GLOBAL WARMING
The Numbers
The scale of CO2 emitted by coal plants is staggering, particularly when compared to the cost and scale of existing efforts to reduce emissions. If all of the 100 currently proposed plants were built the capital investment (not including any carbon reduction measures) would be approximately $90 Billion and the plants would add over 800 Million tons of CO2 to the atmosphere.
By contrast the eight member states of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) hope to reduce emissions by 12 million tons, a10% reduction, by 2020 and that program will cost the public millions of dollars. As mentioned, one plant permitted in Texas in 2007 will emit more new CO2 annually than the RGGI program hopes to reduce over the next twelve years.
- A number of charts that show the scale of CO2 emission increases that would come from proposed and under construction coal plants
- Here is a chart showing how much of U.S. CO2 comes from different sectors:
4 Synapse Energy Economics, EIA Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States 2004, December 2005
- Here is another chart with a different approach to showing coal’s CO2 contribution to overall energy production:
- This chart gives a visual sense of how significant the current “coal rush” is. In the late 60’s when the last coal rush happened, the EPA did not exist and there were little or no controls on pollution. Bear in mind that each new plant has a functional life of 50 or more years. Without anyone talking about it much, we are determining the dominant method we will use to generate electricity for the next half century.
Here is a quote from a UCS study Gambling with Coal: How Future Climate Laws Will Make New Coal Power Plants More Expensive by Barbara Freese and Steve Clemmer, Union of Concerned Scientists, September 2006
“Each new coal plant represents an enormous long-term increase in global warming emissions. A 500-megawatt (MW) plant, for example, produces the annual global warming emission equivalent of roughly 600,000 cars,(3) but unlike a car, a coal plant is designed to operate for 40 to 50 years
There is no doubt that the burden of future CO2 regulations will fall heavily on coal plants. Power plants are the largest source of U.S. CO2 emissions, accounting for 39 percent of the nation’s energy-related emissions, and most of these emissions come from coal plants. In fact, coal plants produce one-third of America’s CO2 emissions—about the same amount as all our cars, SUVs, trucks, buses, planes, ships, and trains combined.(2)”
(3) Based on average annual emissions of 13,500 lbs/vehicle as estimated by the EPA and annual emissions of 4.1 million tons from a 500 MW plant as estimated by the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin.
(2)U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), “Inventory of US Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990-2004,” April 2006. Also see U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States 2004, December 2005, 20–22.
To put this massive increase in U.S. CO2 emissions into perspective, it is important to keep in mind two facts. First, most of the CO2 that is causing the problem came from the U.S., the former Soviet Union, and Western Europe as shown in this chart. Second, The IPCC has made it clear that to avoid the worst effects of climate change, global emissions must be reduced 80% in the next 40 years. As the largest single country contributing to CO2 emissions, if the U.S. does not reduce its emissions, the problem cannot be solved.
- EPA Carbon Calculator – An excellent tool to compare the CO2 emissions of various activities.