Now, some new polling conducted for the women’s political action group Supermajority, and shared first with On Politics, gives us a unique look at how women are shaping the political landscape — and how politics is shaping women’s lives.
“Women’s equality is at the forefront of people’s minds in a way that it hasn’t been ever in my history of looking at research and polling,” said Cecile Richards, the former Planned Parenthood president. “How candidates talk about these issues and think about them is really going to be influential in the coming elections.”
Supermajority, a nonpartisan organization, aims to train two million women to organize around political issues related to women’s equality. Part of that effort means asking about topics that are rarely addressed in political surveys — issues including gender equity and recent restrictions on abortion.
Here’s some of what they found.
On gender equality:
• There is a big partisan split over whether gender equality has been achieved: While 88 percent of Democratic women believe there is “still work to be done,” just 46 percent of Republican women agree.
On the recent abortion laws:
• The passage of new abortion laws, which essentially banned the procedure in a number of states, was a mobilizing moment for many female voters. Fifty-five percent of women said the recent laws made them think about the state of women’s rights and equality; 57 percent said they talked to friends or family about them.
On President Trump:
• Nearly every segment of female voters is more likely to think President Trump has made things worse for women, rather than better: Democratic women, 81 percent to 5 percent; Latinx women, 57 to 21; independent women, 47 to 25. Only Republican women disagree — 5 percent said he had made things worse for them, while 62 percent said better.
On the 2020 election:
• The survey asked which issues are “extremely important” in the presidential election. Climate change was an answer for 65 percent of Democratic women, and 14 percent of Republican women. Conversely, illegal immigration was a response for 72 percent of Republicans, and 43 percent of Democrats.
Vistra Energy coal power plant in Newton, IL. This Nov. 13, 2013 file photo shows the Ameren Corp. Power Plant outside of the Southern Illinois town of Newton. / AP PHOTO/JIM SUHR
Vistra Energy announced Wednesday it is closing its coal burning power plants in Canton, Havana, Hennepin and Coffeen.
The company said in a statement it will retire the four power plants in order to meet new revisions to the Multi-Pollutant Standard Rule introduced by the Illinois Pollution Control Board.
About 300 people will lose their jobs in the closures. The company is working to provide support services for those workers.
Vistra said it was closing the four power plants to save the other four plants it operates in Illinois. The company’s emissions in Illinois will be driven down 57 to 61 percent by the closures, getting it under the new cap, the company said.
“Even though today’s retirement announcements were inevitable due to the changing regulatory environment and unfavorable economic conditions in the MISO market, they are nonetheless difficult to make,” said Curt Morgan, Vistra’s president and chief executive officer in a statement. “By far, the hardest decisions we make in our business are those that significantly impact our people. As always, we will do right by those who are impacted by this announcement. Our employees take pride in the work they do, and we appreciate their decades of service providing reliable and affordable power to Illinois, particularly in years like this one with periods of extreme cold and heat.”
State Rep. Mike Unes (R-East Peoria), who represents the area where Canton’s Duck Creek Power Station is based, pinned the blame for the closures on former Gov. Bruce Rauner and the Future Energy Jobs Act he signed into law in 2016.
“It’s unfortunate that our former Governor and legislative leaders pushed a bill that causes the taxpayers of Illinois to subsidize other energy plants in Illinois while self-sufficient plants, like Duck Creek, are shuttered,” said Unes. “This is the outcome that I feared when this passed in 2016. The bill has now cost us head-of-household, IBEW union jobs at Duck Creek and also at nearby Havana Power Station.”
Unes said there is a group of “hard-core environmentalists” who won’t rest until every coal-burning power plant in Illinois has shuttered. He said that is costing his district desperately needed, well-paying jobs.
State Sen. Dave Koehler (D-Peoria) said he is “incredibly saddened” by the announcement and the hardships it will bring for Fulton County. He called on Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s administration to help those impacted.
“The fact is the current business market for coal-based energy is simply no longer sustainable. As we transition to an energy economy that focuses on limiting emissions, we must be proactive in helping those communities that this will adversely effect,” Koehler said.
“The governor’s primary concerns are to support workers at these locations and assist the impacted communities,” said Pritzker spokesperson Emily Bittner. “In particular, the governor directed agency heads to focus on developing potential short-term opportunities connected to work on the state’s major infrastructure investments, as well as addressing broader impacts and ripple effects in these communities.”
