Coal
Notice Something Missing So Far This Summer? Smog Alerts.
Along with cooler weather in general and a little more rain this Spring has come some relief from really dirty air in DFW.
Last year at this time, we'd already had 6 "exceedences" of the old 1997 85 parts per billion ozone standard in May, and countless exceedences of the tougher new 75 ppb standard that is supposed to be attained by 2018. As of today, we haven't had one even one monitor reading above 85 ppb and only a handful in the 75 to 85 ppb range.
For the last two years in a row, DFW has seen a decrease in air quality, and an increase in smog. Could 2013 be the year that trend is halted?
Weather takes a lot, or even most of the credit. Cooler temperatures and more moisture are not conducive to ozone creation. But unlike during the recession, new car sales seem to be taking off the way the Rick Perry-approved engineers at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality wanted them to two to three years ago. It's possible that the replacement of older dirtier vehicles with newer, cleaner ones by the thousands has finally made a difference you can't see. There's also the impact of cleaner operations at the Midlothian cement plants thanks to citizen victories over the last decade, (although the kilns are rapidly turning back into garbage burners), fewer coal burning plants downwind, and other improvements up and down the southeast to northwest axis that carries our predominant winds from Houston to here.
On the other hand, last June was pretty quiet until the 24th, and then all hell broke loose, with ozone levels into the triple digits. 2012 turned out to be a very bad year for safe and legal air.
And there's the unknowns that nobody's really examining closely – at least not in public. How much ozone pollution is being caused by the natural gas infrastructure in the Barnett Shale that's been built over the last decade and gets bigger every week? How much is the gas industry polluting upwind of us in places like Freestone County between here and Houston? Does the continuing boomtown growth in DFW population cancel out the improvement in individual vehicle emissions?
From a regulatory point of view, no matter how good or bad this summer is, we don't get credit for it either way. Another bad year wouldn't be held against us. Likewise, no violations this entire year wouldn't buy us any more goodwill from EPA. We're in a limbo period, where everyone is just waiting around for the average readings from 2015 -2018 to accumulate and tell us what category of compliance with the new 75 ppb standard we're in. While it would certainly help the cause if the region had some forward momentum in lowering the levels of smog going into 2015, officially, it makes no difference at all – unless you're breathing air. Then, according to EPA's own scientists, anything above 65-70 ppb is damaging to human health.
Theoretically, the TCEQ is supposed to be putting together yet another "DFW clean air plan" to reach that 75ppb standard, to be implemented sometime between now and 2015. The last time it tried to reach such a regulatory goal – the 85 ppb standard – it ended up with a plan that worsened air quality here by starting way too late and basically doing nothing but watching as new cars were going to clean up the air in the middle of a recession. (By the way, the "official" regulatory date of that failure is coming up next week even though the failure was certain last summer. Stay tuned to see if TCEQ acknowledges it in any way).
It's the summer of 2013. Any big changes that need to be in a summer of 2015 clean air plan should be being discussed and set in motion now, especially if they need 2015 state legislative approval, or lead times for industry to adapt. However, state or regional officials have yet to call a meeting of the local advisory group that's supposed to be monitoring the development of that plan. No date is set for such a meeting.
We can hope that a confluence of circumstances is making it possible to have cleaner air in DFW, but as long as Rick Perry is Governor, it's unlikely such an important public health goal will override political agendas.
Sloshing Back and Forth Between Coal and Gas
Around 2003 or so, the Dallas Morning News editorial board convened a roundtable of air pollution stakeholders and more or less facilitated a discussion of what could be done to clean up DFW's dirty air. You see, the area still hadn't complied with the 1997 national smog standard and more and more official air quality monitors were in violation of it. Pretty much, just like now.
There was a memorable moment when one of the "environmentalists" at the table noted that for decades the Texas utility industry had been primarily reliant on natural gas for its power source, then switched almost entirely to coal during the 70's and 80's, exactly when the nation's first national air quality standards were being written and enforced. "Part of the problem is that there doesn't seem to have been any planning for the consequences of the industry switching over from one source to the other just like that. It's like a frenzied mob group of stockbrokers running back and forth between bidders."
