Obama Said to Ban New Coal Plants Without Carbon Controls

[Hissyspit]

Source: Bloomberg News

@BloombergNews: Exclusive: President Obama said to ban new coal plants that lack carbon controls: sources | http://t.co/1NfuwkRncy

Obama Said to Ban New Coal Plants Without Carbon Controls

By Mark Drajem
September 11, 2013 12:15 PM EDT

New coal plants would need to install expensive equipment to limit climate-change emissions under a proposal the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is close to issuing, according to people familiar with the plan.

The EPA agreed to revise a similar proposal from last year in response to opposition by utilities and coal producers who said it would effectively kill coal as a power source. The new version will be structured differently, though offers little solace to plant operators, according to the people who have been briefed by officials and asked not to be identified before the public release.

The rules, the subject of intense lobbying by the industry, are under review by White House officials, and could be reworked before the Sept. 20 scheduled release. The revised standard would retain a provision letting utilities phase-in the capture technology over time, one person said.

Relying on carbon capture to limit coal emissions is challenging because the technology is unproven and it’s too expensive, according to the industry.

Read more: http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-11/obama-said-to-ban-new-coal-plants-without-carbon-controls.html

[dballance]

1. Got to love how their headline makes it all about Obama

Okay, I understand that the EPA is an agency of the Executive Branch. So, therefore, it is President Obama's agency. But from that title you'd think Obama swooped down into the EPA and wrote new rules all on his own.

On Edit---

If Bloomberg's intent was to make it all about Obama so that the real rules and need for them don't actually get discussed then they can say "mission accomplished."

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

8. Of course! He's Superman, didn't you know. Everything is his fault, even when Rethugs

in Congress deliberately block his jobs agenda. Therefore, *HIS* administration hasn't done anything on jobs. smh...

[Cha]

9. Love how you can't stand. :) It's about the environment and I understand

that.

[proverbialwisdom]

2. AUTISM.

GOOGLE: autism coal plants

http://www.safeminds.org/mercury-autism/environmental-mercury/coal/

Coal

Coal naturally contains high amounts of mercury. When coal is burned in coal power plants to produce electricity, it creates two sources of mercury exposure:

mercury emissions into the atmosphere
mercury in coal-combustible by-products (CCBs) such as fly ash

Recent research has implicated air-borne mercury as a contributing factor to autism. A 2008 Texas study found a significant increase in risk of autism diagnosis related to proximity to coal plants or other industrial mercury emitters (see Proximity to Point Sources of Environmental Mercury Release as a Predictor of Autism Prevalence). A 2006 San Francisco study found an association between autism and the amount of mercury in the air. See the SafeMinds Environmental Autism and Mercury flyer for more details.

“Clean Coal” will never be clean. Existing technologies can reduce airborne mercury emissions up to 90%. However, these technologies will not eliminate mercury air pollution or the concentrated mercury present in Coal-Combustion By-Products (CCBs) produced by coal-fired power plants. Long-term solutions are needed to shift energy production away from coal-fired power plants to cleaner non-mercury polluting technologies, like solar and wind technology. SafeMinds has written a policy statement for a mercury-free energy policy (download here). The policy statement includes SafeMinds views on coal, natural gas, and mercury-containing lightbulbs.

There is currently more regulatory focus on reducing mercury emissions. Whereas it is crucial to reduce mercury emissions with the best-available technology, technology does not provide a means to remove 100% of the mercury from emissions. Further, there is a concern that the technology used to reduce mercury emissions may result in an increased amount of mercury in Coal Combusion By-products (CCB’s, a.k.a. CCW “Coal Combustion Waste). And as the recent coal-ash spill in Tennessee demonstrated, CCB’s are a large and lightly-regulated source of exposure to mercury and other toxic chemicals.

<>

[Jesus Malverde]

3. This makes us more dependent on gas fired energy. The oil industry says thanks.

There used to be a time, when the United States was industrialized, we had real pollution problems. Cities like pittsburg were a mess.



We shipped our dirty industries to China. If President Obama was serious about pollution he would insist American companies in China meet US pollution controls for manufacturing.

This move, makes energy more expensive and further puts the United States at an economic disadvantage over countries with cheaper sources of power.

[proverbialwisdom]

4. Economic disadvantage? Public health, AUTISM.

http://najms.net/wp-content/uploads/v06i03.pdf#page=34

Preface to the special issue of autism

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the fastest-growing complex neurodevelopment disorder, continues to rise in its prevalence, now affecting up to 1 in 50 children in the USA, and averaging 1% globally, according to the latest CDC report. More children will be diagnosed with ASD this year than with AIDS, diabetes & cancer combined in the USA. ASD costs the nation $137 billion a year and this debt is expected to increase in the next decade. Hence, ASD has become a huge healthcare burden and global threat, categorized by the CDC as a national public health crisis.

