Given all the talk of an impending coal rush in the U.S. that would lock us into decades of increased air pollution and carbon emissions, I have felt a small degree of comfort in knowing that none of the 100+ proposed coal-fired power plants nationwide are slated for my home state of Massachusetts. Yet after reading this tidbit in yesterday’s Boston Globe, it seems I might have to reevaluate my thoughts on some of these issues. According to the Globe article, a Cambridge, MA-based startup company called GreatPoint is looking to bring a coal-to-natural gas demonstration plant to MA in 2009 — and our governor and environmental secretary are encouraging this development as “clean” energy.
Upon reading this I immediately thought of the courageous folks in West Virginia who put their bodies on the line in protest of the coal industry’s utter disregard for humanity. When will people realize that coal is neither clean nor renewable, that coal mining devastates our land and communities? Furthermore, the Globe article states that GreatPoint is exploring “industrial areas on MA’s coast” for potential locations for their demonstration plant. Immediately the city of Chelsea comes to my mind. In Chelsea, an environmental justice community with an already disproportionately high level of industry, residents are currently fighting to stop a diesel power plant from being sited across the street from an elementary school. This diesel plant has also been billed as a “clean” facility. From Appalachia to Massachusetts and beyond, the impacts of fossil fuel consumption fall hardest upon the poor, people of color, and our children — our future.
In MA our politicians talk about how our state could become the hub of a new clean energy economy. Maybe it’s just me, but I was under the impression that conservation, efficiency, wind and solar would define such an economy — not “clean” coal. We need an energy paradigm that affirms energy and climate justice, not environmental injustice. I will be watching this MA development closely, and I encourage others to do the same. Even in the progressive Northeast, we apparently are not safe from the coal rush.
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I hope you can make your governor understand that “Clean Coal” is an oxymoron. Make him understand the harmful consequences of using coal, and that conservation is another part of the equation. The only logical solution to our nation’s energy crisis is energy from renewable resources.
Yeah this isn’t great news. We have been working several years with a group in PA fighting a coal-to-oil refinery, but coal to natural gas is a new one to me. Our coal-to-oil page, Ultra Dirty Fuels has good info about that process and the fight against the plant in Mahanoy Township.
We’ll be watching this one too.
I recenly came across your website, and as President of GreatPoint Energy, I have a few comments on your thoughts. Coal combustion is the cause of over 35% of all greenhouse gas emissions and is a key contributor to acid rain, particulate emissions, and mercury build-up in our fish. Despite this fact, nearly a hundred new coal burning power plants are proposed in the U.S. and one new 500 MW equivalent plant goes up in China every week. We need to support renewable energy sources, but even if we plaster the country with wind farms and solar arrays and become far more efficient, we are not going to even come close to replacing conventional power generation for many years, if ever. So if we are serious about fixing the global warming problem and as well as cleaning up the air we breath, we need to find a way to clean up coal. At GreatPoint we actually convert coal ino pipeline grade natural gas, meaning we remove all the sulfur, mercury, heavy metals, and yes even most of the carbon (as natural gas is mostly hydrogen). Natural gas is the cleanest commercial fuel in use today – so clean we burn it in our homes without a vent. As part of our technology, all of the pollutants in the coal are captured (prior to combustion as we do not burn coal) and then sold to the chemicals industry or rendered harmless and disposed of properly. The air emissions from our gas is exactly the same as that from natural gas, and unlike coal to oil technology, called fischer-tropsch, our plants are completely clean and non-polluting. I encourage you to delve more deeply into the technology because I believe that converting the dirtiest commercial fuel into the cleanest is the single biggest way to make a positive impact on the environment. I have personally spent time with the Conservation Law Foundation and the Clean Air Task Force and others to include everyone’s input and suggestions into strategy, technology, and plans. One more note, while coal mining has a lot of problems, the strip malls and Wal-Marts that get built on the land after the mines close and the land is sold to developers is not much better, and in my mind potentially much worse. It would be a good idea to take a page out of the compromises reached by environmental groups with the paper companies in Maine to preserve forests, and implement sensitive logging practices, rather than let the land be sold to developes where it is destroyed forever and we all lose.
I truly hope that GreatPoint can make a positive imact on our environment, starting first by converting and cleaning up the dirty fossil fuel plants that we already have in our state.
While I have many responses to Mr. Perlman’s remarks, I will just leave one that has left me particularly incensed.
It is unbelievable to me that Mr. Perlman can compare strip malls to coal mining. While I agree that strip malls are a particularly poor use of land, when is the last time that a wall-mart collapsed and killed 9 people? Not to mention that certain types of mining, such as mountain top removal, are enormously disruptive to the surrounding environment. I highly doubt that the scale of mountain destruction that occurs today would continue for the purpose of putting in a dollar store.