"That's the marketplace," huffed a utility industry representative. And indeed it still is. One frenzied run after another back and forth between the two largest sources of fossil fuel.
You know the scene in Pirates of the Caribbean, At World's End where the crew runs back and forth, from each side of the ship, until it eventually turns upside down? It's like that, only with money doing the running. And it never ends.
That DMN discussion was only a decade ago. What happened next shows how quickly those runs can reverse themselves and the conventional wisdom. Fracking technology delivered new shale plays that flooded the market with new gas. So much new gas, that the price of it dropped to historic lows. That caused a huge switch in the utility industry. Gas was cheaper, so the coal-powered plants started to close and be replaced by gas-powered plants. At the same time the chemical industry, which uses voluminous amounts of gas in production of plastics and other products, announced a new wave of domestic construction because of cheaper gas supplies in the US. Finally, in order to prop-up the low gas prices that that are killing profits, the gas industry itself promoted the fuel for transportation use and export.
And students, what happens when all these elaborate plans to take advantage of cheap gas begin to blossom? Demand increases. Cheap gas turns into not-so-cheap gas. And then coal begins to look pretty good again. All of a sudden it's the negative image of 2003, and all that money is starting to run toward coal as gas prices rise.
And what that means is that the higher methane levels causing climate change are replaced by higher CO2 levels causing the same climate change. This is why we need to get out of the rut we're in where our choices are determined by short-term financial gain and not long-term survival.
Government puts its finger on the scales in the marketplace all the time to help this or that industry. Without government guarantees, whole sectors of the economy would not be able to function in a completely unfettered market. This is what the CO2 cap and trade system was designed to do – make the marketplace respond to pressures put there by government in order to achieve a goal of reducing the stuff that will make the place we live less habitable. But it was all a communist plot,or something like that. So in the meantime, we continue to slosh back and forth.
From the Houston Chronicle comes this summary of the latest trends:
After years of declining greenhouse gas emissions, Texas and other states reported sharply higher levels of carbon dioxide in 2012 as electric generating plants began to use more coal when natural gas prices began to rise, according to a study released Thursday.
Citing research done by the Environmental Integrity Project, Texas once again led the nation in CO2 from power plants in 2012, emitting 251 million tons. Florida was a distant second at 120 million tons. Just five states accounted for one-third of the nation's CO2 power plant emissions. Besides Texas and Florida, they include Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Ohio. Needless to say. the old TXU plants in East and Central Texas run by corporate off-spring Luminant are the largest contributors.
The price of gas will continue to go up and coal will be competitive. Or maybe it will go down and coal won't be attractive. Maybe we'll be downwind of lots more coal plant pollution. Or maybe we'll all have a rig or compressor station in our backyard. Who can say? That's the marketplace! The question is, do you want to bet our survival on it?
New Report Says Burning Coal in Europe Costs Billions in Health Care
Many of you are aware that former EPA Regional Administrator Al Armendariz is now heading-up a Sierra Club effort to close the remaining old coal plants in East and Central Texas that have plagued downwind communities, including DFW, for decades. One big reason is the direct connection between the kinds of pollution these plants release, like Particulate Matter, and their known health effects. Based on past studies, scientists are able to determine what levels of air pollution cause what level of medical responses.
Last week, something called the Health and Environmental Alliance released a report that used that methodology to add up what it said was all the early deaths, hospitalizations, medications and reduced productivity caused by breathing coal plant pollution in Europe and came up with a total of $55 billion a year. It's the first-ever calculation of the effects of coal-fired power generation on chronic lung disease and some heart conditions for the entire continent.
Significantly, it has found that the effects of the pollution which coal incineration causes are not confined to people living close to power stations, but can affect entire populations in varying degrees.
Burning coal to generate electricity worsens a group of conditions known as chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, the report said. These include emphysema, breathing obstructions and bronchitis. It also aggravates asthma and worsens heart disease.
