popular logistics

There really is no such thing as “Clean Coal.” Mining coal destroys mountains, and often kills the miners.  Burning coal releases tons of carbon into the atmosphere and the oceans, and even if you could sequester the carbon, burning coal releases other pollutants, including mercury into the biosphere. The mercury makes its way into fish. This is why people, especially children and pregnant women, should not eat a lot of tuna or swordfish.  Wind, solar, geothermal, ocean current, and “negawatts,” on the other hand, really are clean energy.  Offshore wind turbines don’t release pollution. On the contrary, they create artificial reefs, which enhance fish habitat. This is also good for fishermen, the economy, etc.

Between last year’s decisions by the Supreme Court, and this year’s decision by the EPA, it has become clear that coal is coal going the way of nuclear power, the way of the dodo, and the dinosaurs from which are derived fossil fuels.

The EPA has ruled ( full text PDF ) that new and proposed coal plants must address their carbon dioxide emissions - essentially killing off the construction of new coal-fired power plants in the foreseeable future. The EPA says “You may burn coal, but you must do it cleanly.” ( Sierra Club Press Release / Full Post )

In a decision just made public ( full text PDF ) the EPA has ruled that it will abide by the 2007 Supreme Court decision 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.”

The thing is, they can’t. “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.

What’s next? Auto emissions?  Plug in hybids? Plug in hybrids running on biodiesel and methane?  Charged by PVSolar and Wind power? Probably.

Great news from the Jersey Shore. Writing in the Asbury Park Press, David Willis reported Saturday, Oct. 4, 2008 that New Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities gave a green light to a Garden State Wind Offshore Energy, a joint venture between PSEG Renewable Generation and Deepwater Wind, one of several competitors, including BlueWater Wind, Fishermen’s Energy of New Jersey LLC, Occidental Development & Equities LLC, and Environmental Technologies LLC. David Harper of The Press of Atlantic City covered the story Sunday. Street Insider published the Press Release.

“Offshore wind is probably the most cost-efficient and reliable form of energy we can have” said Jeff Tittle, director of the Sierra Club’s New Jersey Office. “We will have offshore windmills or we will have offshore oil” until the oil runs out and the shore will move as the sea rises and as storms pummel the coasts.

The $1 Billion project will generate 350 megawatts of power, enough for 125,000 homes, and meet approximately 5% of New Jersey’s needs. The $1 Billion cost for the 350 mw facility is $2.86 per watt for construction, compared to $1.87 for the Atlantic City wind farm, and $6.00 per watt, according to Rebecca Smith in the Wall St. Journal for Florida Power & Light’s proposed Turkey Point 3 & 4 nuclear plants.

The wind farm will be generating energy within four years, and be completed by 2013. The first 1 gw wind farm that T. Boone Pickens’ Mesa Power, is building in Texas is forecast to cost $2.00 per watt and be operational by 2011.

New Jersey’s wind farm will be historic. It will be the first offshore wind farm in New Jersey, and with the Delmarva Wind Farm that BlueWater Wind is building off Delaware, and the plant that Deepwater Wind is building off of Rhode Island, one of the first three offshore wind farms, possibly the first in the United States. While the US will still lag far behind Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Spain, other nations in Europe and the rest of the world, this is a start.  I hear the sound of a paradigm shifting.

Is coal going the way of nuclear power, the way of the dodo?

What killed nuclear power was not Three Mile Island or Chernobyl, or the demonstrations of public opposition such as at Seabrook, NH in the late 1970’s or the Musicians United for Safe Energy concerts in New York, Sept. 19-23, 1979.

What killed nuclear power was the realization by the bankers on Wall St. that after an event like Three Mile Island their multi-billion investment very quickly became a multi-billion pile of junk with virtually zero salvage value and a tremendously negative return on investment.

And coal today?

According to the National Energy Technology Laboratory “Historically, actual capacity has been seen to be significantly less than proposed capacity. For example, the 2002 report /of the National Energy Technology Lab, NETL, of the Department of Energy, DOE/ listed 36,161 MW of proposed /coal/ capacity by the year 2007 when actually only 4,478 MW (12%) were constructed.” Tracking New Coal-Fired Power Plants, NETL, Office of Systems Analyses and Planning, by Erik Shuster, Feb. 18, 2008, pg, 4, 5.