It’s Getting Hot In Here

Burying a “take action” link at the very bottom of a blog post is a horrible way to generate Internet activism.  So instead of having you read this whole post before you finally find out how to email the Oregon DEQ and tell them to shut down the Boardman coal plant, I’ll give you the email address now: bartcomments@deq.state.or.us Details on the issue are, of course, below.

I’m sitting in a non-air conditioned building in a Portland suburb, on the third day of the Portland area’s worst heat wave since 1994; in other words, global warming is sounding even less attractive than usual.  More importantly, though, on the desk beside me is an Oregonian editorial about the Boardman Coal Plant - the only major coal plant in Oregon, and our state’s largest stationary source of greenhouse emissions.

I have to admit, I’m disappointed.  The editorial, “Finally, a plan to clean up the coal plant,” applauds an Oregon Department of Environmental Quality proposal to “clean up” certain pollutants from the Boardman plant over the course of ten years.  The Oregonian editors seem to feel the DEQ is standing up to big polluters and doing what it should to reduce pollution from coal; what they fail to grasp is that the DEQ plan calls for a reduction in mercury, sulfur dioxide, and nitrous oxides from Boardman, but seems to do nothing to address the most important greenhouse gas of all: carbon dioxide itself.  If you believe, as I do, that “carbon sequestration” at coal plants is an expensive farce, then we’re left with only one alternative: it’s not enough to “clean up” Boardman - the coal plant must be completely shut down.

Is the idea of shutting down - rather than cleaning up - the Boardman plant by 2018 simply unrealistic and naive?  A few months ago, most people would probably have said it was.  But now Al Gore, a politically respectable figure, is calling for a complete nation-wide phase-out of fossil fuel energy in ten years; and since it’s Al Gore, rather than you or I, who said it, people are beginning to listen.  I find it ironic that phasing out fossil fuels in ten years would mean the elimination of coal by 2018 - precisely the year that the DEQ plans to have Boardman “cleaned up” in a minor way, but still spewing greenhouse gases.  If we’re really going to make our nation more secure and our environment safe and stable, a ten-year time frame is what we should be looking at; it makes no sense to talk about “cleaning up” coal in ten years, when we need to eliminate it entirely.

There’s more.  At first glance, shutting down Boardman sound unrealistic.  But by the Oregonian’s own admission, installing technology for the already-proposed cleanup will require the plant to be temporarily taken off the energy grid anyway, until installation is complete.  This of course will raise energy rates for a while; but since the DEQ would let Boardman back on the grid once controls for nitrous oxides and other chemicals were in place, the jump in prices would do nothing to actually reduce emissions of the main greenhouse gas - carbon dioxide - in the long term.  Why not do this instead: plan to have Boardman permanently off the grid by 2018; put Portland General Electric and other utilities on notice, so they will begin investing heavily in renewable energy now in preparation for Boardman’s closure; rather than putting ratepayers through a temporary hike in energy prices and then depositing them back on the unstable fossil fuel bandwagon, follow initial rate increases with a transition to purely renewable energy, helping to stabilize Oregon energy prices in the long term.  And permanently eliminate the planet-warming behemoth that is the Boardman plant.

The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality is currently accepting comments on its proposal for the Boardman plant.  Email the DEQ at bartcomments@deq.state.or.us to tell them we need to shut down, not “clean up” the Boardman plant by 2018!