Wausau Daily Herald: New coal-fired power plants pose several big questions
A building boom that would add scores of new coal-fired power plants to the nation's power grid is creating a new dilemma for politicians, environmentalists and utility companies across the United States.
Should power companies be permitted to build new plants that pollute more but are reliable and less expensive? Or should regulators push utilities toward cleaner burning coal plants, even if it means they will cost more and are based on newer, yet still unproven, technology?
I've worked in electric power generation for over twenty years. The article should have made clearer that "pollutants" do not include CO2 - the greenhouse gas. Burning fossil fuels pumps CO2 into the atmosphere to a greater or lesser degree unless there is sequestration (which hasn't been done large scale yet, if it can be done at all.)
ReplyDeleteTexas is running up against a connundrum that other areas will be facing as well. Wind energy, solar cells, etc. are nice, but don't produce enough power enough of the time to build a grid on. I'm not sure how much of the public understands this. So you still need baseload plants. The two choices are nuclear - which people hate, and fossil fuels - which people hate. I believe TXU may have floated the idea of building more nukes instead of coal plants - which of course was equally unpopular, for somewhat different reasons.
For an inside look at the people, politics and technology of large scale electric generation, and nuclear generation in particular, see my thriller novel "Rad Decision", available online at no cost to readers. (They seem to like it, judging from their homepage comments.)
RadDecision.blogspot.com