HEAL says the elderly and the young are at particular risk, with lung damage sustained in childhood reducing the chances of achieving maximum lung function in adult life.
We haven't seen any similar studies of the costs of breathing coal plant pollution in Texas or DFW, but they could be large since we're directly downwind of the state's "lignite belt" where almost all the older, dirtier coal plants are located.
Perry’s Coal Rush Ends With a Whimper, not a Bang
In 2006, Governor Perry announced that he was going to fast track over a dozen new coal plant permits in East and Central Texas. There was an instant hue and cry. Not only citizens but cities protested. Believe it or not, the same Dallas City Hall now prostituting itself for gas refineries was actually out organizing a multi-municipality alliance with Houston against the coal plants and Perry. Downwinders launched its now infamous "Smokestack Love" cross-state tour, complete with a 16-foot long parade-quality float with a smokestack-inhaling Perry.
Unfortunately, opponents weren't able to stop all the plants. A leftover 1980's permit for the Oak Grove lignite plant north of College Station did get approved over the objections of local landowners. But most were derailed by fierce resistance or lower natural gas prices brought on by the heavy exploitation of the Barnett and Eagle Ford Shale plays.
Last Thursday, the final domino of that proposed 2006 wave of new coal plants fell with the announcement that the White Stallion plant near Bay City was being canceled.
"The news marks a victory for opponents of coal in Texas, notably the Environmental Defense Fund and the Sierra Club, who have worked for years to oppose the White Stallion and other coal power projects in the state. At this point, there are no longer any major new traditional coal power plants planned in Texas. All of the new projects are primarily natural gas and wind power, with some solar."
Congratulations to all those who worked so hard to see these bad ideas finished off for good. But remember there are still older coal plants in East and Central Texas that are among the largest point sources of pollution in the state, and the nation. Having now eliminated new potential clean air threats from the last of the Perry-proposed coal rush, the Sierra Club is turning its attention to the existing plants that are long past their prime and need to be replaced with cleaner sources of energy.
Remember Those East Texas Coal Plants?
The Sierra Club does. Funded by a $50 million donation from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, its Beyond Coal campaign is coming to Dallas-Ft. Worth to take on the old TXU, the operator of some of the most polluting coal plants in the nation, including Martin Lake, the third largest stationary source of Greenhouse Gas pollution in the nation.
Hoping to persuade customers to switch electricity providers, as well as hit the plants as contributors to the chronic regional smog problem, the Club is sending at least two organizers up to North Texas from Austin on a regular basis. They'll be supervised by former Downwinder technical adviser and EPA Regional Administrator Dr. Al Armendariz, who's now heading up the Texas franchise of Beyond Coal.
Although some might argue that gas mining in the Barnett Shale has replaced the threat the coal plants represented seven years ago when Governor Perry attempted to fast track the permitting of over a dozen new ones, the old TXU ones still release formidable amounts of pollution because they're so old. A new Texas Tribune interview with Dr. Armendariz lays out the campaign's strategy for taking them on.
Gas Mining Is Second Largest Source of Greenhouse Gases in US
For the first time as part of its annual inventory of pollution that cause global warming from stationary sources, the EPA included oil and natural- gas production. As a result, emissions from drilling, including fracking, and leaks from transmission pipes totaled 225 million metric tons of carbon-dioxide equivalents during 2011, second only to power plants, which emitted about 10 times that amount.
The EPA yesterday released details of emissions from about 8,000 factories, power plants and refineries. Will it surprise you to learn that the state with the greatest overall amount of emissions from power plants and refineries was Texas, with a total of 294 million metric tons. The next-highest state was Pennsylvania, with 129 million metric tons. Florida, Ohio and Indiana rounded out the top five. California ranked seventh, with 71 million metric tons of emissions. Idaho and Vermont had the lowest levels of reported emissions.
Ranked by facility, two coal-fired power facilities owned by Atlanta- based Southern Company topped the list, followed by the Martin Lake plant in East Texas owned by Energy Future Holdings Corp (TXU) of Dallas.
