By Steven Elbow — 8/06/2008 5:48 am
Environmentalists say the decision by Gov. Jim Doyle to scrap the use of coal at the state's power plants in downtown Madison will help the city's long-suffering air and water.
"We'll have no more coal dust running into the lake. We'll have no more air pollution from the coal. We'll have no more mercury going into our air and lakes. We'll cut our global warming pollution drastically," rejoiced Jennifer Feyerherm, director of the Sierra Club's Wisconsin Clean Energy Campaign. "All these problems will be solved by simply moving away from coal."
Doyle said last week that the state would end coal use at the pollution-belching Charter Street heating plant, built in 1954, and the 106-year-old Capitol Heat and Power Plant, and replace them with cleaner systems. No target date has been set for the conversion.
His announcement accompanied the release of a report outlining 13 options for cleaning up the state's downtown heat and power plants, ranging from the increased use of biofuels to building a new plant to heat both the state government facilities and the UW campus.
The Charter plant, which burns more coal than the state's other 14 coal-fired plants combined, provides heating and cooling for the UW-Madison campus. The smaller Capitol Heat and Power Plant provides heating and cooling for state, city and county office buildings and the Monona Terrace Convention Center.
Together with Madison Gas and Electric's announcement two years ago that it would end coal-burning operations at its downtown power plant by 2011, Doyle's decision means Madison will be nearly free of coal-burning power plants, which Feyerherm said could mean a drastic reduction in soot-causing sulfur dioxide emissions.
Linda Barth, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Administration, said the state hasn't decided how it will meet energy needs now that coal is out of the picture.
"We could be shutting down a plant, retrofitting, or something in between," she said.
But according to Feyerherm, the boilers at Charter and Capitol are so old that retrofitting would be difficult. (Another plant, on Walnut Street, doesn't use coal.)
She said the governor's announcement could be a turning point for Dane County, where the particle pollutants from power plants and vehicles are so thick that the state Department of Natural Resources says the air has been in violation of federal clean air standards for the past three years. And health experts say Dane County's dirty air is a direct cause of asthma, heart attacks and strokes.
"The governor is setting Madison up to be a model," Feyerherm said.
Doyle's decision doesn't end the state's use of coal in Madison -- the Mendota Mental Health Institute still uses a coal-fired heating plant -- but Feyerherm said Doyle is putting the state on a coal-free course.
"The state really needs to get out of the business of burning coal," she said.
Last May the Sierra Club filed suit against the Department of Administration and the UW-Madison for violations of federal clean air laws at the Charter Street plant. Late last year a federal judge sided with the group, saying the state violated the U.S. government's Clean Air Act by failing to include pollution controls during renovation of the plant that was completed in 2004, and that it failed to apply for new permits for the renovation.
The state came to a settlement with the group that called for a 15-percent-a-year decrease in coal use at the Charter Street plant, completion of a study on cleaner options for the Capitol and Charter plants, and the review of options for a dozen other state-owned coal plants, including the one at the Mendota facility.
In addition, a proposed Alliant Energy coal-fired plant in Cassville in Grant County has been met with a groundswell of opposition from grassroots groups and Dane County officials, who say emissions from the plant will drift into Dane County. It's still uncertain whether the plant ever will be built.
Feyerherm -- pointing out that the price of coal doubled in the past year and some experts predict a three-fold increase this year -- said even power companies are beginning to question the construction of new coal-fired plants.
And emissions from power plants are a growing political issue, with the major presidential candidates agreeing that greenhouse gas laws, which would place a cost on carbon emissions, should be enacted.
"There will be a cost for carbon pretty soon, and coal is the dirtiest fuel you can burn in terms of carbon dioxide and global warming pollution,"
Feyerherm said. "The writing is really on the wall."
The options laid out in the heating plant study last week include natural gas and the use of biofuels such as wood waste, corn mash, oat hulls and switchgrass, all of which would drastically reduce carbon emissions. The market for biomass fuels, the report notes, is not yet mature, but will likely see growth in coming years.
"It is likely that a switch away from coal will have immediate short-term economic impacts," the report says, "but it can also stimulate development of renewable energy markets as well as more aggressive energy conservation efforts."
Feyerherm said cleaner air begins with conservation.
The first step, she said, should be implementing a program of energy efficiency -- everything from using power-saving light bulbs to revamping the manufacturing sector. She said such measures could cut power use in half.
"That's the very first thing we need to do," she said.
Other long-term fixes include enacting laws that provide incentives for alternatives like wind and solar energy. Wind alone, she said, could provide a quarter of the country's energy needs. And in Germany, where research on solar power is in high gear, an increasing percentage of the country's electrical needs are being met with photovoltaic systems.
"When we get the economic structures matching the reality -- get the subsidies out of coal, get the subsidies out of fossil fuels and put them in investments in energy efficiency and investments in solar -- then we'll really see the tide turning," Feyerherm said.
