Tweet
This looks like a pretty good deal between the EPA and the Tennessee Valley Authority:
The Tennessee Valley Authority agreed Thursday to mothball 18 coal-fired boilers and spend as much as $5 billion on new pollution controls in a far-reaching deal with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to settle Clean Air Act complaints.
The TVA agreement to shut down 16% of its total coal-fired power-generation capacity is the largest such commitment by any company that has settled with EPA under a clean-air enforcement action. The company, which is owned by the federal government, said it will replace the lost capacity with cleaner generation sources, such as natural gas or nuclear power. TVA said the retirements include about 1,000 megawatts of capacity that was already slated for idling. The TVA will also invest $350 million in clean-energy projects.
That the replacement comes in the form of clean-energy rather than renewable-energy sources is annoying, especially considering the reports that fracking for natural gas is dirtier than coal. And this is the end of a twelve-year odyssey to get the TVA to comply with Clean Air Act requirements.
Still, I think this winds up as an advance. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson claims that 3,000 premature deaths will be avoided as a direct result of their anti-pollution rules on mercury, sulfur and greenhouse gas emissions, and that $27 billion in annual health benefits will be found. This TVA action is kind of a proof of concept. If the coal boilers are retired, and cleaner sources used as replacement, and the area around the Tennessee Valley gets healthier and more prosperous, then we have primary evidence that EPA did its job well. Of course, conservative lawmakers went back to the only argument they have, that this will raise energy costs. TVA disputes that, and even if it were true, an extra nickel on dime on your electric bill in exchange for an asthma-free child sounds like a good trade. It’s notable that the new Republican Governor of Tennessee, Bill Haslam, endorsed the deal, specifically because of the economic development possibilities.
Hopefully the EPA will get more coal plants retired as soon as possible. This, incidentally, is why you don’t want their regulatory authority curtailed.
12 Comments
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About FDL News Desk
I know a little about fracking–enough to know that some really, and I mean really nasty chemicals are involved. I don’t understand the mystery as to the refusal of companies to disclose what chemicals they are using during the fracking process. I thought companies that used chemicals were required to have available MSDS’s, or Material Safety Data Sheets that identified all chemicals and their properties. These are available to the workers on site as well as local fire departments and the community at large. Do oil companies have an exemption for this?
Its not easy to find a number for this, but the best estimate I have found of the efficiency of most coal fired power plants is 30%. If new plants were designed to be twice as efficient (and 60% is still not all that high efficiency-wise) we could get the same power with half the coal- half the mining pollution, half the air pollution, half the CO2, half the coal ash to dispose of.
This was what was supposed to have happened in 25 years after the Clean Air Act. They were supposed to have closed down the old plants gradually and replaced them by now. It we had done something real instead of living in the fantasy world of an Alzheimer’s afflicted president and his followers, we would be twice as far to where we need to be, all in a gradual economically non-disruptive process.
Laws you say? Yeah, there’s a law about the fracking chemicals. It was in the last Bush Energy Bill, that Obama signed BTW. The law says they don’t have to tell anyone including the EPA or other watchdog agencies, the names of the chemicals they’re using, how much they’re using, or the damage these chemicals cause to human health or the environment.
And if anyone thinks Obama is going to try and change this law, I want some of what they’re smokin’.
As far as the elimination of 18 coal fired boilers, I don’t believe we’re getting the entire deal. It’s not the MO of this administration by a longshot.
Read today that in some areas of fracking, you can set the water on fire and that cows nearby were radioactive. Nice.
Yes, that is correct.
You gotta see the documentary “Gasland.”
People in PA. turned on their kitchen faucet, holds a bic lighter by it and the running water turns into an open flame. It’s absolutely horrifying.
Teabaggers held a rally today at the state capital in OKC. They could’ve fit in the corner booth a denny’s, about 20 people showed up
Correction, these criminals were exempted in Bush’s Clean Water Act, not his energy bill. Sorry. Obama voted for it,too.
I believe you were right the first time? He made a rule change to the Act allowing dumping “waste”-meant to help coal producers-in water. Natural Gas producers were specifically exempted from the Act in the Energy Bill.
And nuclear power is NOT clean energy. It’s the dirtiest energy of them all. For starters, there is no place on earth to store the nuclear waste that persists in being radioactive for thousands of years. For seconds, even the ones that don’t go poof in the night and explode or spill nuclear radioactivity, leak some radioactivity normally.
Have you seen the photos of the birth defects of the children born from Chernobyl’s persistent radioactivity?
from
.
http://climateprogress.org/2011/04/14/clean-air-act-benefits-ucs-ticker/#more-46861
that is from climateprogress
edit does not work.
http://climateprogress.org/2011/04/14/clean-air-act-benefits-ucs-ticker/#more-46861
I wish we would invest more money in thorium nuclear research, it doesn’t melt down and produces very little waste compared to uranium. But a working thorium reactor is still several years in the future.