In a decision just made public ( full text PDF ) the EPA has ruled that it will abide by the 2007 Supreme Court decisions and limit carbon emissions from new and proposed coal plants – essentially killing off the construction of new coal-fired power plants in the foreseeable future. According to the Sierra Club “The decision means that all new and proposed coal plants nationwide must go back and address their carbon dioxide emissions.”

What’s next? Nuclear Power? Auto emissions?  Carbon Dioxide is Carbon Dioxide, whether from a coal plant, a tail pipe, or the nuclear fuel cycle. Will we see plug in hybids? Plug in hybrids running on biodiesel and methane?  Charged by PVSolar and Wind power? I think it is a matter of when, not if.  Toyota led the way with the Prius – the status car of the decade for people who care about the planet.  New taxis and limos in New York City and elsewhere must be hybrids.  Toyota is capturing the ‘Black Car’ market while Ford, with the Escape hybrid is leading the yellow cab market. In MOTOWN GM announced the Volt, a worthy successor to the EV1, and now Ford announced the Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan hybrids.

Here’s what happened.  In April, 2007 the Supreme Court ruled that the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency can and must regulate Carbon Dioxide unless it can prove scientifically that greenhouse gases do not contribute to global warming. See Environmentalists hail Supreme Court ruling on carbon or the New York Times. The Sierra Club filed suit in May to request the EPA overturn the Deseret Power’s proposed plant because the 110 MW plant would have emitted 3.37 million tons of CO2 each year. The EPA ruled that it will regulate carbon.  For the text of the Supreme Court’s Rulings: Environmental Defense v Duke Energy and Massachusetts v Environmental Protection Agency ).

On “We Can Solve It” Al Gore challenged America to generate 100% of our electricity using clean, renewable, sustainable technologies. Boone Pickens came up with The Pickens Plan

and said “I’m going to build a wind farm in West Texas.” Vinod Khosla (Sun Microsystems), Paul Allen (Microsoft), Eric Schmidt (Google) and others in Silicon Valley are investing in solar and wind, and designing hybrid cars.

Meanwhile, the coal industry is trying to fight back. They keep talking about ‘Clean Coal.’ The thing is, “Clean coal” technology doesn’t really exist. We at Popular Logistics would like to see every coal miner in America and elsewhere offered a job manufacturing photovoltaic solar modules, wind turbines, and other tools of the sustainable energy trade.

“Clean Coal is a marketing plan, it’s all smoke and mirrors.  See How Stuff Works , Greenpeace ( Myths and Facts ). Richard Coniff, at Yale Environment 360 writes:

Clean is not a word that normally leaps to mind for a commodity some spoilsports associate with unsafe mines, mountaintop removal, acid rain, black lung, lung cancer, asthma, mercury contamination, and, of course, global warming. And yet the phrase “clean coal” now routinely turns up in political discourse, almost as if it were a reality.

Coniff writes about the energy and the money required.  Burning hydrocarbons releases chemical energy and carbon dioxide.  Burning coal in a “clean” manner requires recapture of the carbon, and storage somewhere – such as oil or gas wells or in the oceans. This adds to the cost, or would, if the technology existed. It doesn’t make much sense from a thermodynamics perspective. Which is why T. Boone Pickens is building wind turbines, not “Clean Coal” plants.