The governor’s office noted Vistra began signaling potential power plant closures as early as February 2018. The new rules were issued on Aug. 13.
Vistra said it plans to close all four plants by the end of the year if it is determined they aren’t needed to continue providing reliable power sources by federal regulators.
Duck Creek employs 60 people. 75 people work at Havana, and 60 at Hennepin. About 95 people work at the Coffeen plant.
Editor’s note: The photo above depicts the Newton Power Plant in southern Illinois, not the Duck Creek Power Station in Canton as originally labeled.
California Oil Industry Sounds Alarm Over Utilities’ Power Shutoff Plans
By Ted Goldberg, Aug 20, 2019
A refinery in the Los Angeles suburb of Carson burns off flammable gases after a September 2005 power outage blacked out much of the L.A. area. (David McNew/Getty Images)
The industry group representing oil companies in California says if the state’s utilities shut off power to refineries during periods of high fire danger, the facilities could be knocked offline, resulting in major pollution releases and increased gasoline prices.
The Western States Petroleum Association asked California regulators in early May for exemptions from power shutoff plans that the state and electrical utilities have adopted to reduce the chances of power lines starting fires during extremely windy and hot conditions.
The industry group warned that an outage as short as a minute could result in refineries going off line for up to three weeks, triggering a series of ugly consequences.
“An uncontrolled shutdown of a refinery from a de-energization action would result in immediate emergency load shedding, flaring and a heightened risk of a catastrophic event,” the association wrote in a letter to the California Public Utilities Commission.
The filing has prompted an angry reaction from a leading environmental group, which says it fears the oil companies will use a power shutdown as a justification for harmful emissions.
“It’s outrageous that action to protect against wildfire risk might result in dangerous pollution,” said Clare Lakewood, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Refineries shouldn’t be allowed to use this as an excuse to contaminate the air we breathe.”
When asked recently about the petroleum association’s concerns, a PG&E representative said the utility would work to restore power faster for refineries after the shutoffs.
“We are continually working to analyze our systems, refine our procedures and further assess how we can minimize the impacts of a public safety power shutoff. This includes working towards the ability to be able to prioritize the re-energization of critical infrastructure like oil refineries,” said Jeff Smith, a PG&E spokesman.
Two weeks after the association’s filing, the commission approved PG&E’s shutoff plans. Oil companies did not get the break they wanted.
But the association’s concerns have not faded. The head of the industry group continues to call on the state’s utilities to keep the power flowing to refineries even during periods of high fire danger.
“Unplanned shutdowns imposed by a utility can result in health, safety and environmental impacts,” Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the group’s president, said in a statement.
“If a utility’s actions disrupt the fuel supply chain, this could significantly impact affordable fuel costs for businesses and consumers in California,” Reheis-Boyd said. “Utilities need to make sure that they are investing adequate resources to protect critical facilities to ensure that any de-energization event is used as an absolute last resort and does not cause more harm to Californians.”
PG&E Shutoff Plan Scrutinized
The industry’s concerns were highlighted last week when state lawmakers scrutinized PG&E’s shutoff plans. State Sen. Scott Wiener. D-San Francisco, mentioned the refineries while questioning a PG&E executive.
“We saw the oil industry, and I’m not usually aligned with the oil industry, but their letter was very compelling. That’s pretty problematic for that to happen,” Wiener said during a state Senate subcommittee hearing last Wednesday.
PG&E says it recently met with the industry to discuss its concerns, but it has not signaled an intention to alter its shutoff plans.
Sumeet Singh, the PG&E vice president overseeing the company’s wildfire safety program, told the panel that the transmission system serving refineries is built with redundancy in mind.
“When you look at our transmission system, by nature, especially the 100-kilovolt and above … there’s quite a lot of reliability that’s built into it,” Singh said. That means “if you lose a line, you have another” line as a backup, he added.
Singh also suggested that the oil industries can take PG&E to court “if they fundamentally believe that the decision that we made was inaccurate, inappropriate, targeted in some way, led to some harm.”
2017 Power Outage at Valero Refinery
An oil company lawsuit against the utility would not be unprecedented. A May 2017 power failure at Valero’s Benicia plant triggered a major release of toxic sulfur dioxide and prompted emergency shelter-in-place orders.
