This week we're celebrating as more utilities are recognizing that coal is dirty and expensive, and are deciding to make the switch to clean energy.
If built, the Consumers plant would have released 2,152 tons of sulfur dioxide and 63.4 pounds of mercury per year. This marks the 159th coal plant proposal that has been defeated since the beginning of Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign.
These are all tremendous victories for public health. These plants were leaving families breathing polluted air, and the proposed Bay City plant would have done more of the same.
While there is still much work to be done to get these Midwest communities powered by clean energy, we are thrilled by the grassroots activism that brought about these recent victories.
We know that the steady drumbeat for clean energy will continue, and the Sierra Club will be right in the middle of it all. Congratulations to everyone who worked so hard to win these impressive victories!
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The "successes" mentioned in the article primarily involve switching from coal to other forms of energy such as natural gas, solar, or winds. These sources may be relatively cleaner then coal, but are not "clean". One study shows that, if you look at the pollution in the total life cycle; that natural gas emits more greenhouse gasses then coal. And the manufacturing processes involved with wind and solar energy are not "clean".
While these changes are nice, we need equal or more attention paid to stabilizing US population growth and decreasing our consumption levels. As it stands now, the increase in the US population of 3 million people per year, or about 1%, is more then offsetting reductions on per capital emissions of green houses gases and energy.
What is the Sierra Club doing about US population growth?
rooftop solar and offshore wind emit virtually zero co2.
Waste bio char is massively carbon negative, land negative and water use negative.
Burning natural gas is anything but clean. Has the Sierra Club not heard of fracking? And those acres of solar panels. How exactly are we going to manufacture and maintain them without massive amounts of cheap and abundant fossil fuels? While I appreciate your earnestness, this is more news from a perspective that cannot come to terms with the end of cheap and abundant fossil fuels, and the change in the standard of living that will be necessary in that transition, if we hope to navigate it with anything resembling grace.
www.offthegridmpls.blogspot.com
Much much smarter people have it covered.
Really, outside of a world-wide shift in consciousness, PV solar might as well be a dead technology. And that shift, on the individual, or cultural level, is not possible if we are not realistic about hard resource limits on a finite planet.
I guess they get a pass because it's a per capita thing! Only are they really 3.5 billion Chinese in China?
And look who is nearly equal to china with just 1.3 the people: The USA.
They would need to have a population of 3.5 billion to justify on a per capita basis their coal usage.
using 8 year old data - lame.
http://205.254.135.7/oiaf/aeo/tablebrowser/#release=IEO2011&subject=0-IEO2011&table=7-IEO2011®ion=0-0&cases=Reference-0504a_1630
It will really helpful to solve my confusion
Process $ Chemical Engineering
The clean energy future won't look much different from today. We'll still have lights and air conditioners and hair dryers. We just won't be burning rocks to make them go...
Rooftop solar, plus parking lots and road sides can provide way more than 100% of our peak electrical needs. No land should be paved for solar.
Smae for wind.
Offshore wind is thew way to go.
No batteries needed. Waste bio char bio fuels are the only massively carbon negative energy source we have. They take what we dump and turn it into energy and fuels using the existing gas generators.
Add efficiency and underwater turbines