NY Times: Is America Ready to Quit Coal?

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/business/15coal.html?_r=1

Is America Ready to Quit Coal?

By MELANIE WARNER

Last May, protesters took over James E. Rogers’s front lawn in Charlotte, N.C., unfurling banners declaring “No new coal” and erecting a makeshift “green power plant” — which, they said in a press release, was fueled by “the previously unexplored energy source known as hot air, which has been found in large concentrations” at his home.

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With concerns over climate change intensifying, electricity generation from coal, once reliably cheap, looks increasingly expensive in the face of the all-but-certain prospect of regulations that would impose significant costs on companies that emit large amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

As a result, utilities’ plans for new coal plants are being turned down left and right. In the last two-and-a-half years, plans for 83 plants in the United States have either been voluntarily withdrawn or denied permits by state regulators. The roughly 600 coal-fired power plants in the United States are responsible for almost one-third of the country’s total carbon emissions, but they are distinctly at odds with a growing outlook that embraces clean energy.

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The coal industry is aware of all of these issues and is fighting back. An industry-financed group called the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity spent $38 million last year informing Americans, via TV and newspaper ads, that coal is the source of 50 percent of their electricity, that it is an abundant domestic resource and, most importantly, that there is the promise of “clean,” or carbon-free, coal. This argument is what Mr. Kennedy’s group calls “the dirty lie.”

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