50 Dirtiest U.S. Power Plants Huge Contributor to Carbon Emissions

U.S. power plants are an outsized contributor to the world’s carbon pollution, a new report released by Environment America Research & Policy Center and the Frontier Group says. It found that in 2012, they added more climate change-causing carbon to the environment than the entire economies of any nation other than China. 

The report, “America’s Dirtiest Power Plants: Polluter on a Global Scale,” demonstrated that U.S. power plants produced more than six percent of worldwide global warming emissions.

The report found that a relatively small number of primarily older, coal-fired plants were the main culprits. The 50 dirtiest power plants, less than one percent of all U.S. power plants, produced a whopping 30 percent of power-sector emissions in 2012, 12 percent of all U.S. carbon emissions, and nearly two percent of all the world’s carbon emissions. The U.S. has about 6,400 electricity-generating facilities. Yet a single one—the Scherer Power Plant in Georgia—produced .4 percent of U.S. carbon emissions, equivalent to the entire economy of Sri Lanka, which ranks 86th in the world.

“U.S. power plants are polluters on a global scale,” said Elizabeth Ouzts of Environment America Research & Policy Center. “That’s why clean power now must be part of the solution to the climate crisis.”

The report emphasized how much pollution the dirty plants produce relative to their energy production. Coal-fired plants produced 74 percent of U.S. power-plant pollution in 2012 but only 37 percent of its electricity. The 50 dirtiest plants contributed only 15 percent of the nation’s electricity.

“U.S. power plants make such an outsized contribution to global warming emissions because so many of them are old and inefficient, and because so many of them run on coal, one of the dirtiest fuels on the planet,” said the report, which said that 98 of the country’s 100 most carbon-polluting plants ran on coal.

The report recommended that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) “strengthen, finalize and implement the Clean Power Plan,” and that states begin to implement the plan to meet the standards as quickly as possible, working to quickly phase out the older, polluting plants and move to renewable energy sources. Its series of recommendations also includes urging Congress to pass a national renewable energy standard.

The Environment America Research & Policy Center is among many groups pushing for the Clean Power Plan. Six million comments have been submitted to the EPA and more than a thousand people have testified in hearing held across the country this summer in favor of the plan.

“For too long, power plants and other major polluters have enjoyed a holiday from responsibility,” said Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. “Rhode Island and some parts of the country have taken steps to cut carbon pollution and invest in clean energy, but this report shows why federal carbon pollution standards are necessary to protect public health, our communities and future generations from the dangerous threat of climate change.”
Anastasia Pantsios
http://ecowatch.com
18/9/14

EP committee examines EU energy security plan. --Six EU countries depend on Russia as the supplier for their entire gas imports.

European Parliament (EP) industry committee debated on the energy security plans this week, seeking ways for the European Union (EU) to reduce energy dependence, EP said in a statement published on Thursday.

The energy security plan, submitted by the European Commission, aims to improve the EU's situation of relying on the external energy.

Statistics shows the EU imports 53 percent of the energy it consumes, including almost 90 percent of its crude oil, 66 percent of its natural gas and 42 percent of its solid fuels such as coal.

In 2013 the bill for importing energy amounted to about 400 billion euros (about 538.5 billion US dollars), said the EP.

Meanwhile, EU is also heavily dependent on one single supplier, namely Russia, responsible for a third of oil imports, 39 percent of gas and 26 percent of solid fuels. Six EU countries depend on Russia as the supplier for their entire gas imports.

• That can make the EU "vulnerable to external energy suppliers", the statement said.

The EU is now seeking to reduce this dependence by diversifying energy sources and suppliers, cutting back on energy consumption, boosting energy production and cooperation between countries and investing in renewable energy.

These initiatives and others have all been outlined in the European energy security strategy, which was presented by the European commission in May and debated by the industry committee this week.

"Energy security will play a prominent role in the work of the committee in the months to come. This issue is of crucial importance to all of us." Chair of the EP industry committee Jerzy Buzek said earlier this week. (1 euro = 1.35 US dollars)
Sources: Xinhua - globaltimes.cn
24-25/7/14
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Related:

• Paving the way for European energy security

• Έρχεται κρίση με το φυσικό αέριο το φθινόπωρο

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• Ενώπιον νέας ενεργειακής κρίσης στην ΕΕ;

• Ukraine invites European observers to gas measuring stations on borders

China to close over 2,000 coal mines by 2015 (those that do not meet safety standards)

China plans to shut down over 2,000 small-scale coal mines by 2015 in an effort to eliminate outdated capacity and improve work safety, according to the State Administration of Work Safety.

Coal mines in the provinces of Liaoning, Heilongjiang, Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan, Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou, as well as Chongqing municipality, will be major targets, the administration said.

It will gradually weed out coal mines with an annual output at or below 90,000 tonnes, and shut down those that do not meet safety standards.

