It’s Getting Hot In Here

At 8:30 this morning Alliant Energy, a subsidiary of Interstate Power and Light, announced its plans to abandon construction of a 649 MW coal plant in Marshalltown, Iowa.   The decision comes only 6 days after the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) agreed to extend the public comment period from 30 to 90 days and add 5 public meetings after receiving hundreds of emails, postcards and letters from people throughout the state in response to a call for action from groups including the Sierra Club, Iowa Interfaith Power & Light, and Iowa Global Warming.  The extension of the comment period forced Alliant to confront the economic reality that this coal plant just is not a good investment.  

The Marshalltown plant was the last remaining proposed coal plant in Iowa. In early January, LS Power/Dynegy decided to discontinue efforts to build a new coal plant in Waterloo.

In early 2007, Interstate Power and Light spokesman Scott Drzycimski announced a plan to construct a 600 MW coal-fired plant outside of Marshalltown, IA. The project was to be headed by Alliant Energy, one of IPL’s subsidiaries, and would create 65 permanent jobs and 1,000 temporary ones over the span of its construction.  Alliant’s announcement today cited the current economic climate, a recent ratemaking decision by the Iowa Utilities Board, and impending federal future greenhouse gas regulations.

I’d like to draw attention to a few things.  First, Governor Culver said this morning that he did everything he possible to make the coal plant succeed.  I can tell you that Culver pretty much stayed out of the decision-making process and allowed the Iowa Utilities Board to conduct its business without interfering.  Although Culver is no friend of coal, he is also trying to navigate the jobs vs. environment argument that is now surfacing in Marshalltown.  If you read through the comments, it becomes apparent that the support for the plant in Marshalltown was more because of the economic development than the energy the coal plant would produce.

Here’s the kicker – coal plants are a single source of jobs that people can point to and say we will have X jobs because of this facility.  Jobs in the energy efficiency and renewable energy sectors are dispersed across companies and regions, which makes it more difficult to define the number of jobs that will be created.  And yet it is exactly the geographic distribution and broader benefits that make jobs in these sectors more desirable.  Add this to the fact that more diverse investments make these green jobs more resilient in a time of economic turmoil than further in fossil technology.

The multifacted challenges that threaten to drag our economy further down mean we need to have new ways of generating long-term jobs on a large scale and new ways of communicating what these jobs are,what we need to do to get them and why they are preferable to the old dirty jobs.

We can’t simply say “no coal, no coal.”  We are at a dangerous moment where we have the momentum to turn the tide on coal, which is worth celebrating to be sure.   This makes us a target for the folks promoting fossil energy jobs right now.   As the economy deteriorates we risk being made scapegoats by an industry who is putting much more money into developing and distributing a persuasive message than we are.

We talk about building a diverse movement and engaging those who will be most affected by climate change, which means that we need to adapt our communication to resonate with folks’ economic concerns.  As the coal industry plays on the public’s economic fears, we have to be prepared to rebut their claims with clear concise and evocative messages that are easily recognizable and go beyond “look it’s a wind turbine.” This is a challenging time where people are willing to accept coal if it guarantees jobs.

Obviously the battle for public opinion is an ongoing process, but we are never going to reach our full effectiveness if we don’t try to anticipate the counterarguments of the fossil fuel industry.  At the moment we sometimes come off as kind of self-righteous, with the message “we are good and those who support coal are bad.”  If that image persists, the fossil fuel industry will find a receptive audience for their message among people who have lost their jobs and just need to put the food on the table.  This is not to say that everyone stopping coal comes off as self-righteous, but we should be aware of this potential.  Let’s make sure we are conscious of the image we project, the way our opponents portray us and how we want to counter it. That way we can keep winning our victories against coal (and “clean coal“) and keep building solutions with the public’s support behind us.