I paid my electric bill today... I found it a little high, but that is a separate story. What interested me most about this bill was the insert American Electric Power is required to provide to its customers: information about its fuel mix and emissions.
It was no surprise to me that coal was the number one fuel used for energy generation in Virginia, but...
what surprised me were the percentages. Perhaps I've been naive.
Coal 86.9%
Nuclear 11.5%
Gas 1.2%
Hydro 0.4%
I understand that coal thinks it's still king here in Appalachia and that lots of folks in Virginia, West Virginia, and Tennessee in particular have cast their lots with coal and its new cousins "liquid coal" and "clean coal." But those new cousins are experimental at best and are at the development
stage. The TWO plants testing the carbon capture technology won't have results we can use until 2011 or 2012. Even if Integrated Gasification (the fancy name for liquid coal) reduces tons and tons of emissions, it doesn't account for the pollution that occurs from the MINING of the coal. No one in the energy sector seems to be looking at this realistically. All they see is that the US has about 30% percent of the world's recoverable coal reserves. I guess it beats importing oil as it is a domestic resource. I just happen to be of the opinion that I enjoy my mountains the way they were when I was a child, and would like to see Appalachia get out from under the physical, economic, and sociological damage that coal companies have done to her.
Look at those percentages again... NO wind? NO solar? Such a small hydro percentage? Given the topography of Virginia, I would assume more water generated power...AEP says in a separate note from my bill that they have pledged to add 1000 MW of wind generation by the end of 2010, but as they provide power in 14 states, that doesn't sound like anything worth patting them on the back.
I unfortunately don't have an answer for this... but I figure I can contact the power company and let them know what I think of their fuel mix. I think it stinks, and I imagine others do too. Unfortunately, I'll bet most people just threw away that insert without even looking at it. I am going to make sure that my relatives and neighbors all know, and I just told a bunch of people who can go tell more people and... so on, and so on...
CONTACT INFO
AEP website
Appalachian Power Company website Virginia-specific unit
1-800-956-4237 VA
1-800-982-4237 WVA
1-800-967-4237 TN
1-800-277-2177 OH
1-877-373-4858 TX
1-800-311-4634 IN
1-800-311-6424 MI
1-800-572-1113 KY
1-888-216-3523 OK
1-888-216-3523 (East TX, LA, AR)
1-800-723-7430 (North TX - Panhandle)