 Recently, Old Dominion Electric Cooperative announced plans to build a new coal-fired power plant in Surry County. This business-as-usual approach to generating electricity may have appeared to make sense in the 20th century, but in light of what we know today about the impacts of burning coal, Virginia can do much better.
The Wise Energy for Virginia Coalition has compared the consequences of generating electricity from coal to the alternatives, and must oppose construction of the new plant.
As utilities strive to keep electricity prices low, they have done everything they can to avoid or "externalize" the actual costs of generating electricity from coal. As a result, the real cost of that electricity - the true cost of coal - is far more than what is reflected on the monthly bill.
Since the 1970s and the passage of the federal Clean Air Act, utilities have spent millions of their customers' dollars lobbying and litigating against laws that would require them to clean up our air. The consequences of this lobbying and litigation are profound. Asthma rates have exploded as we breathe air contaminated with smog and soot, pollution that shortens all our lives. Many of our local fish come with a consumption warning about mercury contamination. Acid rain from the sulfur dioxide and nitrogen coming out of these coal-burning power plants acidifies streams and harms the great forests of the Appalachians. Even the expanding dead zone in the Chesapeake Bay is partially the result of burning coal, which contributes 25 percent or more of the nitrogen that chokes our Bay.
The damage doesn't stop there. Today more and more coal is mined by a method called mountaintop removal mining. Let that sink in: mountaintop removal mining. The companies that provide the coal burned in power plants routinely blow up entire mountains to get at the coal seams and then simply dump the rock and dirt in the nearest stream valley. This practice displaces communities that live in the coal fields, all in the name of cheap electricity.
Overshadowing all this harm associated with burning coal is the looming threat of global climate change. Hampton Roads is particularly vulnerable to the sea level rise that is anticipated to swallow wetlands and waterfront homes and businesses the next 50 to 100 years.
There is a better way. By simply using our electricity more efficiently, we can use considerably less energy to provide the same convenience and do the same work. A study by the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, released last September, found that in Virginia we could meet close to 30 percent of our electricity needs by 2025 through energy efficiency. Changing our light bulbs to compact fluorescents or even newer LEDs is one example of efficiency, but there is a wide range of existing technologies and techniques to reduce demand at a cost far less than that of building a new power plant. And the good news is these investments in efficiency save money and create far more jobs than building and operating a new coal plant. ACEEE estimates that an even more modest approach to efficiency would save electricity consumers $15 billion through 2025 and create nearly 10,000 new jobs.
These investments give us the time we need to deploy renewable energy technologies such as wind and solar. An analysis by the Virginia Coastal Energy Research Consortium has found that there is a potential for 4 gigawatts of electricity just 12 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach. Investing in offshore wind would bring thousands of new jobs to our region in building and maintaining these wind farms.
There are real alternatives to burning coal to generate electricity. The Wise Energy Coalition stands ready to work with the ODEC to pursue these alternatives.
(This OpEd was published in the Sunday VA Pilot 2/8/09)
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