The CPUC blamed PG&E for the outage, but declined to punish the company. Valero filed a lawsuit against the utility, seeking more than $75 million in damages. That lawsuit is currently on hold pending the outcome of PG&E’s bankruptcy proceedings.
The industry’s filing with the commission says the 2017 Valero outage proves the dangers an electricity failure poses to a refinery.
Currently, the Valero refinery is not in an area designated by PG&E as one at high risk for a public safety power shutoff. Solano County inspectors and Benicia fire officials note that the refinery gets power from two separate lines.
Terry Schmidtbauer, Solano County’s assistant director of resource management, which oversees the Benicia facility, says the likelihood of Valero losing power from a pre-emptive shutoff is low.
“That being said, we are all aware of the past events where Valero did lose all power and had to shut down rather quickly. Such an event is not impossible, even if highly unlikely,” Schmidtbauer said.
Schmidtbauer said after the 2017 outage, county inspectors told Valero to set up a procedure by which it would rely more on fuel gas and steam to generate electricity at the plant to run the refinery if it were to lose power from PG&E.
A Valero spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.
Contra Costa County’s refineries — the Chevron, Shell, Phillips 66 and Marathon plants — are expected to rely more on their cogeneration facilities and reduce refining in cases of power shutoffs, according to Randy Sawyer, the county’s chief environmental health and hazardous materials officer.
“I am expecting that they will cut back on their operations so they can continue to operate somewhat on their own,” Sawyer said.
Shell’s Martinez refinery has emergency backup systems, but they are not enough to power the entire plant, according to Shell spokeswoman Ann Notarangelo.
“We do not have enough onsite generation to sustain plant operations in the event of a complete loss of power from PG&E,” Notarangelo said.
Several of the Largest Coal Plants in the United States to Close in 2019
Coal plant closings are increasing in the United States, but this year will see some of the country’s heaviest emitters of greenhouse gases shut down as alternative sources like renewables continue to drop in price relative to coal.
Navajo Generating Station, set to close in 2019 | Myrabella/Wikimedia Commons
Several of the largest coal-fired power plants in the United States are scheduled to shut down this year, representing some of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases, as the cost from building new power-generating facilities using renewables or natural gas continues to fall relative to coal.
As coal-fired power plants become increasingly unsustainable in the face of the growing savings from alternatives energy sources like solar and natural gas, plant operators have been quickly shutting down the smaller and most inefficient coal-burning plants in an effort to shift resources to larger, more profitable plants that contribute to the overwhelming bulk of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions. Now, a new report in Scientific American reveals the extent to which even these larger plants are becoming loss-leaders for coal plant operators and are having to be shut down.
The Navajo Generating Station (NGS) in the state of Arizona is slated to cease operations by the end of 2019, making it one of the largest carbon-emitting generators in the country to ever be taken offline. Between 2010 and 2017, NGS pumped 135 million metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, with an average annual emission during those years equal to the total emissions produced by 3.3 million passenger vehicles in a year. According to Scientific American, “[o]f all the coal plants to be retired in the United States in recent years, none has emitted more” than NGS.
While NGS is the largest carbon-emitting coal-fired power plant slated to be shut down this year, other major coal-fired plants around the country are facing the same existential problem as NGS and are major emitters in their own right. Pennsylvania’s Bruce Mansfield coal plant, which produced 123 million tons of emissions between 2010 to 2017, is scheduled to be shut down for good by the end of the year.
Kentucky’s Paradise coal plant generated 102 million tons of emissions from 2010 to 2017, the year that the Tennessee Valley Authority began shutting down the plant by closing two of its three units. The remaining unit will be taken offline at the end of this year.
About a decade ago, the smaller, more inefficient coal-fired plants around the country started being taken offline as the growth in renewables, and the abundance of cheap natural gas began to increase the costs of operating these plants relative to switching to alternatives. Soon, it was becoming cheaper to build entirely new alternative energy generating facilities from scratch than continuing to operate these smaller coal plants. Unable to compete, they needed to be shut down so resources could be diverted to the larger coal-fired plants whose economies of scale allowed them to be still competitive.
Those economies of scale appear to be increasingly unable to save a growing number of larger coal plants that only a few years earlier were believed to be able to hold on, even if they wouldn’t dominate the energy production sector the way they had for a century.