China's mines are among the deadliest in the world, with fatal accidents occurring frequently due to poor safety regulations and a lack of safety awareness. 
Source:Xinhua Published: 2014-5-31 11:40:52 

[globaltimes.cn ]
31/5/14
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Related:

• Air pollution champion: China burns more coal than rest of world combined

• China will destroy 5,000,000 cars this year to battle air pollution (Polluting vehicles to be scrapped)

• Measures taken to tackle heavy air pollution in N. China

Air pollution champion: China burns more coal than rest of world combined

China burns almost as much coal as the rest of the world combined, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) has reported. China’s coal use is poised to continue rising, despite the country's rapidly deteriorating environment, experts predicted.
­The latest EIA report revealed that China's coal consumption grew more than 9 percent in 2011, continuing its upward trend for a 12th consecutive year. Since 2000, the country has accounted for more than 80 percent of the global increase in coal use, the EIA reported. China currently accounts for 47 percent of global coal consumption, nearly totaling the rest of the world combined.

Image from eia.gov

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Coal remains the most widely used energy source in China due to its low cost – the country is the largest user of coal electricity in the world. Along with its own vast coal resources – about 114 billion tons produced as of 2011 according to the World Coal Association – China also imports large quantities of coal, since the country's coal-mining regions are often far from the areas where it is in demand. "The Asian market is the fastest-growing coal market in the world," Brookings Institution energy analyst Charles Ebinger told Mother Jones magazine. 
China's heavy use of coal is believed to be one of the reasons the capital Beijing recently witnessed its worst air pollution in years. For two weeks, Beijing's air was labeled worse than “very unhealthy” and “hazardous.” Authorities have closed 103 factories and taken 30 percent of government vehicles off the roads, but with little effect.
Air pollution in China hit a record high earlier this month: 30 to 45 times above recommended safety levels. Beijing itself became blanketed in a thick, toxic cloud that grounded flights and forced people indoors.

Vehicles drive through the Guomao Bridge on a heavy haze day in Beijing's central business district January 29, 2013.(Reuters / Jason Lee)

The report is the highest-level acknowledgment to date of the hazardous air quality levels across much of China.
"We should take effective measures to speed up the enhancement of our industrial structure, push for energy conservation and build an ecological civilization," Chinese premier Wen Jiabao announced on state television.
However, the measures undertaken by the Chinese government do not include replacing coal production and consumption with more environmentally friendly sources of energy. Rather, the IEA predicted the opposite: Coal consumption will grow not only in China, but also in India and other developing economies, and this trend will prevail until clean energy prices can compete with coal.
Notably, wind power recently surpassed nuclear power production in China, and is now the country’s third-biggest source of electricity, second to hydropower, according to a recent report by the China Wind Energy Association.

.rt.com
30/01/13
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Related:

• Heavy smog shrouds Beijing for 3rd day

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Buildings and cars are pictured on a heavy hazy day during winter in Beijing's central business district, January 30, 2013.(Reuters / Jason Lee)

Visitors take pictures on Tiananmen Square during a foggy day in central Beijing, January 29, 2013.(Reuters / China Daily)

A combination photograph shows people wearing masks on a heavy haze day during winter in Beijing January 29, 2013.(Reuters / Jason Lee)

Ukraine to Get $3.7 Bln Loan From China

KIEV, December 26 (RIA Novosti) – Ukraine’s national energy company Naftogaz will receive a $3.7 billion loan from China to finance a program to substitute gas with coal, the Ukrainian government’s press office said on Wednesday.
“On December 25, 2012, a loan agreement between Natfogaz and State Development Bank of China on financing the program of natural gas substitution with Ukrainian coal worth a total of $3.656 billion against the Ukrainian government’s guarantees was signed in the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers in the presence of Deputy Prime Minister Yuriy Boyko,” the statement said.

The program envisages measures to introduce coal-water fuel technology to domestic heat and power plants, and to build coal-to-gas conversion facilities allowing Ukraine, which is heavily dependent on costly Russian gas imports, to substitute about 4 billion cubic meters of gas with coal. This would save the country $1.5 billion a year on average, the statement said.
Ukraine imports about two-thirds of the gas it consumes from Russia under a 2009 deal that ties the gas price to oil prices, which have risen strongly since 2009, boosting Ukraine's gas bill.
Naftogaz imported Russian gas at $416 per 1,000 cubic meters in the first quarter of this year, at around $425 in the second quarter, at $426 in the third quarter and will have to pay around $432 in the fourth quarter.
Ukraine has long sought to alter the terms of the gas deal it signed with Russia in 2009, insisting on both price and volume cuts, but these attempts have failed to deliver the result desired, prompting the ex-Soviet republic to seek alternative gas supply options to cut its huge energy bill.
.en.rian.ru 
26/12/12