Dousing the coal-fired plant.

• Author: Brown, Lester R.
• Position: EYE ON ECOLOGY

IN A REPORT COMPILED in early 2007, the Department of Energy listed 151 coal-fired power plants in the planning stages and talked about a resurgence in coal-fired electricity. However, over the next several months, 59 proposed coal-fired power plants either were refused licenses by state governments or quietly abandoned. In addition to the 59 plants that were dropped, close to 50 more are being contested in the courts, and the remaining plants likely will be challenged as they reach the permitting stage. What began as a few local ripples of resistance quickly is evolving into a national tidal wave of grassroots opposition from environmental, health, farm, and community organizations and a fast-growing number of state governments. The public at large is turning against coal. In a recent national poll by the Opinion Research Corporation about which electricity source people would prefer, only three percent chose coal.

One of the first major coal industry setbacks came in early 2007, when environmental groups convinced Texas-based utility TXU to reduce the number of planned coal-fired power plants in that state from 11 to three--and now even that trio of proposed plants may be challenged. Meanwhile, the energy focus within the Texas state government is shifting to wind power. The state is planning 23,000 megawatts of new wind-generating capacity (equal to 23 coal-fired power plants).

In May, Florida's Public Service Commission refused to license a huge $5,700,000,000, 1,960-megawatt coal plant because the utility could not prove that building it would be cheaper than investing in conservation, efficiency, and renewable energy sources. This argument by Earth-justice, a not-for-profit environmental legal group, combined with widely expressed public opposition to any more coal-fired power plants in Florida, led to the quiet withdrawal of four other proposals. Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, who keenly is aware of Florida's vulnerability to rising seas, actively is opposing new coal plants and has announced that the state plans to build the world's largest solar-thermal power plant.

The principal reason for opposing new coal plants is the mounting worry about climate change. Moreover, construction costs are soaring--and then there are intensifying health concerns about mercury emissions and the 23,600 U.S. deaths per year from power plant air pollution.

Utilities have argued that carbon dioxide from coal plant smokestacks can be captured and stored...