“It’s just the economics keep moving in a direction that favors natural gas and renewables,” said Dan Bakal, the senior director of electric power at Ceres, which consults with companies looking to transition to cleaner and increasingly cheaper energy sources. “Five years ago, it was about the older coal plants becoming uneconomic. Now, it’s becoming about every coal unit, and it’s a question of how long they can survive.”
How Will Latest Round of Coal Plant Closures Cut Down US Carbon Emission Levels?
The first coal-fired plants to be shut down were smaller and poorly-utilized plants that didn’t add significantly to US carbon emissions, so their shutdown did little to arrest the rise in US carbon emissions. The Scientific Americanreport reveals that in 2015, 15 GW of coal-generated capacity was shut down, cutting the total number of coal-fired plants in the US by 5%, a record number of closures for a single year.
The reduction in emissions wasn’t comparably large, however. Those plants accounted for 261 million tons of emissions over the six years preceding the closures with an annualized average emission of 43 million tons.
For comparison, total closures of 14 GW of coal-fired capacity represented 511 million tons of emissions over a comparable period, with an annualized average emission of 83 million tons. When counting all of the closures slated for 2019, which represents 8 GW of coal-fired capacity and so just about half the capacity lost in 2015, these plants produced 328 million tons of emissions between 2010 and 2015 for an annualized average emission of 55 million tons.
“You notice the average size of retired plants going up over time. There are not a lot of small plants left, period,” said John Larsen, head of power-sector analysis at the economic consulting company Rhodium Group. “Once you’ve cleared out all the old inefficient stuff, it’s logical the next wave would be bigger and have more implications for the climate.”
There are a lot of factors that can give a false sense of the trends in the industry, however. Take the emissions figures cited for the final years of plant operations before their closing. In the final years of their operation, they would have been operating at a reduced capacity as the plant progressively took itself offline, so those numbers can’t be taken as representative for those plants, historically, much less for the industry overall.
What’s more, the most heavily emitting plants in the US have no anticipated retirement dates. Because these plants are even larger than the ones being closed this year, they can burn coal and emit carbon pollutants all day and all night long, every day of the year because the economies of scale drive down the costs of burning coal in these plants as opposed to smaller less efficient ones.
But there are reasons to give credence to the data reported on in Scientific American. Other economic data point to the unsustainability of an increasing number of coal plant operators. Several major coal mine operators have declared bankruptcy in the last 12 months, even as President Donald Trump has made saving the coal industry a major priority for his administration.
The situation is becoming so desperate for the industry that memos from the US Energy Department were leakedto Bloomberg last year, revealing that the administration was considering direct intervention to force power utilities to purchase energy from coal-fired plants. The justification for such an unprecedented intervention into the private energy sector was the argument that national security required ‘always-on’ power capacity and that without coal and nuclear power, this capacity in the electrical grid could be threatened.
While that argument is highly debatable, what isn’t is that coal is increasingly approaching a total collapse of the coal industry, from mine operators to power generators. Research indicates that regions that depend on coal as their main if not only economic driver could face regional depressions in the years ahead. The collapse of coal will not be without consequences for a substantial number of people.
But just as it makes economic sense to simply build an entirely new renewable or natural gas generator than to continue to use an existing coal-fired plant, the costs of propping up coal plants that will never make money in the future with the compelled sale of coal-generated energy to utilities will be greater than it would cost to direct massive government and private investment into coal-reliant communities to build entirely new–and hopefully diverse–industries that can replace the coal jobs that are going to be lost.
For now, the largest coal plants may be operating on the assumption that they can weather the hurricane-force headwinds for the coal industry, but the NGS, Bruce Mansfield, and Paradise plants thought they could hold out too. Now they’re the inefficient dead weight in the industry that is getting cut. How long until no coal-fired plant in the country can sustain itself in competition with alternatives whose most innovative days lay ahead while coal’s glory days were decades ago?
With the climate crisis accelerating at the rate that it is and the economics in the energy industry trending further and faster away from coal than anyone imaged two decades ago, the only sane policy for the planet–and for the communities who rely on coal for their existence–is to take action now rather than bide for time that will never be given. By taking the industry out behind the barn and putting it out of its misery through public policy in an orderly way rather than wholesale and sudden collapse, we can then be empowered to invest resources into new industries to give the old coal communities the economic support they’ll need to make the transition. Any other policy at this point is simply madness.
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