Overall, CO2 from power plants declined over 4% because there was less coal-burning and more gas-burning nationwide. But for areas where gas is mined, like the Barnett Shale in North Texas, GHG pollution is increasing substantially.
Does Pollution Discriminate? The Coal Plant Edition
A new NAACP report examining the locations and impacts of all 378 coal-fired power plants in America found that those living near the plants were disproportionately poor and members of minority groups. More often than not, the worst-performing coal plants were also in predominately poor and minority communities.
"Coal Blooded: Putting Profits Before People" failed 75 plants on their environmental justice impacts and found those same plants were responsible for a heavier pollution burden. 14% of sulfur dioxide emissions and 13% of all smog-forming nitrogen oxide emissions from all U.S. power plants came from just those 75 power plants.
The four million people living near those 75 plants are among the poorest and more isolated communities of color. The average per capita income within three miles of the 75 failing plants is $17,500, and nearly 53 percent of the people are minorities.
One of those 75 failing plants is in Texas according to the report's graphics, but the plants aren't listed by state in the Appendix. All coal fired plants in the immediate DFW region have been closed for a while based on their advancing age and voluminous pollution, but that may not be the case in places like San Antonio or Austin. Stay tuned for a clarification.
Another Day, Another White House Retreat on Clean Air
In an election year, apparently no environmental initiative is safe from the Obama White House.
You may have missed this because it was one of those late Friday government announcments that officials like to use to bury bad news, but the EPA is going to consider softening those much-ballyhooed coal plant Mercury emissions rules that it fought so hard to get only last year. And because "consider" in this case means "we're going to do it," you can add these rules to the growing list of those clean air efforts in this supposedly environmentally-friendly administration that have bitten the dust because of political interfernce.
One of the reasons this rule is being rewritten is to satisfy the less-than-state-of-the-art White Stallion coal and pet coke-fired power plant being proposed for Matgorda Bay, whose owners have campaigned against the new rules since Day One. They say the rules are too strict and can't be met, despite being based on the track record of top performers in the utility industry. You will be unsurprised to learn that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is a co-facilitator in that campaign, up to the point of being so enthusiastic in its unquestioned support that it had to be ordered by a state judge to reconsider the first air permit it gave the plant because of the lack of any public participation.
White Stallion is going to be built less than 20 miles from the boundary of the eight-county Houston "non-attainment area" for ozone, or smog. Regulations on new sources of industrail pollution are tighter inside such areas than outside. That's pretty much all you need to know about the owner's commitment to using best technology. It's the same problem DFW used to face with the Midlothian cement plants and Ellis County until Donwiwnders petitioned, and EPA agreed, to include them in the North Texas non-attainment area.
Anything that makes it harder for Houston to meet clean air standards, also makes it harder for DFW to do the same. But this rollback is also a shame because of this administration's gap between promise and performance when it comes to critical upgrades in national polluiton standards – ozone, particulate matter, cement kilns and now coal plants. When push comes to shove, there seemingly isn't any polluter this White House won't do a favor for between now and November.
Proposed Corpus Pet Coke Plant Too Dirty for New Power Plant Rules
A $3 billion proposed power plant that would sit on Corpus Christi's bay and emit over 13 million tons of Greenhouse pollution a year may never be built because it can't meet new EPA power plant emissions rules. That's the headline of this Monday Fuel Fix article by the Houston Chronicle's Matthew Tresaugue.
Chase Power was planning on opening the the Las Brisas (the Breezes) power plant in 2013, but that may never happen unless the company or the state of Texas is successful in lawsuits against the Agency's New Source Performance Standards.
Those standards don't apply to older plants, but they do apply to power plants under construction or planned, like Las Brisas. They require all power plants to achieve greenhouse emission limits that are difficult to meet without CO2 sequestration or other carbon-eating technology.
Las Brisias is designed to burn Petroleum Coke, a refinery by-product that is particularly nasty and releases as much carbon as coal. If it ever is built, it would instantly become the fourth largest CO2 polluter in the state.
