Tag Archives: Coal

The costs of coal on your neighbors’ health

We can’t afford the costs of coal on our health.

John Sepulvado wrote for CNN Radio 1 April 2012, A power plant, cancer and a small town’s fears,

The two of them invested their life savings building their home. It’s a large ranch house on several acres, and the plan was the two of them would leave it for their sons and grandchildren. They gave up that dream after Maddox’s mother developed a rare form of ear cancer and died after living at the home for three years.

“I’m not going to bring my grandchildren up in this,” Maddox says. “Anybody who does would be a fool, I think.”

The problem, Maddox explains, is now he and his neighbors are getting sick. For Maddox, the first signs of trouble would come in the middle of the night, when he would wake up with nose bleeds mixed with clear mucus. Then his muscles started twitching, and then he got kidney disease, and then sclerosis of the liver.

Where does he live? Down the road from Plant Scherer in Juliette, Georgia: the nation’s dirtiest coal plant.

Georgia Power’s solution? Buy houses like his, cap the well, and raze the house.

Better solution? Get off of health-destroying moribund coal and get on with clean distributed wind and solar, for the profit (even to Georgia Power), for energy independence, for resilience, and yes, for our health.

-jsq

Bulgaria cancelled a new nuke

If Bulgaria can do it, Georgia can do it: end a new nuke boondoggle. Bulgaria started opposition when building the plant seemed irreversible, yet they reversed it. We can, too. And we can get on with solar and wind.

Rayna St. wrote for Global Voices 31 March 2012, Bulgaria: Construction of the Nuclear Power Plant “Belene” Cancelled,

On March 28, Bulgaria officially announced the cancellation of its newest nuclear power plant (NPP) “Belene” construction. The Parliament has stopped this controversial project after years of discussion and more than half a billion euros invested in the construction of the first reactor.

Nuclear opponents in Bulgaria undid a done deal, starting with this:

Continue reading →

Insurgents win majority on Cobb EMC board

According to the Cobb EMC board election results, even without two runoffs, four new members were elected yesterday, so added to the 4 new members elected in November, that’s 8 out of 10 members opposed to coal plants, opposed to corruption, and for transparency.

Kim Isaza wrote for MDJOnline today, Four new Cobb EMC directors elected,

Four more seats on the Cobb EMC board of directors are now in new hands, and two more will be settled in unprecedented runoff elections on April 21.

The winners are: Rudy Underwood, who was unopposed in Area 2; Kelly Bodner in Area 3; Bryan Boyd in Area 8; and Eric Broadwell in Area 9.

One runoff will be for Area 4, where Jim Hudson won 681 votes (42 percent) and David McClellan won 601 votes (37 percent). There were eight candidates competing in Area 4.

The other runoff will be for Area 5, where Tripper Sharp — one of the plaintiffs to the 2007 lawsuit against the EMC — got 775 votes (46 percent), and Charles A. Sevier got 502 votes (30 percent). Nine candidates were vying for that seat.

To quote from Rudy Underwood’s platform:

Continue reading →

Solar eating fossil fuels’ cake in Germany

Why is Georgia Power still peddling misinformation about solar power instead of moving ahead with it? What’s happening in Germany could be a clue.


Giles Parkinson wrote for Crikey.com 28 March 2012 (it’s tomorrow in Australia), Why power generators are terrified of solar,
The first graph illustrates what a typical day on the electricity market in Germany looked like in March four years ago; the second illustrates what is happening now, with 25GW of solar PV installed across the country. Essentially, it means that solar PV is not just licking the cream off the profits of the fossil fuel generators — as happens in Australia with a more modest rollout of PV — it is in fact eating their entire cake.
So solar is taking the profits out of coal and natural gas. So sad!
Deutsche Bank solar analyst Vishal Shah noted in a report last month that EPEX data was showing solar PV was cutting peak electricity prices by up to 40%, a situation that utilities in Germany and elsewhere in Europe were finding intolerable. “With Germany adopting a drastic cut, we expect major utilities in other European countries to push for similar cuts as well,” Shah noted.

Analysts elsewhere said one quarter of Germany’s gas-fired capacity may be closed, because of the impact of surging solar and wind capacity. Enel, the biggest utility in Italy, which had the most solar PV installed in 2011, highlighted its exposure to reduced peaking prices when it said that a €5/MWh fall in average wholesale prices would translate into a one-third slump in earnings from the generation division.

You know, if the utilities got out in front and generated energy from solar and wind themselves, they wouldn’t be having this problem.

Here in Georgia, even Georgia Power could get going and do that, instead of fighting this:

Continue reading →

Luckie Street Solar Project

So whose solar parking lot is that in Atlanta?

According to Atlanta Downtown Improvement District, Luckie Street Solar Project (New Development)

157 Luckie St NW, Atlanta, GA 30303
CATEGORY: Institutional Development
Developer: Turner Enterprises
Solar panels added to a surface parking lot that will produce nearly 200 kilowatt hours of energy, making this the largest solar project installed in Downtown Atlanta
$1 million
Completed 2011

That’s 20 cents per kilowatt hour. Which won’t take many years to pay for itself.

Why did Ted Turner do this? According to Maria Saporta for the Atlanta Business Chronicle, 10 December 1010, Ted Turner builds solar project on parking lot next to his building,

Continue reading →

Georgia Energy Trust Fund —Dr. Sidney Smith 2012 02 17

After the ribbon cutting for a new solar installation in Bryan County, Dr. Sidney Smith talked about a distributed commodity market in solar power, plus large private investment utility-scale solar plants, and then he told LAKE about the Georgia Energy Trust Fund.

Here’s the video:


Georgia Energy Trust Fund —Dr. Sidney Smith 2012 02 17
South Eastern Pathology Associates,
Selling Power, Lower Rates for Customers LLC (LRCLLC),
Richmond Hill, Bryan County, Georgia, 17 February 2012.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

We donate 1.5% of the money we make to this trust fund for the county…. Now we invest that money in Georgia bonds for the county. And then the county only gets half of the interest So the funds we donate for these counties will grow forever as a result of what we’re doing with the trust fund…

It’s invested in us, roads, airplanes, deep water, stuff like that.

And that’s the key actually.

Continue reading →

Georgia legislature giving unelected bodies bond-issuing privatizing power

The Georgia House has just passed a bill authorizing local development authorities to form public-private partnerships as they see fit and to issue bonds to pay for them, putting we the taxpayers on the hook. If this bill passes, VLCIA could issue bonds for a private prison, a biomass plant, a coal plant (apparently not a coincindence; see below), a toll road, a private railroad, or whatever it felt like. It wouldn’t even need cooperation by elected officials. It wouldn’t have to go to the Lowndes County Commission for permission, like VLCIA did for $15 million in bonds to buy real estate. The Industrial Authority could just issue the bonds itself! And we the taxpayers who would have to pay for it? We’ll just get to pay, that’s all. There’s still time to stop it in the Georgia Senate.

Maybe HB 475 should be called the “Easy Jobs for Cronies Act”. It adds various definitions of public-private partnership, and then throws in a wild card: Continue reading →

Coal EMCs: no budget for this boondoogle —Katherine Helms Cummings

Received yesterday on Coal Plants Washington and Ben Hill not quite dead yet. -jsq
I asked Washington EMC Chair Mike McCoy today after their monthly board meeting what their budget is for 2012 and this boondoggle. They haven’t got a budget. They are meeting next week with the four remaining co-ops (assuming some don’t peel off before then) and they will work on a budget then.

You can check my blog out for more of the hair raising and mind boggling details of what they are doing in the “best interests” of the owner members and community.

-Katherine Helms Cummings

On her blog, Rural and Progressive, she posted yesterday Is Washington EMC “winging it” on Plant Washington finances? and today WEMC Board Member supports forensic audit. Very interesting.

-jsq

Coal Plants Washington and Ben Hill not quite dead yet

Somebody’s been watching too much Twilight. Plant Washington now joins the undead. But maybe Plant Ben Hill is really dead.

Dave Williams wrote for the Atlanta Business Journal yesterday, Georgia coal plant project to push on,

Cobb Electric Membership Corp.‘s board of directors voted Tuesday to pull out of the $2.1 billion 850-megawatt Plant Washington project, citing the uncertain impacts of tightened federal regulation of carbon emissions. Cobb EMC was the largest participant in the consortium Power4Georgians.

The consortium began looking for other partners to replace Cobb EMC well before Wednesday’s decision, which had been anticipated, said Dean Alford, spokesman for Power4Georgians.

“This in no way changes the course,” he said. “It’s still full steam ahead.”

But he wouldn’t say who else would help fund it. We’ll see whether he’s blustering or actually has any further backers.

John Roach and Kim Isaza in MJDOnline yesterday, EMC backs out of plan to build coal-fired plant, had a list of the other current partners: Continue reading →

Southern Company has 3 biggest CO2 plants in U.S.

David Ibala wrote for the AJC 11 January 2012, Study: Southern Company plants are 3 biggest greenhouse gas emitters
Two Southern Company coal-fired electric generating plants near Atlanta are the biggest contributors to global greenhouse gases in the United States, and a third Southern plant in Alabama is the third-biggest emitter, an analysis of environmental data found Wednesday.

The nation’s No. 1 producer of carbon dioxide — the heat-trapping gas that is held chiefly responsible in models of global warming — is Plant Scherer in Juliette, about 65 miles southeast of downtown Atlanta, according to the Associated Press analysis of data reported to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for 2010.

That’s the plant that supplies most of our power in south Georgia, whether you get it through Georgia Power or Colquitt EMC.
The No. 2 producer is Plant Bowen, just west of Cartersville, about 50 miles northwest of central Atlanta, and the third-largest is Plant Miller in Quinton, Ala., about 165 miles west of Atlanta near Birmingham, the AP said.
The story also notes (as a picture caption):
Georgia Power recently installed pollution-control equipment, called baghouses, to curb mercury pollution at Plant Scherer. EPA rules that will regulate mercury likely will lead to the utility to install additional baghouses at other coal-fired plants
Hm, that’s exactly what Southern Company said it was incompetent to do. Apparently it figured out to do what other power companies already knew how to do.

Anyway, pumping out CO2 from coal plants is what Southern Company is doing instead of solar and wind.

-jsq