Two stories in The Herald- Dispatch this past weekend show the contradictions and controversies over what was once a simple matter: burning coal to generate electricity.
"Next-generation coal is going to need to continue to be part of our energy future for this country," said Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, chairman of the National Governors Association as that group met, according to The Associated Press.
"It is abundant, it is available, it is Americanized in the sense that we control the supply," he said Saturday. "We would be incomplete and doing a disservice to the debate and the ultimate policy direction that we're going to take if we don't envision coal being part of that."
Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle sees a different side of coal, however.
"There's no doubt there's a tension, and there's no doubt there is very rapidly growing public opposition to coal," Doyle said.
Closer to home, a debate has erupted over what could be Ohio's first new coal-fired power plant in decades. American Municipal Power-Ohio says it plans to begin construction on a new power plant along the Ohio River above Pomeroy, Ohio, sometime next year. The $2.9 billion plant could provide power to 81 cities and villages in Ohio, two in West Virginia, one in Kentucky, 27 in Pennsylvania and five in Virginia.
The new plant could go into production in 2013. It would replace a smaller, older plant near Marietta, Ohio. It would burn high-sulfur coal. AMP-Ohio says the plant will burn coal more cleanly than older plants.
AMP-Ohio buys much of its electricity on the open market, where prices have spiked in recent years. But not all cities want to be a part of the new plant. Three Ohio communities have opted out of the coal plant program, while the Cleveland City Council could vote tonight to do the same.
In Cleveland, the concern is whether the new plant would stabilize electric bills when the federal government could be about to levy taxes on plants that produce large amounts of carbon dioxide, according to The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer.
American Electric Power, which supplies most of the power to the Tri-State, also wants to build a clean-coal plant in Meigs County, but it says it must be allowed to raise its rates to do so. The plant would be expensive to build and to operate because of the clean-coal technology, AEP says.
We can't deny coal's place in power generation. Through the first 11 months of 2007, coal accounted for 48.4 percent of all electricity generated in the United States, according to the federal Energy Information Administration. Natural gas was second at 21.7 percent, nuclear power was third at 19.3 percent, and hydroelectric generation provided 6 percent.
Those numbers are a bit different from 1995, when coal's share of generation was 51 percent, with nuclear at 20.1 percent, natural gas at 14.8 percent and hydropower at 9.3 percent. The past decade witnessed the construction of a number of gas-fired power plants. Among them are the large plant in Lawrence County, Ohio, and two small ones in Wayne County.
But the price of natural gas has increased, and electric utilities want to add more generating capacity and upgrade their transmission networks. Also, the cost of producing electricity from natural gas is about four times as much as from coal. For now, coal is the fuel of choice.
The future use of coal is one of those questions that will vex the United States for years to come. We need the electricity it generates, but we need to generate that power without as much pollution as in past years. But realistically, there is no alternative for the foreseeable future.
The presidential candidates aren't talking about this much, but they need to. The three states that generate the most electricity from coal are Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania. All have primaries coming up soon. The United States needs an affordable, faster track to clean electricity, including that from coal.
7-day Archive
