998 million. Even that may be under-stating it: Blan Holman, a lawyer for the Southern Environmental […]

Ragtag youth and ABEC face off in South Carolina

On the eve of the South Carolina Democratic primary, some battles are being fought on stage, and others in the parking lot.

This primary season, leading up to arguably the most important presidential election in recent history, has been a circus. Even outside the candidate events, voters waiting in line to cheer Huckabee or Obama might see confederate-flag-jacket-donning Ron Paul supporters espouse southern pride, orange-shirted volunteers collect petitions about Darfur, and PETA organizers dressed up as pigs holding puzzling signs that say "Stop Global Warming, Tax Meat." And while all the presidential campaigns try to capture the media's attention by printing more and bigger signs, and turning out louder supporters, they can't quite keep the menagerie at bay.

In a way, this is all good for democracy -- it shows that volunteers and organizations are pressuring candidates on specific issues, many of which the candidates have not sufficiently addressed on the stump or in debates. Politicians have a knack for beating around the bush. But, when a corporate-funded group joins the cast, as the euphemistic Americans for Balanced Energy Choices has, the parking lot battles really begin.

Turtle Wane

Having depleted their own nation’s once-plentiful turtle populations, Chinese buyers are now offering top dollar for turtles from the southern U.S. In the last three years, there’s been a dramatic upswing in the number of turtles exported to China, where the animals’ meat is considered a delicacy and their shells are ground up to make […]

Have Plutonium, Will Travel