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Last May, protesters took over James E. Rogers's front lawn in Charlotte, N.C., unfurling banners declaring "No new coal" and erecting a makeshift "green power plant" - which, they said in a press release, was fueled by "the previously unexplored energy source known as hot air, which has been found in large concentrations" at his home. And so it goes for Mr. Rogers, the chief executive of Duke Energy. For three years, environmentalists have been battling to stop his company from building a large coal-fired power plant in southwestern North Carolina. They say it will spew six million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually, in addition to producing toxic gases and mountains of fly ash similar to the muck that engulfed a Tennessee community recently.

A tale of 2 power plants: Tennessee's experience shows how environmental concerns can be misdirected On Dec. 22, a deluge of coal-ash slurry broke through a retaining wall near the Kingston Fossil Plant, a power plant in eastern Tennessee. Black sludge inundated a valley and destroyed houses as it surged down to the Emory River, where hundreds of fish soon lay dead on fouled banks. Helicopter video footage showed a landscape resembling the moon's surface, with more than a billion gallons of sludge covering 300 acres. The disaster also temporarily halted an incoming train loaded with coal. This presumably came from other industrially ravaged landscapes to the east, where entire Appalachian mountaintops are routinely bulldozed into valleys to access seams of Paleozoic carbon.

I was going to write about Tom Paine. The upcoming 200th anniversary of his death on June 9 certainly needs to be acknowledged, but if the people of Cumberland County can pull together to prevent the despoiling of their God-given land, they will do more to honor Tom's memory than my feeble words, so I'll defer for now. When coal burns, most of it turns into gas (carbon dioxide), but heavier minerals are left behind in the ash. Therefore, coal ash contains concentrated amounts of toxic metals such as mercury, lead, arsenic and heavy radioactive elements. As I said in an earlier column, Wake Forest University found Emory River arsenic measurements hundreds of time higher than allowable levels after the TVA ash spill. Radioactivity in the ash is over 50 percent above allowable levels in uranium mining waste.

Natural gas will provide an increasing share of America's energy needs over the next several decades, doubling its share of the energy market to 40 percent, from 20 percent, according to a report to be released Friday by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The increase, the report concluded, will come largely at the expense of coal and will be driven both by abundant supplies of natural gas - made more available by shale drilling - and by measures to restrict the carbon dioxide emissions that are linked to climate change. In the long term, however, the future may be dimmer for natural gas if stricter regulations are put in place to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 - a goal set by President Obama. Although lower in carbon than coal, natural gas is still too carbon-intensive to be used under such a target absent some method of carbon capture, the authors of the report concluded.

The fate of scores of new coal-burning power plants is now in limbo over whether to regulate heat-trapping greenhouse gases. The uncertainty resulted when an Environmental Protection Agency appeals panel on Thursday rejected a federal permit for a Utah plant, leaving the issue for the Obama administration to resolve.

New technologies will permit rapid decarbonization of the world energy economy in the next two decades, according to a new report from the Worldwatch Institute. These new energy sources will make it possible to retire hundreds of coal-fired power plants that now provide 40 percent of the world's power by 2030, eliminating up to one-third of global carbon dioxide emissions while creating millions of new jobs.

Six weeks before leaving office, the Bush administration is giving up on an effort to ease restrictions on pollution from coal-burning power plants, a key plank of its original energy agenda and one that put the president at odds with environmentalists his entire eight years in the White House. President George W. Bush had hoped to make both changes to air pollution regulations final before leaving office on Jan. 20. In the midst of a coal-fired power plant construction boom, the rules would have made it easier for energy companies to expand existing facilities and to erect new power plants in areas of the country that meet air quality standards.

Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute ... There is a veritable cottage industry of economists and statisticians (including Daniel Yergin, Bjorn Lomborg, Peter Huber, and Michael Lynch) who tirelessly implore their readers not to panic over oil prices because The Market will always come to the rescue. As easy conventional oil depletes, tar sands, oil shale, and biofuels become more economic to produce. Even coal-to-liquids becomes feasible on a large scale. And, as everyone knows, there is an endless amount of coal.

A GOP senator from the nation's leading coal-producing state contends Democrats will increase energy costs and make the U.S. more dependent on foreign oil if they focus solely on alternative energy. In the party's weekly radio and Internet address Saturday, Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said Republicans support a more comprehensive energy plan that would increase funding for energy research, develop U.S. oil and gas resources and promote clean coal and nuclear power.

Los Angeles will eliminate the use of electricity made from coal by 2020, replacing it with power from cleaner renewable energy sources, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said. Consumers of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the largest city-owned utility in the United States with 1.45 million electricity customers, will see higher power bills in the fight against climate change, he added in his inaugural speech for his second four-year term as mayor on Wednesday.

There are 44 coal combustion waste sites nationwide that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has identified as "high hazard," but the agency cannot make the locations of these hazardous sites public, Senator Barbara Boxer told reporters today. The California senator chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which oversees the federal environmental agency.

