Major Coal Victory -- LS Power Agrees to Abandon Two Coal Projects, Invest in Solar

Today, the Sierra Club is celebrating a landmark victory that was a long time coming. We have reached a settlement with LS Power to cancel their plans to build two new coal plants -- the Longleaf plant in Georgia, and the Plum Point 2 plant in Arkansas.

These two coal plants are #160 and 161 on the growing list of new coal plants defeated by the Sierra Club and our allies since 2002. These are two more nails in the coffin of a rush to build new coal plants that we have fought for a decade, and that is now coming to an end, with only a handful of proposed coal projects hanging on by a thread around the country.

The victory is especially sweet because the Longleaf campaign was the longest running fight against a new coal plant that the Sierra Club had fought anywhere in the country. We have been opposing the plant since it was first proposed in 2001 -- ten years, enough time for a child to go from birth to middle school! This victory is a testament to the power of perseverance, and kudos go to our allies Friends of the Chattahoochee and GreenLaw for sticking with this roller coaster ride through thick and thin.

LS Power will also abandon plans to build their proposed Plum Point 2 coal plant in Arkansas. They will install state-of-the art pollution controls on their Sandy Creek plant in Texas, which will soon begin operation. And they will invest $400,000 in solar projects in the area of the Sandy Creek project, including putting solar panels on a nearby school. Sierra Club, Public Citizen, and Sandy Creek Energy Associates all helped bring this agreement across the finish line.

Today's announcement is a victory for our health, for clean energy, and for electricity consumers and their pocketbooks. Once again, new coal plants have proven to be the wrong choice for a 21st century energy investment. Wind and solar are affordable, reliable, and safe, and new coal projects like Longleaf and Plum Point 2 are finding it harder and harder to compete.

Congratulations to all who worked so hard to win these hard-fought victories!

 

Follow Mary Anne Hitt on Twitter: www.twitter.com/maryannehitt

Comments

[Terry Floyd]

09:04 AM on 12/17/2011

There is a window of opportunity here for the coal industry to clean up their act. Using the

configuration design in http://www.coal2nuclear.com/ . We can eliminate all of the toxic

emissions and the importation of oil. A WIN WIN PLUS!!!!!

“These include the tailings of ancient tin mines, rare earth mine tailings, phosphate mine tailings and uranium mine tailings. In addition to the thorium present in mine tailings and in surface monazite sands, burning coal at the average 1GWe power plant produces about 13 tons of thorium per year. That thorium is recoverable from the power plant’s waste ash pile.
One ton of thorium will produce nearly 1 GW of electricity for a year in an efficient thorium cycle reactor. Thus current coal energy technology throws away over 10 times the energy it produces as electricity. This is not the result of poor thermodynamic efficiency; it is the result of a failure to recognize and use the energy value of thorium. The amount of thorium present in surface mining coal waste is enormous and would provide all the power human society needs for thousands of years, without resorting to any special mining for thorium, or the use of any other form or energy recovery.”

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4971

http://www.coal2nuclear.com/

http://www.gpb.org/news/2011/12/12/georgia-coal-plant-cancelled

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5FxJ1Ac9m4

[Andrew Harvey]

02:33 AM on 12/15/2011

$400,000. That's what I call "Shut up and go away money".

Wind and solar: I'd like her to show us a single example of an iron or aluminum smelting operation that runs on Solar or Wind power. Do you suppose an auto manufacturer could work around that constraint?

Congrats Sierra Club. By the way, I burn all your fliers in my fireplace, increasing CO2 in the atmosphere. Thanks for the free kindling.

[lilpeg]

09:26 AM on 12/15/2011

They probably could work around the constraint. Especially in the South. It is the responsibility of the power companies to make it do-able. That is what they are for.

[Andrew Harvey]

07:50 PM on 12/15/2011

How do you propose the utility company make the sun shine 24 hours a day?

[flipacoin]

07:42 PM on 12/14/2011

"Wind and solar is affordable and reliable..."

OK. What is the manufacturer, website and cost? Are you running your home off the grid, Mary Ann?

[altohone]

05:47 PM on 12/14/2011

400k is clearly insufficient, and a rounding error on the cost of a coal plant. Let us hope a comparable amount is added every year.

The added pollution controls on the completed plant may be the bigger victory. If this company can do it, the others can too.

[D-Driller]

02:16 AM on 12/14/2011

Will the solar arrays provide as much power as the two defeated coal plants? It's not a win if all you managed to do was stop the enlargement of our power infrastructure. The building of a new power plant is an expensive process and not done lightly - there must have been a projected need for the extra power in the coming years due to population/industrial growth in the affected areas. I think it is great that the coal plants were shut down, as long as the replacement energy source is able to meet the power needs of the future. If it does not, and the $400,000 expenditure on solar will not produce the same amount of power as two $1,000,000,000 power plants, then it is a pyrhic victory, is regressive as opposed to being progressive, and quite literally, particularly during summer brownout season in the South, could endanger lives.

[Genders]

08:41 PM on 12/13/2011

Great news! terrible headline! Coal defeated! that's the headline!