2 More Utilities Retiring Aging Coal Plants in Wake of Health Report

Two of the nation’s biggest power providers, Exelon and Progress Energy, announced plans this week to retire more than a dozen of their aging coal-fired power plants.

While the decisions were based on economics, they ultimately will have an impact on human health.

In North Carolina, Progress Energy, under pressure from the state to upgrade its emissions scrubbing equipment, announced Tuesday that it would close 11 coal-fired units by the end of 2017 and shift to cleaner-burning natural gas. The targeted units represent nearly 30 percent of the company’s statewide coal fleet.

Exelon followed up on Wednesday, announcing its own plans to shut down three of its coal-fired units in Pennsylvania by the end of 2011. In addition, Duke Energy plans to retire several of its aging coal-fired units over the next decade.

“Coal-fueled generation will continue to be vital to our ability to meet customer electricity needs,” Progress Energy Carolinas CEO Lloyd Yates said. “But as environmental regulations continue to change, and as even more significant rule changes appear likely in the near future, the costs of retrofitting and operating these plants will increase dramatically.

“We believe this is the right decision for our customers, our state and our company.”

It's the right move for health reasons, too, as Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) found when it took an in-depth look at coal's impacts on human health and mortality. In a report released last month, the medical and public health group connected coal and its emissions to a number of serious health issues, including increased risk of heart disease, cancer, asthma and lowered IQ’s.

Local Health Risks

While coal accounts for 50% of the nation’s electricity production, it is responsible for 87% of the total utility-related nitrogen oxide (NO2) pollution, 94% of utility-related sulfur dioxide (SO2) pollution, and 98% of all utility-related mercury pollution, PSR found.

“Cities with high NO2 concentrations had death rates four times higher than those with low NO2 concentrations,” write the authors of the PSR report, Coal's Assault on Human Health.

Coal is associated with detrimental effects on human health throughout its lifecycle — from mining to transporting, burning and finally disposing of waste products.

At extraction, breathing coal dust can damage miners' lungs. Mountaintop mining operations can contaminate drinking water with the heavy metals they unearth and push into nearby streams. Dust from blasting and coal trucks then carry those risks to coal field communities.

In the transportation stage, coal trains and trucks released over 600,000 tons of NO2 and 50,000 tons of particulate matter (PM) into the air every year as recently as 2005, largely through diesel exhaust. Then, at the end of the lifecycle, the waste from coal-fired power plants in the form of coal ash becomes a problem. The toxic flood of wet coal ash that spilled into a Tennessee river last December when a TVA impoundment broke was a vivid reminder of coal power's wastes.

It is the combustion stage, however, that exacts the largest toll on health.

The air contaminants released by burning coal cause a wide range of cardiovascular, respiratory and neurological diseases by triggering inflammation and oxidative stress in various parts of the body, the physicians write.