Three environmental groups want the state to throw out a permit it just issued that would allow TVA to dump water tainted with mercury, selenium, arsenic, and other chemicals from the Kingston coal-fired power plant into the Clinch River. The Clinch, which lies below the power plant, has already received ash moving down the Emory River from the massive ash spill last December. Earthjustice, Environmental Integrity Project, and the Sierra Club on Thursday filed an appeal of a water discharge permit that the Tennessee Department of Environment & Conservation issued four weeks ago. They say letting TVA pipe one million gallons of wastewater a day from a pond with gypsum into the river isn't wise. The material will be a byproduct of the plant's new air pollution system.

Three environmental groups want the state to throw out a permit it just issued that would allow TVA to dump water tainted with mercury, selenium, arsenic, and other chemicals from the Kingston coal-fired power plant into the Clinch River. The Clinch, which lies below the power plant, has already received ash moving down the Emory River from the massive ash spill last December. Earthjustice, Environmental Integrity Project, and the Sierra Club on Thursday filed an appeal of a water discharge permit that the Tennessee Department of Environment & Conservation issued four weeks ago. They say letting TVA pipe one million gallons of wastewater a day from a pond with gypsum into the river isn't wise. The material will be a byproduct of the plant's new air pollution system.

Like a losing army that loots and then sets fire to a village before retreating, the Bush Administration continues to employ a "loot and run" strategy, gutting as many environmental regulations as they can before leaving office. As I reported in October, the Bush Administration has been rushing to codify new mining waste rules that would clear away a critical protection against the devastating practice of mountaintop removal coal mining that is decimating mountains, watersheds and communities across the region. Yesterday, they won approval of the new "Stream Buffer Rule" - I put that in quotes since it's not much of a buffer for streams anymore - which will make it even easier for mining companies to dump "mining waste" - aka the tops of whole mountains! - on top of running streams.

NRG Energy, based in Princeton, NJ, is a wholesale power generation company with ownership in 47 coal, oil, and natural gas plants worldwide. The company's portfolio of projects totals approximately 22,735MW in the United States, about half of which is generated in Texas. NRG also has plants in Australia, Europe, and Latin America with a total of about 1,216MW of generation

TVA admits to 'some' fly ash; maybe up to 20%, ex-plant worker says BRIDGEPORT - An unknown amount of toxic coal fly ash apparently washed into the Tennessee River at TVA's Widows Creek steam plant Friday when a gypsum storage pond overflowed, spilling thousands of gallons of waste. The Tennessee Valley Authority acknowledged in a statement Saturday that the pond contained "some" fly ash, although TVA spokesman Gil Francis told reporters Friday that Widows Creek stored fly ash and gypsum in separate ponds.

Democrats on the Senate committee overseeing the Tennessee Valley Authority castigated the agency for failing to live up to its environmental stewardship mission during a hearing Thursday on last month's toxic sludge spill at the Kingston Fossil Plant. Led by Chairwoman Barbara Boxer of California, Democrats on the Environment and Public Works Committee also called for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to regulate fly ash, which is a byproduct of burning coal, as hazardous waste.

TVA is near the end of its first phase of response to a massive coal ash spill in East Tennessee last month, stabilizing and preventing further spread of the sludge at an estimated cost of $1 million a day. The giant public utility is considering options for what could be the costliest, lengthiest and most complicated operations: removing the ash from land and water and restoring the area to pre-spill conditions. Advertisement The state must approve the Tennessee Valley Authority's "corrective action" plans and has given it a mid-March deadline to submit details.

Around 100 Greenpeace activists have occupied a construction site in Rotterdam's harbor to protest against a coal-fired power plant German energy giant E.ON AG is building there. The environmental group says it hopes to force E.ON to change its plans and build a plant that will release less carbon dioxide.

In remarks focused on the promise of renewable energy and demand-side management, US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Jon Wellinghoff on Wednesday suggested that there may never be another new nuclear or coal power plant built in the country. Pointing to upwards of 1,000 GW of potential wind energy in the Midwest and West, new solar power production and storage technologies and emerging hydrokinetic power resources, Wellinghoff asserted that renewables are poised to play a substantial, gap-filling role in the US energy picture.

oncerned locals are taking a stand against mountaintop removal at an upcoming protest march called Related content Leveling AppalachiaOn the MARCC86 the CO2 ASAPArrested EconomyShedding Light on a Deal Related to:walksmytheenergydukecoalprotestremovalsays Walk Past Coal for a Sustainable Future. Sponsored by Footprints for Peace, the walk will protest Duke Energy's expansion of its coalburning Cliffside Power Plant in the Carolinas. The action corresponds with a simultaneous protest at Duke's Charlotte headquarters. The five-mile walk will begin on the campus of Xavier University, pass by the Duke Energy offices downtown and end at Fountain Square. A 15-minute video from Kentuckians for the Commonwealth of Mountaintop Removal will be featured at the end of the march, along with several speakers in opposition to the plant expansion.