Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 25, 1991 TAG: 9103250238
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ROBERT McCONNELL
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
He further concludes that I am "misapplying" my geology training by calling upon utilities such as Virginia Power to explore thoroughly all alternatives before supporting the construction and operation of additional coal-fired power plants.
I did not state that "Virginia Power can accommodate . . . growth [in electricity demand] without new coal plants . . . through conservation and alternative energy." My thesis was that utilities should exhaust all feasible alternatives before committing Virginia's future to coal-fired power plants.
Several points Mr. Kennel raised are accurate (and well-known), and were not mentioned in my article due to length constraints. Among them is the fact that much of the acid rain-causing pollution in Virginia comes from out of state. How this fact can be used to support the construction of additional coal-fired plants in Virginia is, however, a mystery to me.
I would like to consider other points in Mr. Kennel's letter.
Clean coal. It is also accurate (and well-known) that scrubbers can remove a sizable percentage of particulate matter and sulfates from coal smoke. The cost, however, is high, both in energy to run the process and in installation and maintenance. Furthermore, the more efficient the process (as I mentioned in my article), the greater is the development and maintenance cost of landfills or slurry ponds in which to dump the vast quantities of toxic wastes produced.
Acid rain. Mr. Kennel offers three separate opinions:
(1) Acid rain is really no great problem. This conclusion is based on a non-refereed report that has rightly been ignored by Congress and President Bush in their near-unanimous support of the 1990 Clean Air Act. This report must compete with the exhaustively documented effects of acidification on surface water bodies and their plant and animal life.
(2) Acid rain can actually be beneficial. Acid rain-causing pollutants could reflect back some of the sun's energy and mitigate the impact of global warming (whose effect Mr. Kennel later implies is not significant), caused by carbon dioxide buildup.
(3) Acid rain is going away: "...legislation provides for dramatic SO2 cleanup by 1995." If Mr. Kennel really believes this, he probably also believes in the tooth fairy. Legislation is only as good as the enforcement mechanisms authorized. Past such legislation has been filled with loopholes, exemptions, waivers, lack of enforcement and drawn-out litigation.
As to the impact of acid precipitation on Shenandoah National Park, recent research has shown that streams in the park are indeed becoming acidified. Additionally, researchers at the University of Virginia have concluded that Virginia's trout streams are particularly susceptible to acidification, and that such acidification is beginning to occur.
Furthermore, the Virginia Coal and Energy Journal reports that some of Virginia's plants most susceptible to acid rain are showing signs of stress, and the Tennessee Valley Authority has documented such effects on mountaintop frazier firs. I could list additional scholarly, well-researched and well-known studies that have drawn similar conclusions in Europe.
Finally, in one of the most ominous reports to be published recently, The U.S. Geological Survey has reported that precipitation in Northern Virginia (ironically, the site of Mr. Kennel's home office) has become the nation's most acidic, averaging pH4 during 1990. Should the rainfall continue to acidify in Northern Virginia at a rate similar to the past four decades, we can look forward to rainfall with the acidity of lemon juice before 2030.
Global warming. Mr. Kennel basically sidesteps the subject. This is of course understandable, as coal-burning is widely recognized as the major source of increases in atmospheric CO2 content. However, with the sole exception of the United States, the world's industrial democracies consider the "greenhouse effect" so threatening that they have drawn up plans to cut CO2 emissions up to 20 percent over the next decade. The United States, which contributes a quarter of the world's greenhouse gases, continues through the Bush administration to stonewall the rest of the world on corrective measures.
Conservation. In a letter to Virginia Secretary of Natural Resources Elizabeth Haskell, the Southern Environmental Law Center states that "an aggressive lighting-efficiency program in Richmond alone could save enough energy to eliminate the need for one of the cogeneration facilities and the hundreds of tons of air pollution it would emit annually." It also cites a New York study concluding that "all of the projected growth in demand between 1986 and 2000 [in New York] could be met by implementing about 80 percent of the energy-efficiency measures in existing buildings and equipment."
It is abundantly clear that conservation has tremendous cost-effective potential for today and tomorrow. And conservation can offer the same economic benefits as new plant construction. We must exhaustively explore alternatives before rushing headlong into a coal-fired future. Cogeneration should and will be a part of that future. But cogeneration from coal need not be.
by CNB