BEYOND TENNESEE: ENDING AMERICA’S DIRTY POWER NIGHTMARE

By XXXXXXXXX

“Coal is my worst nightmare.”

This statement was not uttered by the residents of Kingston, Tennessee whose community was flooded right before Christmas by three million cubic feet of coal waste caused by the failure of a massive holding pond for toxic sludge. It was not made by the people in the scores of communities in West Virginia and Kentucky already devastated by the ravages of mountain top removal coal mining.

Instead, the statement in question comes from incoming Energy Secretary Steven Chu. All we can say is: Welcome to our nightmare, Secretary Chu.

The military-like land and air assault that coal-fired power plants and coal mining pollution represent is a principal reason why the Boston-based Civil Society Institute launched CLEAN (www.TheCLEAN.org), also known as Citizens Lead for Energy Action Now. CLEAN membership comprises over 100 environmental, consumer and faith-based organizations in 42 states.

One of CLEAN’s priorities is to gather research on technologies, programs and policies that would move the U.S. away from coal-fired and nuclear power to an electricity delivery system that is based on safe, clean renewables and energy efficiency. The best-available research in this area clearly indicates that we can substantially reduce our reliance on coal-fired and nuclear power. Indeed, it is possible to phase those technologies out completely over the next 40 years. Industry propaganda aside, it is simply untrue that we have no choice but to rely on coal-fired power or nuclear power well into the future.

As the Tennessee toxic sludge disaster and the ongoing toll of mountain top removal mining across Appalachia so clearly illustrate, there is no such thing as clean coal. And there is no prospect of clean coal any time soon outside of the fantasy world inhabited by some coal industry PR executives. As Mr. Chu has commented: “It’s not guaranteed we have a solution for coal.”

CLEAN goes a bit farther in arguing that it would be a monumental waste of taxpayer and electric ratepayer dollars to determine whether “clean coal” carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) works or not. Why continue to tie ourselves down to dirty coal when we can unleash the post-carbon economy by addressing global warming and reducing the enormous human cost of coal-fired and nuclear power with true clean energy investments.

Of course, the coal and utility industries want to have their cake and eat it, too. They want to profit from cheap, dirty coal and then saddle the public with the costs and potential liability associated with testing CCS technology. The result would not be unlike the Price Anderson Act, which shifted the costs in the 1950s of nuclear accidents largely onto the public.

The coal and utility industries have been perpetrating a fallacy. The have mustered their substantial financial resources to ensure that coal combustion waste, which contains toxic contaminants, remains virtually unregulated. They continue to use high-dollar ad campaigns to feed the mythology that coal is “cheap” and somehow can magically be made “clean.”

The truth is that coal could hardly be dirtier. In addition to heavy metals, coal contains uranium and thorium. Burning coal concentrates of these radioactive substances in coal ash. Scientific American reported in December 2007 that a 1978 study by the Oak Ridge National Lab “estimated radiation doses by people living near the coal plants were equal to or higher than doses for people living around studied nuclear facilities.”

What coal and nuclear power share is the myth that they either are somehow “clean” or can be rendered as such. But there is no ignoring the voluminous amounts of toxic waste generation that results from both coal- and nuclear-based power. The legacy costs of nuclear power begin with the mining of uranium and ends with the generation of high-level nuclear waste. The legacy costs of coal-fired power are innumerable – global warming, water and land contamination, lung disease, property damage, habitat destruction.

Our standard for the future should be that any energy source producing waste that is dangerous for the environment and the health of citizens – as well as expensive and problematic to deal with – by definition is not “clean energy.” The only way coal and nuclear power can survive is if the substantial business risk inherent in these technologies is shouldered almost exclusively by the taxpayer and ratepayer. The real questions for policymakers today is this: Why should we embark on massive “bailouts” for the power sources of yesterday -- coal and nuclear -- when clean, safe renewable energy sources are ready to take their places? If President-Elect Obama is true to his word about basing policies on science (i.e. reality), he should end America’s dirty energy nightmare by directing Secretary Chu to start phasing out coal and nuclear power from our energy mix.

XXXX is the and a member of the Citizens Lead for Energy Action Now (TheCLEAN.org) , XXX is one of the more than 100 grassroots organizations in TheCLEAN.org.