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West Virginia Redefines Dirty Energy as 'Alternative'
When you hear the phrase "alternative energy," what comes to mind?
Solar power? Wind? Hydroelectric?
Not for West Virginia's political leaders. They think a little differently.
In the recent legislative session, Gov. Joe Manchin championed and state lawmakers approved an energy portfolio standard requiring 25 percent of generation to come from "alternative and renewable" sources by 2025.
But the new standard, which goes into effect this month, defines "alternative" in an unusual way to include natural gas, old tires, coal gas and even waste coal – energy sources that emit significant quantities of climate-warming greenhouse gases, as well as toxic, health-damaging pollutants.
"It's Governor Humpty Dumpty occupying that nice mansion beside the Kanawha River (where he can admire the endless coal barges)," West Virginia Sierra Club Chair Jim Sconyers wrote about the new law. "After all, it was Humpty Dumpty who said, 'When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.'"
The new law sets up a system of tradable credits for electricity produced by alternative and renewable sources. While it offers credits for traditional renewable sources including solar, wind, hydropower and geothermal, it also gives credits for what it calls "alternative" sources:
* advanced coal technology, a method of capturing emissions from burning coal that's still unproven on a large scale;
* coal bed methane, or natural gas extracted from coal beds, an energy source that has a serious impact on groundwater supplies;
* fuel produced by coal gasification or liquefaction, which emits toxic pollutants as well as greenhouse gases;
* synthetic gas made from coal, another hydrocarbon-intensive and polluting fuel;
* integrated gasification combined cycle technologies, which reduce but do not eliminate the emissions typically associated with coal plants;
* waste coal, the burning of which produces large amounts of greenhouse gases as well as toxic emissions;
* tire-derived fuel, another polluting, toxic fuel source;
* pumped storage hydroelectric projects, which are actually net consumers of energy;
* natural gas, the burning of which produces greenhouse gases and other pollution; and
* nuclear power, which releases radioactive pollution to the environment and also produces dangerous waste products.
The West Virginia Environmental Council's head lobbyist, Donald S. Garvin, Jr., blasted the new standard in an op-ed, writing:
"No other state includes natural gas as a source of 'alternative' energy. Nuclear energy is included by only a few, and they specify 'advanced generation' nuclear facilities.
"Most states that include 'clean coal' specifically limit it to facilities that include carbon capture and sequestration, or require that they lead to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Some jurisdictions specifically exclude 'pump-storage' hydropower facilities."
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Biomass burning
I hope that Ms Sturgis will appropriately broaden her critique of biomass burning, since wood and solid waste bruning is typically viewed as "clean and green" in comparison to coal.
While she quite correctly notes the increased emissions of toxins from burning waste coal, the same is true for buring solid waste, of even greater importance is the fact that buring wood emits more CO2, NOx, SO2 and particulates than buring coal (tons/MWh of power).
Yes burning wood is dirtier than burning coal.
To call power generation by burning wood "clean and green" is a travesty since it actually accelerates climate change according to the EPA since it is not "carbon neutral" (See Fed Register P18899). The current House and Senate climate bills which don't count these emissions of CO2 from biomass (about 700,000,000 tons a year if renewable targets are met in 2020 effectively reducing the cap reduction from 17% to 11%) are an environmental scam. To then qualify these biomass plants for billions of dollars in renewable energy credits is a total ripoff of the taxpayers/ratepayers.
More information is available at www.nobiomassburing.org
Bill Sammons, M.D.
drsammons@aol.com
A Few Mistakes
Nuclear power actually releases much less radioactivity to the environment than coal. Less radioactivity is released to the environment by all of the nuclear power plants in the United States than bubbles up into Americans' basements in the form of naturally-occurring radon.
And while pumped storage facilities are indeed net users of electricity (owing to the second law of thermodynamics), they serve a vital purpose on the grid -- one which improves grid efficiency and therefore reduces the overall fuel consumption and pollution emission from the power plants supplying that grid.
The most efficient generating plants are "base load" plants, which produce their full megawatt output day and night. But customers use more power during the day. There are two solutions to this disparity: We can run expensive, low-efficiency "peaking units" during the day when power demand is high and shut them down at night. Or we can use a pumped storage facility.
The pumped storage facility (for those unfamiliar) uses excess night-time generation capacity to run large pumps that move water from a low reservoir (like a lake or river) to an elevated storage area. Then during the day, the stored water is released through water turbines (similar to those at a hydroelectric plant) to supplement the higher day-time power demand. Pumped storage facilities therefore serve to even out power demand on the grid, allowing it to run most efficiently.
Natural gas and propane deliver the highest amount of energy per unit of carbon of all the various fossil fuels. While they are neither carbon free nor renewable, they are excellent "alternatives" to coal -- which currently powers more than 60% of our nation's electricity demand. There are even a few natural gas generation plants running on methane produced from biological decay in abandoned and covered landfills. This seems to me like an excellent "alternative" to coal.
I agree with the author that generation meeting the definition of "alternative" should meet the intent of the legislation -- namely, reducing the emission of undesired pollutants, including but not limited to greenhouse gasses. But the list of "alternatives" disputed in this article wrongly demonizes a few options that I believe could drastically improve the cleanliness of our power generation infrastructure.
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