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This coal power plant, Brayton Point, is shutting down in 2017.
For this coal-news update, we’ll get the depressing outlier out of the way first: One of the Midwest’s largest coal-burning plants is about to be fired back up following a two-year hiatus.
A filthy 900-megawatt generator in Minnesota was severely damaged in late 2011. But following $200 million in repairs, Xcel Energy says it should be up and running again within a week. From E&E Publishing:
Once at full power, Sherburne’s Unit 3, combined with two 750-megawatt coal burners, known as Units 1 and 2, should be able to produce 2,400 megawatts of electricity, according to Xcel.
The refired Unit 3 generator will also help burnish Sherco’s reputation as Minnesota’s largest point-source emitter of carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas that scientists have linked to global climate change.
But the development is an unusual one in a world where coal is being slowly but surely kicked to the curb. This week, the private equity firm that just bought the coal-fired Brayton Point Power Station in Somerset, Mass., one of the biggest polluters in the region, announced it would shut down the facility in 2017. From the Providence Journal:
The New Jersey-based energy firm cited a host of issues in announcing its decision to close the plant, including low electricity prices because of the surplus of natural gas and the cost of meeting stricter environmental rules. The move comes just five weeks after it closed on the purchase of the facility from the Virginia-based energy conglomerate Dominion Resources.
The Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign is cheering the news:
With [the] announcement that the Brayton Point Power Station in Massachusetts would retire by 2017, the campaign officially marked 150 coal plants that have announced plans to retire since 2010.
According to the Clean Air Task Force, retiring these 150 coal plants will help to save 4,000 lives every year, prevent 6,200 heart attacks every year and prevent 66,300 asthma attacks every year. Retiring these plants will also avoid $1.9 billion in health costs.
We’ll end this coal update with the sad news that coal miners continue to die on the job in America. The Wall Street Journal reports on three fatal mining accidents that occurred on three consecutive days. They happened while more than half of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration staff is being furloughed by the government shutdown. “The fact that this occurred over the weekend, when there may be a greater expectation an MSHA inspector would not be present, is a red flag,” administration head Joseph Main told the newspaper.
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Coal on the decline — 150 coal plants set for retirement, Sierra Club
New owners to shutter outmoded Brayton Point Power Station in 2017, Providence Journal
Coal-Mining Accidents Kill Three in Three Days, The Wall Street Journal
Minnesota’s largest coal unit to restart, despite concerns over pollution, emissions, E&E Publishing
John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.
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One giant coal plant reopening in Minnesota, another shuttering in Massachusetts
Watch out!
It’s not easy to unite the right-wing Heartland Institute and bird-loving environmentalists.
But that’s what some wind energy developers appear to be doing by proposing to the federal government that they be allowed to kill bald eagles and other protected species with their turbines.
Across the country, 14 wind projects have applied to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for permits that would let them “take” — aka harm or kill — a certain number of eagles each year. That includes four wind farms in California, one in Minnesota, and one in Oklahoma.
The Oklahoma project could be the first in the nation to actually receive such a permit. The company behind it, Wind Capital Group, wants permission to kill up to three bald eagles every year for 40 years on its proposed 94-turbine wind farm. A Native American tribe in the area is protesting, as are some conservation groups. The Daily Ardmoreite reports:
Osage Nation Principal Chief John D. Red Eagle expressed his deep concern and opposition to killing eagles in Osage territory from a cultural standpoint.
“The eagle is a sacred and symbolic figure to the Osage people, and the area targeted for this project contains a high bald eagle population,” Red Eagle said. “While the Osage Nation does not oppose wind energy or alternative energy, we do oppose the specific area for this project. It all comes down to siting projects in appropriate places, and this is not an appropriate place for a massive wind energy project.”
Reuters reports that the Obama administration has been working to loosen wildlife rules to facilitate wind development:
The fight in Oklahoma points to the deepening divide between some conservationists and the Obama administration over its push to clear the way for renewable energy development despite hazards to eagles and other protected species. …
It is illegal to kill bald and golden eagles, either deliberately or inadvertently, under protections afforded them by two federal laws, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.
In the past, federal permits allowing a limited number of eagle deaths were restricted to narrow activities such as scientific research.
But the Obama administration in 2009 broadened such permitting authority to include otherwise lawful activities like wind power developments.
Now the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is seeking to lengthen the duration of those permits from five to 30 years to satisfy an emerging industry dependent on investors seeking stable returns.
As we’ve reported previously, the Obama administration has never prosecuted a wind farm for killing a protected bird, and it recently assured a California wind farm and a luxury real-estate development that they wouldn’t be prosecuted for accidentally killing endangered California condors.
The prospect of eagle “take” permits has angered some folks on the left and on the right — and in between. This despite conditions that would be attached to such permits compelling wind companies to contribute to eagle conservation efforts.
Of course, conservationists and right wingers don’t actually see eye to eye on this issue. The conservationists don’t want bald eagles, golden eagles, or other protected birds to be killed in the name of energy. “If they kill two birds, I think it’s a crime,” Steve Groth of the Minnesota-based Coalition for Sensible Siting told Minnesota Public Radio.
On the other hand, the Heartland Institute, whose funders include ExxonMobil, is opportunistically seizing an excuse to slam a fast-growing alternative to planet-baking fossil fuels.