Instead of trying to adapt or find a technology that could greatly reduce its carbon footprint, Chase Power is joining Texas in suing the EPA, while also petitioning to get an exemption from the Agency that would allow it to disregard the new greenhouse gas rules. Their local Congressman, Rep. Pete Olsen, is more than happy to oblige them.
Halfway to Failure
(Late Monday evening update: It's clear that the Hinton Street monitor will record its third "exceedence" of the 85 ppb standard this year, putting it just one away from making the entire region non-attainment" in 2012.)
It's a bad sign when there are ozone problems on the weekends. It means that even with less people on the road and many businesses on less than full throttle, there's still enough pollution to cause trouble. And it usually means a rough week ahead. That's what happened on Sunday, when summer finally caught up with DFW in a big way.
Four area ozone monitors set new annual highs set on Sunday, and many others saw very alarming numbers during the afternoon. There were three "exceedences" of the old 1997 85 parts per billion ozone standard, and one of those was the second time the Dallas Hinton Street site had seen an 8-hour average above 85 this year. Six other monitors have already had their first. And it's only June.
Four such exceedences within a year puts a monitor in official violation of the obsolete standard that DFW is still struggling to meet. So with the Hinton Street results, we're already halfway to being out of compliance with the 1997 standard again. But it's all academic. Everything is now geared toward meeting the new 75 parts per billion ozone standard by 2018. DFW could be in violation of the old standard every year from now until then, and except for the terrible toll on public health, there'd be no penalty from either the EPA or TCEQ.
On the other hand, its going to be pretty hard to meet that new, harder standard when you haven't been meeting the old, easier one.
The state's official response is mostly to sit back and hope that DFW drivers trade in their older, more polluting cars for cleaner, newer ones. That phenomena was supposed to be responsible for making this year the best one for clean air in decades. According to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality's computer modeling, no DFW monitor will violate the Clean Air Act for ozone pollution in 2012. At least, that's what they told the EPA when they submitted the region's clean air plan to the feds in December. And the EPA bought it. Because the TCEQ computer modeling said everything was hunky-dory.
But reality has a way of rudely intruding on TCEQ's computer modeling. Only six months into the new plan and most of the DFW monitor averages predicted by the state are already underestimates. We had the highest ozone levels ever recorded in March. Maybe there's just not enough of you trading in your cars.
Or maybe it's just that old TCEQ junk science at work. One thing we know the state's computer model didn't consider was how already-dirty air makes the VOC pollution from natural gas operations more easily convert into ozone pollution. Denver officials who are also dealing with new gas operations contributing to long-standing smog problems have considered this factor and think it explains larger than expected ozone readings there.
TCEQ chose to ignore this variable. Supposedly because the gas patch was well west of DFW and "couldn't possibly" affect North Texas ozone levels. But as anyone who's driven I-30 or I-20 over the past ten years can tell you, the gas patch extends all the way from east of Denton to Grand Prairie to Midlothian, encompassing most of the 9 county non-attainment area. In the same December 2011 clean air plan the state predicted record-low ozone levels this year, it also estimated that gas industry sources were emitting 34 tons per day more smog-forming VOC pollution than all the cars and trucks in DFW combined.
It was a political decision not to look at how dirty air from Houston, the East Texas coal plants, the Midlothian cement kilns and everything else east of Weatherford makes gas industry emissions more likely to cause ozone in North Texas. TCEQ's clean air plans are always full of such decisions that drive the final results of its supposedly objective computer modeling. Hard to believe now, but there was a time in the not-so-distant-past that the same computer modeling made it clear that the Midlothian cement plans "couldn't possibly" be affecting DFW ozone levels.
A plan to meet the new 75 ppb standard must be submitted to EPA by 2015 to show three years of compliance by 2018. That's only two-years away. If new cars alone can't get us down below 85, it will be extremely difficult for the state to argue they can get us down to 75. More actual things that work to reduce pollution will be necessary. Including bringing better controls to the cement kilns and coal plants and other industries still putting out way too much pollution. It will be a fight. but so far, the evidence is that more is needed if DFW is ever going to have safe and legal air.