T.V.A. Agrees to Shutter 18 Generators That Use Coal

[ProSense]

T.V.A. Agrees to Shutter 18 Generators That Use Coal

By FELICITY BARRINGER

In a sweeping legal settlement, the Tennessee Valley Authority has agreed for the first time to reduce its overall capacity to generate coal-fired electricity, promising to close 18 of its coal-burning generators over the next six years while spending $3 billion to $5 billion on pollution controls on any remaining units that use coal.

The accord, announced Thursday by the Environmental Protection Agency, will bring about one of the most significant cuts in coal-fired power generation by any utility that relies heavily on coal in its fuel mix. The closings will eliminate 16 percent of the authority’s coal-fired capacity, and the accord holds out the prospect that some or all of another 18 units will shut down as well, for a total loss of as much as a third of the authority’s coal-burning capacity.

By the end of 2017, the utility’s emissions of nitrogen oxides, a crucial component in smog and ground-level ozone, will be reduced by at least 69 percent, and sulfur dioxide emissions will be cut by 67 percent, the E.P.A. said, compared with 2008 levels. Sulfur dioxide can react with other compounds to form ultrafine particles, which are associated with heart and lung disease.

The actions dictated in the sweeping 120-page settlement, reached with four states and three environmental groups that sued the T.V.A. over air pollution, signal a fundamental shift for an agency that was created during the Depression to bring electricity to rural America In the 1960s and ’70s, it became one of the largest users of coal in the utility industry. Coal makes up more than half of the fuel that the utility burns to generate electricity for nine million people.

more

[RC]

1. And replace them with what?

Electricity consumption is still going up.

[BeFree]

3. RC... why not be happy?

Are you not glad coal plants are being shutdown?
Or is Big Coal and it's big problems the only thing that makes the precious nukes look good?

Solar is your friend. Nukes will kill you. The sun is your friend. Man made plutonium is a killer.

[RC]

5. Solar and Wind are horrendously inefficient.

They don't scale up efficiently, either. To say nothing about unreliability and needing costly backups/storage to even function 24/7/365.
Besides photo/solar cells are not environmentally friendly to manufacture.

My question remains, replace them with what? More coal fired plants? Oil, gas, nuclear? Millions of gerbils in cages? What?

[BeFree]

6. Nukes?

Lets build more nukes, right? That is your answer?

You do make me laugh..... the nukes are the worst of the worst and you can't accept that truth for one second, but you have the audacity to make a claim that solar has problems.

Why can't you just be glad we have been successful at closing some dirty coal plants?

[BeFree]

2. A Win!

People for the ethical treatment of the air we breathe win one.
It has been a long long time since they won a damn thing they really don't know what to do with themselves, tho.

Anybody have any idea what they could do to celebrate? Or is it too little, too late?

[LAGC]

4. What does this have to do with the President?

Did you mean to post this in GD?

Edit to add: Oh, and BTW, K&R.

[TheWraith]

7. Someone is actually unrecommending this.

More than one someone, actually--it was at five on the Greatest page, then I clicked on it, and it read 3.

[hugo_from_TN]

8. Unrec'd for whining about unrec'ing.

[TheWraith]

9. Yeah, that's a really mature attitude.

And sensible, too. :eyes: