Coal Mountain

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http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17504

 

 

Coal Mountain

 

By William J. Kelly, AlterNet

January 6, 2004

 

The celebrated ecological economist Herman Daly once said, " There is something

fundamentally wrong with treating the earth as if it were a business in

liquidation. " In the year ahead, the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power,

the nation's largest municipal utility, has the perfect opportunity to begin

righting that wrong.

 

 

 

The question on the minds of many environmentalists and elected officials in Los

Angeles is whether the department – which contributes to smog in Southern

California and environmental degradation throughout the Southwest – will begin

to treat earth's resources as precious stones to be conserved for future

generations or go on treating them like cheap goods at a discount store?

 

 

 

If any place in the nation has the potential to make a massive shift toward

renewable power it would seem to be Los Angeles, with its abundant sunshine and

urgent need to clean up air pollution. Ironically, though, the department seems

poised to invest in a distant coal plant. It's not alone. Across the

intermountain West, energy companies are contemplating construction of some 35

new coal power plants. Other proposals dot the South and nation as a whole.

 

 

 

Indeed, coal shows no signs of giving up its throne as the king of fuels in the

U.S. electric utility industry. Cheaper today than in 1949, coal produces 56

percent of the nation's electricity and the Department of Energy estimates that

the U.S. has enough of the mineral to burn for hundreds of years to come.

 

 

 

Yet, even with modern day environmental controls, coal is a major source of air

pollution, including toxic mercury, and produces more carbon dioxide than other

fossil fuels, which scientists widely acknowledge are causing Earth to warm up.

Coal, for instance, produces 89% of the carbon dioxide from U.S. electric power

plants.

 

 

 

Despite such problems, early next year the Utah Department of Environmental

Quality is expected to issue a draft permit to build a third coal-burning power

plant at the state's InterMountain Power Project. The Los Angeles department has

spent $2 million to support planning and permit applications for the project and

soon will have to decide whether to help finance the proposed $1.75 billion

project. Alternatively, it could spend the money on renewable power facilities

in its own smog-clouded backyard.

 

 

 

That looks unlikely. A recent report from the city council's chief advisor

recommends that that department embrace green power and move toward the state's

20 percent renewable portfolio standard, but only if it's not too expensive, a

caveat that appears to leave the door open to more coal.

 

 

 

The problem chronicled by the report – which relies on conventional accounting –

is that renewable energy costs more than fossil fuel. For instance, wind costs

between 5 and 6.5 cents/kwh and solar power costs between 40 and 60 cents/kWh,

even in sunny Southern California. Meanwhile, power made from coal, like rags on

a department store discount rack, costs just 2 to 4 cents/kWh.

 

 

 

No surprise then that the department is likely to invest in coal power in the

coming year and hold off much of its planned investment in renewable power until

the proverbial out years.

 

 

 

The Intermountain Power Project – built in the early 1980s – already has two

950-megawatt coal-fired units and the Los Angeles department consumes about 45

percent of their combined output. The units burn 5.3 million tons of coal a

year. Their operator, the Intermountain Power Agency, estimates there are about

100 million tons of recoverable coal in the vicinity of the project's current

supply mines, or a 20-year supply. The project is one of three major coal-fired

power plants on which the department relies.

 

 

 

Its upcoming decision on whether to invest in expanding the Intermountain Power

Project is likely to be intertwined with the fate of another coal plant, the

Mohave Generation Station in Laughlin, Nevada. Mohave – owned jointly by

Southern California Edison, the department, the Salt River Project, and Nevada

Power Co. – has operated since 1971. The federal Environmental Protection Agency

is requiring the operators to reduce the plant's sulfur dioxide emissions by 85

percent by 2006 because it diminishes visibility at the Grand Canyon. It is the

single biggest source of the acidic emissions in the western United States,

producing about 41,000 tons of the pollutant a year.

 

 

 

The 273-mile slurry pipeline that supplies the plant with coal from the Black

Mesa Mine is depleting the local aquifer of the Navajo and Hopi Indians and the

mine itself faces eventual depletion. Given the prospect of having to

internalize some of the costs of the pollution and resource depletion, instead

the department and other Mohave plant owners may simply walk away and close the

plant in 2005. This would cut the department's capacity by 158 megawatts, which

is 10 percent of the plant's total 1,580-megawatt capacity.

 

 

 

Seeing the writing on the wall, the department sold half its original 20 percent

interest in the Mohave plant to the Salt River Project in 2000. It has since

used the $95 million in proceeds to modernize major generating stations in the

Los Angeles Basin, which operate on natural gas. The move will enable the plants

to make more power without exceeding air pollution limits. However,

environmental groups point out that more frequent operation of the plants will

increase the actual pollution emitted from the facilities at a time when air

quality shows signs of deteriorating in the Los Angeles region.

 

 

 

Last year, the inland area downwind of the department's plants experienced its

first stage one smog alert since 1998, forcing the local air district to tell

residents to restrict their outdoor activities. Over the past two years, the

number of days over the federal ozone standard in the Los Angeles area shot up

from an all-time low of 36 in 2001 to 68 during the 2003 summer smog season.

 

 

 

Meanwhile, state law requires the department to develop a renewable portfolio

standard plan. In response, it plans some investments in wind, solar power, and

other renewable facilities. However, even with those additional facilities, its

total renewable energy generation capacity will amount to only 3 percent, or 220

megawatts out of a total of 7,000 megawatts.

 

 

 

The department's laggard pace at developing renewable power has rankled some

members of the Los Angeles City Council and state Legislature, which has buoyed

the hopes of environmentalists that a breakthrough may be at hand in the next

month or two. But the promise of cheap and abundant power for the nation's

second biggest city and profits from wholesale power sales bode against any

departmental rush to green power.

 

 

 

Instead, the future is likely to involve burning sizable amounts of coal that

release large amounts of carbon dioxide, acidic gases, and mercury, pollutants

that are changing the climate, polluting the air, gradually contaminating the

world's fish supply, and damaging human health. Coal, which supplies 50 percent

of the department's power, sells for less than $24/ton, down from a peak price

of $52 a ton in 1979. As long as the coal is mined and burned hundreds of miles

from Southern California, Angelinos will not bear the environmental costs, at

least not directly.

 

 

 

Being able to escape those costs will likely make it irresistible for the Los

Angeles City Council – which depends upon the department to transfer 7 percent

of its power sales revenues to the city's general coffers each year – to pass up

the opportunity to invest in the new coal plant, even as they give lip-service

to a renewable future.

 

 

 

William J. Kelly is a correspondent for Energy Circuit, where a version of this

story originally appeared, at www.californiaenergycircuit.net.

 

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