The wind industry, for its part, says worries about eagle deaths are exaggerated. Again from Reuters:
Fewer than 2 percent of all human-caused deaths of golden eagles occur at modern wind farms and only a few bald eagle deaths have been documented in the history of the industry — far less mortality than is attributed to such causes as poisoning or vehicle collisions, said the American Wind Energy Association spokesman Peter Kelley.
The American Bird Conservancy thinks that birds and wind energy can exist in harmony — it’s just going to take hard work, careful research, and federal regulations. From the nonprofit’s website:
American Bird Conservancy supports wind power when it is bird-smart, and believes that birds and wind power can co-exist if the wind industry is held to mandatory standards that protect birds.
Bird-smart wind power employs careful siting, operation and construction mitigation, bird monitoring, and compensation, to reduce and redress any unavoidable bird mortality and habitat loss. These are issues that the federal government should include in mandatory wind standards.
The bald eagle is a symbol of freedom and an iconic beneficiary of America’s environmental movement, which saved it from extinction by banning DDT and passing laws to protect endangered species. No climate activists would want it to become the new face of opposition to the renewable energy revolution.
John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.
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Wind farms seek federal OK to kill eagles, pissing off both left and right
Shutterstock / Jorge Moro
Ride a train through swaths of the Midwest in the summer and it’s hard to imagine how the country could ever produce more corn. Well, imagine it: Farmers will cover 97.3 million acres of land with the monoculture crop this year.
That’s more than in any other year since 1936, when, like now, the drought-plagued nation’s corn reserves had run low. But unlike the 1930s, corn prices are high now in part because of demand for exports, biofuels, corn-syrup-flavored candy, and feed for factory farming.
From the Twin Cities Pioneer Press:
In its annual spring plantings report issued Thursday, March 28, USDA said farmers nationwide intend to plant the most corn acres since the 1930s. For Minnesota, it’s the most corn ever. Minnesota soybean acres will fall 4 percent.
“The profitability of corn was just too hard to pass up for producers,” said Brian Basting of Advance Trading.
[HOST NEAL] CONAN: So why are so much corn being planted?
[ECONOMICS PROFESSOR CHAD] HART: Well, a combination of factors that you mentioned. The drought last year definitely put corn supplies at the lowest level they’ve been in quite some time. But also, we’ve seen big demand build up for corn over the last five years, and that’s led to some significantly higher prices, which farmers are chasing after by putting in acreage this year.
Corn has so many non-dietary uses that it ends up feeding just three people per acre. Guess that’s what happens when a market gets skewed by massive government subsidies thrown at a crop of questionable nutritional value.
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Posted 21 February 2013 in
A recent study that purports to show the conversion of grassland to corn and soybean crops is not only off the mark, but it also distracts from the real threat facing our nation’s land.
The study, published in the proceedings of the National Academies of Science, relies on hard-to-interpret satellite imagery to come up with estimates, which are, by the authors’ own admission imprecise.
The Renewable Fuels Association takes the study to task in this blog post:
A recently published study in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science suggests that native grasslands in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota have been converted to cropland to facilitate increased corn and soybean plantings between 2006 and 2011. The study’s findings stand in stark contrast to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) acreage data, which show increased corn and soybean acres in the region have occurred via crop switching, not cropland expansion. Further, the extremely high rate of error associated with the satellite imagery used by the authors renders the study’s conclusions highly questionable and irrelevant to the biofuels policy debate.
And there are some key facts to consider:
Total planted cropland in the five states in 2011 was the lowest since 1995. Total planted acres in 2011 for the five-state area were 3.6% below the 10-year average (2001-2010).
While North Dakota planted 540,000 more acres to corn in 2011 than in 2006, total acres planted to all crops in the state actually fell 3.25 million acres (15%) between 2006 and 2011. Total planted crop acres in 2011 were also lower in Minnesota. This strongly suggests the expansion in corn area took place on land previously planted to other crops.
Data from USDA show that the increase in corn and soybean acres in the five-state region was primarily achieved via crop switching rather than cropland expansion. That is, farmers increased corn/soybean plantings on land previously planted to hay, wheat, and other crops. Indeed, USDA shows total crop acres in the five-state region actually declined 2.1% from 2006 to 2011.
While this study leaves us with more questions than answers, here is what we do know is happening on America’s prairies: the relentless hunt for fossil fuels is having a devastating effect on land, air and water. Developing shale oil in the Dakotas for example is poisoning the soil and water, while “flaring” – or burning excess natural gas, a byproduct of extracting oil from rock formations – is spewing carbon dioxide into the air.
Meanwhile, American farmers are working hard to make the most out of their farms, often producing multiple, beneficial products out of each acre, including renewable fuel and animal feed. Production has become increasingly more efficient, with higher yields resulting in more crops without significantly expanding land use.
At the same time, advanced biofuels present the opportunity to use marginal lands for perennial energy crops – such as switchgrass – in ways that are compatible with land conservation. A study last month from researchers at Michigan State and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory found that using marginal lands to produce biofuel from plants like grasses could yield as much as 215 gallons per acre along with “substantial greenhouse gas mitigation.”
If we are serious about protecting our natural resources, we need to address our addiction to oil and support clean alternatives like renewable fuel.
Renewable fuel is more important than ever – driving economic growth in communities that need it, improving our nation’s energy security and attracting millions in new technology dollars to invest in America’s future.
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