<>

Xuejun Kong, MD
Editor-in-Chief, NAJMS
Department of Medicine
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Harvard Medical School

Christopher J. McDougle, MD
Guest Editor, NAJMS
Lurie Center for Autism Massachusetts General Hospital
Harvard Medical School

More: http://www.democraticunderground.com/101672031

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/24/autism-toxic-chemicals-children-environment-risk-factors_n_1543316.html

[Jesus Malverde]

6. Then it would stand to reason that Autism would have reached its zenith years ago when coal was used

everywhere. People used to burn it at home, power trains and ships with it. It was everywhere. Yet Autism as defined is a relatively recent phenomena....

[proverbialwisdom]

7. Good points, obvious question, not my field / I don't have an explanation, I suspect others do.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080424120953.htm

Autism Risk Linked To Distance From Power Plants, Other Mercury-Releasing Sources
Apr. 25, 2008

...The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated environmental mercury releases at 158 million tons annually nationwide in the late 1990s, the time period studied by the Texas team. Most exposures were said to come from coal-fired utility plants (33 percent of exposures), municipal/medical waste incinerators (29 percent) and commercial/industrial boilers (18 percent). Cement plants also release mercury.

<>

Journal reference: Palmer, R.F., et al., Proximity to point sources of environmental mercury release as a predictor of autism prevalence. Health & Place (2008), doi:10.1016/j.healthplace.2008.02.001.

http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/health-and-human-body/human-body/chemicals-within-us/#page=1

Chemicals Within Us
Written by David Ewing Duncan
Republished from the pages of National Geographic magazine

(p3)

And then there is mercury, a neurotoxin that can permanently impair memory, learning centers, and behavior. Coal-burning power plants are a major source of mercury, sending it out their stacks into the atmosphere, where it disperses in the wind, falls in rain, and eventually washes into lakes, streams, or oceans. There bacteria transform it into a compound called methylmercury, which moves up the food chain after plankton absorb it from the water and are eaten by small fish. Large predatory fish at the top of the marine food chain, like tuna and swordfish, accumulate the highest concentrations of methylmercury—and pass it on to seafood lovers.

<>

[Kolesar]

5. We have a whole forum on Energy issues if you want to get up to speed on it

Love to have you
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=forum&id=1127

[daleo]

11. There's a lot of cross-ownership between coal and oil companies

This will also make wind and solar more competitive.

[SunSeeker]

10. K & R

[cstanleytech]

12. If it came down to coal or nuke power plants though I would pick coal ones.

Of course what I would really prefer would be something clean like solar, geothermal, hydro or wind.

[joshcryer]

13. US exports of coal are at an all time high.

Thanks for renewables and gas fired peaking plants.

[Celefin]

14. Funny how CCS nowadays is treated as a commonplace technology

When it actually isn't, at all.

The revised standard would retain a provision letting utilities phase-in the capture technology over time, one person said.

It better do - currently there is no carbon capture and storage technology that actually works or is being tested at a real-world power plant. That provision makes it unnecessary to implement anything for the next 15-20 years at least.

[Nihil]

15. Funny how CCS is even being treated as a real-world technology that works - it doesn't.

Still, at least that allows Obama to continue supporting coal and I'm sure someone
is about to remind use that he needs the votes for his next election ... oh, wait ...
what's the official justification for it now?

You are sadly spot on: not only is there no genuine CCS technology in place in any
real-world plant but this just allows the good old "kick the can down the road" process
to continue ... Business As Usual = Suck up the dollars and f*ck the environment.

[Celefin]

16. Indeed. Plus even if you 'C'apture the 'C'arbon... the 'S' renders the approach unusable

There has been extensive debate on that... from injecting it into the deep sea to storing it in shale formations or shut oil wells.
They all carry enormous risks, from extremely rapid ocean acidification to disruption of the food chain; the geological formations approach is insecure, a large scale accidental release of a CO2 'geyser' has the potential to kill off everything on the surface in a very large area... and then there are the myriad of unsolved technical problems AND the very large energy costs associated.

It's a total non-starter but has been cited by politicians all over the spectrum as THE solution to our climate problems.
Pure smoke and mirrors.

Indeed kick the can down the road. It's infuriating... especially that most of the voters believe this rubbish because it has been treated as 'fact for a decade now. Incidentally a decade where there has been no progress on CCS.

Anyway, thanks for your reply

[Nihil]

17. "Pure smoke and mirrors" - exactly so!

They use the nice shiny pseudo-tech-geek "mirrors" to redirect the view to other things
whilst providing an uninhibited chimney to put even more pure smoke into the air.

I'm in total agreement with you on this!