This post was co-written by Nachy Kanfer of the Sierra Club Ohio Beyond Coal Campaign.
If you missed this announcement last week because the news was covering party crashers and Tiger Woods – we're here to update you: Last Wednesday, American Municipal Power announced it would likely not build its proposed 960-megawatt coal-fired power plant in southeast Ohio.
The plant had suffered several cost increases and growing public opposition regarding its environmental impact. The Sierra Club has opposed this dirty facility from the beginning through grassroots activism, outreach to the financial and investment community, media work, and litigation.
The AMP plant was originally proposed in 2006 as a $1.5 billion project that would have provided electricity to municipal utilities across Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Virginia. By late 2009, costs had already increased to approximately $3.9 billion, including financing, while energy demand and market prices had fallen dramatically and efficiency and other alternatives became increasingly available.
Together with our allies, including Ohio Citizen Action, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Ohio Student Environmental Coalition, and Meigs Citizens Action Now, local residents were instrumental in persuading several communities not to sign power contracts with AMP because of the environmental and economics costs of using coal power. This subsequently generated intense pressure and uncertainty among member municipalities as the plant's price-tag steadily increased.
Meigs County, where the facility would have been located, is already adjacent to four existing coal-fired power plants. One major question remaining is that of economic development and job creation in Meigs County, located in a region of Ohio with higher unemployment and poverty rates than the average. But with a solid commitment to clean, renewable energy, the region could see more job creation and an economic boost.
Grassroots work also generated thousands of written and dozens of oral comments at various Ohio Environmental Protection Agency permit hearings, and sent thousands of emails to Governor Ted Strickland and key statewide decision-makers urging them not to supply public funding. In October, the Sierra Club also published a scathing economic analysis of the AMP coal plant proposal, which received attention in the financial press.
It's yet another sign that even beyond its terrible environmental impacts, coal also does not make economic sense either. The news is something to be thankful for in southeast Ohio, and we hope the state starts taking more serious strides in the direction of clean, renewable energy in order to boost the economy, create jobs, and fight global warming.