On March 25, 2008 Duke Energy broke ground and began construction on Cliffside, an 800 MW coal-fired power plant located in Cliffside, NC.
Months prior to this, a team of non-profit grassroots agencies, activists, students, lawyers, grandmothers, and outraged citizens had formed a coalition dedicated to stopping this travesty. We were, and are, committed to stopping Duke Energy’s construction of a coal-fired plant that will release six million tons of CO2 per year and lock us into another fifty years of fossil fuel dependence. This disregard for our precarious climatic state is criminal, and our state and federal legislature is simply not taking the necessary steps to slow imminent climate chaos. Instead, our elected officials are permitting the expansion of the fossil fuel industry and, like NC state representative Tim Moore, spouting nonsense such as:
“Coal may not be the best thing in the world but it’s probably the most efficient that we have.”
How about ACTUAL efficiency and conservation? How about small-scale, localized clean energy? How about addressing the core issues of the problem: the fact that Duke Energy is a utility monopoly, an employer of greenwashing scams, and an enormous detriment to ecological and community health? Maybe we need to come to terms with the fact that cheap energy is over and it’s high time that we drastically reduce our consumption. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have clean water to drink and clean air to breathe than somewhere to charge my ipod/ microwave/cell phone/ tv/ blowdryer/ electric toothbrush/ lava lamp or whatever other crap that we’ve all been convinced is essential to our survival. In any case, another antiquated coal-fired power plant is the last thing we need.
“I think this is a wonderful thing for this area. It’s a wonderful development for this state and most importantly it’s critical to our customers to be able to have affordable, reliable electricity in the future,” said Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers.
Get real, Jim! I don’t think that mercury in our watersheds, filthy air, and climate change are “wonderful developments”. And as for those THIRTY jobs (yes, thirty jobs, that’s it) that the Cliffside plant would bring, well, you can shove those jobs up your multi-million dollar ass. And, as for our “critical” need for the plant, NC WARN, a grassroots organization involved in the fight to stop Cliffside recently published a report stating that the Cliffside expansion will actually create an energy glut in our state, saying:
“Data from SERC, a southeastern utility consortium, show that planned expansions, if completed, could create excess generation capacity of 63,000 megawatts in the next decade, equivalent to 60 large plants. According to the SERC report, ‘This is significantly more than the generation capability needed for reliability/adequacy in the region.’ The agency also confirms that out-of-region sales are already occurring and likely to increase.”
http://www.ncwarn.org/docs/news%20rel/nr-03-17-08IndustryDataProvesNewPlantsNotNecess.htm
Jim Rogers and Duke Energy are building this unnecessary plant in North Carolina, putting the cost of it’s construction on North Carolina ratepayers, using massive amounts of water from North Carolina watersheds, polluting North Carolina rivers, exacerbating the already poor air quality in North Carolina, and then selling the energy to other states for extra corporate profits!
So, we’ve been taking matters into our own hands. We’ve asked questions, locked down, faced arrests and police brutality, held rallies, called our representatives, debunked Jim Roger’s greenwashing scams, filed lawsuits on behalf of our air and water, written editorials, handed out fliers, pulled media stunts, submitted consumer complaints, demanded public hearings, sent letters, and we are not through!
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What an inspiring story of tenacity – keep up the good work!
Hell Yeah! keep it up NC. We gotta keep the opposition up and not let them get away with it.
Right on, Kat. AMAZING post. I have so much faith in yall!..
Let me know how I can continue to support the campaign from TN. I will lock myself to another bulldozer with you as my support ANY day!
you take carolina, we got ohio.
together, we are strong!
If you would like to talk about heads being buried, let me lend you a shovel and point some things out. This facility will have a net emissions decrease across two criteria pollutants and one HAP: NOx, SOx, and Mercury. This will occur not only because this facility has the most current emission control technology but because in the construction permit issued by the state requires Duke to shut down four 50MW boilers from circa 1970’s. I don’t know how much you know about 1970 pollution controls, but there isn’t much to know, because it wasn’t there. Also to your point on Jobs, This facility will employee no less than a 1000 while under construction for the next 5 years, plus the yearly overhaul, get your fact right. Progress is going to happen and as a design engineer for power boilers and emission control technology I much prefer to build a biomass facility, but there is not enough biomass to burn in NC, not enough water to drive hydro, Solar is not cost effective for years….can you afford that kind of overhead?, and the environmentalists dispute nuke-power as well. So when you unplug your computer, IPod, A/C, and all other electronics and go live off the grid because you don’t agree with where the power comes from then you can complain. However accepting the energy and then complaining about its origins is asinine. I am sure this will not get posted to your site, however if just one person reads this then my point has been made.
Dear Concerned Engineer,
Thanks for the dose of realism. Your post is a solid reminder that it is not the engineers and construction workers that we ought to be opposing, who are concerned with creating good jobs and producing energy in a way that is viable right now. Rather our grievance is with the wreckless taxpayer subsidies and incentives for so-called “clean coal”, mining, and land permits that have put us in a situation where coal is still cheaper to produce than biomass, solar, and efficiency projects. Our grievance is with the CEOs and company managers who lobby our government against climate change legislation and clean energy incentives and fill their campaigns with dirty contributions. Our grievance is with the politicians who, despite all of the scientific and economic signals that building a coal plant with a lifespan of 50+ years in 2008 is a recipe for climate disaster and is soon to be seen as political suicide.
Great article Kat! Keep up the fight!
Josh
you guys are doing awesome things down there.. it’s super inspiring and you have lots of support and solidarity in the northeast. woo!
North Carolina is also the 2nd largest consumer of mountaintop removal coal in the country. Stopping the Duke plant might save a few mountains as well.
Great job guys.
Can someone give me context of the photo? Christine rocksss