In a unanimous vote today, the California Energy Commission adopted strict new rules on global warming pollution that all but seals the coffin for coal-fired power plants in the western United States.
In short: California will lead the nation in reducing global warming pollution.
It's just like the good ol' days, when California took on the car industry and forced the end of leaded gasoline.
More below the flip.
The CEC's vote prohibits the sale of electricity from new coal-fired power plants, regardless of where that power comes from. Want to build a new coal plant in, say,
Gerlach, Nevada, and sell your dirty power to California? Sorry,
no deal:
Recommendations:
- The state should specify a GHG performance standard and apply it to all utility procurement, both in-state and out-of-state, both coal and noncoal.
- While more specific recommendations must await the January 2006 report of Governor Schwarzenegger's Climate Action Team, the Energy Commission recommends that any GHG performance standard for utility procurement be set no looser than levels achieved by a new combined-cycle natural gas turbine.
- Additional consideration is needed before determining what, if any, role GHG emission offsets should play in complying with such a performance standard.
Auf english? If someone wants to build a new coal plant and sell its power to California, he or she will have to reduce the plant's carbon dioxide pollution to levels that are only achievable by one particular kind of coal plant, known as an "integrated gasification combined cycle" (IGCC) plant.
For reference, there are over 30 dirty, conventional coal plants proposed in the West that seek to serve the California market, from Nevada, Idaho and Utah to Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico.
Not ONE of those 30+ plants can meet California's new greenhouse gas standard, as not one of them is an IGCC plant.
Further, the coal lobby will not be able to meet the standard with "offsets" - in other words, they can't go out and plant a bunch of trees, or reduce pollution in Canada, to meet the standard. In other words, You wanna make a mess with a bunch of new, dirty coal power, you gotta clean it up.
These are plants that are only being proposed because Darth Cheney says it's OK; any other President, and people would simply laugh at the notion of expanding coal power in the West - given the West's huge storehouse of energy efficiency, wind and solar power, there really isn't a need for any more dirty, inefficient and outdated baseload coal power.
Again, to refresh our memory: 40 years ago, California took on the car industry over the little issue of smog, severe air pollution and leaded gasoline, which was poisoning people all over the country. California beat the industry's lawyers, and as a result, we have unleaded gas, catalytic converters, and dramatically cleaner air throughout the U.S.
So while some might say that today's move is just a stunt by California, I think that those are people who don't own stock in a big coal company. Message to coal investors: divest ... divest ... divest ...