Category Archives: Coal industry

City of Richmond, Richmond Mayor and Sierra Club will fight

East Bay Times, by Annie Sciacca, March 13, 2020

An uncovered coal car rumbles along the tracks in Richmond, Calif. on Wednesday, April 29, 2015. (Kristopher Skinner/Bay Area News Group)

RICHMOND — Nearly two months after the City Council approved an ordinance that bans the storage and handling of coal and petroleum coke in Richmond, multiple companies that handle and export those products have sued the city in federal and state courts.

The ordinance phases out coal and coke operations within three years.

Three companies — the Levin-Richmond Terminal Corp., which manages the only coal-handling facility in the city, coal export firm Wolverine Fuels and Phillips 66, which manufactures petroleum coke and exports it through the Levin Terminal — allege the ban violates their constitutional rights.

Coal and petroleum coke shipments make up more than 80 percent of Levin-Richmond Terminal’s business, according to executives at the company. The coal is mostly shipped to Japan and petroleum coke to other countries for use in manufacturing.

While city documents about the ordinance acknowledge Richmond cannot regulate the transport of coal or petroleum coke, banning the storage and handling of coal and petcoke at the Levin Terminal effectively forces out the coal trains.

Because of that, Levin’s lawsuit, filed in federal court last week, calls the ordinance “an improper exercise of police powers” and contends it “violates Constitutional protections and unduly burdens interstate and foreign commerce, is preempted by federal law, violates Constitutional protections against taking of property and business interests, impairs Levin’s Constitutional rights to due process, equal protection and contractual relations, and is arbitrary, capricious and unlawful.”

Federal lawsuits by Wolverine Fuels and Phillips 66 make similar arguments. The companies also allege the city has not shown sufficient evidence to support its claims that the handling of coal and petcoke is bad for residents’ health.

When coal is put in open-air piles, its dust containing poisons such as arsenic, mercury, cadmium, vanadium and chromium is swept around San Francisco Bay, according to environmental advocates with the Sierra Club. The toxins can cause cancer, birth defects and neurological harm, and microscopic particles can inflame lungs and find their way into blood to cause heart and lung disease, diabetes, low birth weight and other illnesses, Sierra Club documents say.

Phillips 66, Wolverine and Levin point to the results of an air monitoring test done over the summer by Sonoma Technologies that suggest their activities don’t harm the community. The Phillips 66 lawsuit says there is “no scientific basis for concluding that fugitive dust from the storage and handling of petcoke at the Terminal posed any health risks or environmental impacts.”

But an evaluation from researchers at UC Berkeley and Belvedere Environmentals posted by advocates of the coal ban disagree.

The particle levels in downtown Richmond are “are definitively associated with increases in: premature death (life expectancy of residents is 7 years shorter than residents of the hills), ischemic heart disease, asthma attacks (incidence in one downtown census tract is higher than 99% of all California census tracts), lung disease (cancer, pneumonia, and bronchitis), dementia, stroke, preterm births, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome,” the researchers wrote in a Nov. 2019 assessment.

The lawsuits against the city are not a surprise. Levin-Richmond Terminal Corp. president Gary Levin warned the council in a July letter that adopting the ban could lead to closure of the terminal and the loss of 62 jobs, and that the company might sue. Wolverine Fuels, which exports thermal coal to Japan using the terminal, also threatened to sue in a letter to the council.

In addition to the three federal suits filed by each company against the city, at least two more petitions — from Levin and Phillips 66 — appear in state court records in Contra Costa County.

Calls to the acting Richmond city attorney were not returned, but Richmond Mayor Tom Butt has expressed concern over the potential costs of fighting the lawsuits, which he expects to top $1 million.

Butt said he was expecting help in fighting the lawsuits from the Sierra Club, which lobbied for the coal ban and helped draft the ordinance. But the Sierra Club maintains it never promised to indemnify the city or pay the legal costs.

“I voted for it, I supported it. They were all over Richmond — lobbying city council members. They started this whole ‘no coal in Richmond’ movement. They drafted the ordinance, assured everyone it was no problem — ‘they may sue us but we’ll win’ — but we’re looking at spending over a million to defend this,” Butt said. “Richmond is not a rich community. We struggle with our budget. I kind of resent the fact they put us out front on this.”

A video of a December council meeting shows Sierra Club’s Aaron Isherwood and Butt discussing potential litigation over the lawsuit. While Isherwood said he can’t promise to cover legal costs — “the city will have to hire its own attorneys” — he added “we will hire attorneys to help defend.” He also said the Sierra Club has “already expended considerable resources” to help the city on the coal ordinance.

Butt said Thursday, “The message was murky, but I took it to mean that they’ll be there for us.”

“In Oakland after the City Council passed its coal ordinance, Sierra Club has been there every step of the way as intervenors,” Isherwood said in a written statement. “When Mayor Butt first approached us to ask about the Sierra Club funding the City of Richmond’s legal costs, we made it clear that we don’t have those kinds of resources to offer, but that we would back the City up in court as intervenors. We will do so, and we remain committed to supporting Richmond and this community in their fight to protect families from the impacts of coal dust.”

Coal industry, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Keeping Watch on Earth News, Trump administration, US Environmental Protection Agency

EPA rule change: power plants can dump fine powder, sludge and contaminated water

November 3, 2019 Roger Straw

EPA to scale back federal rules restricting waste from coal-fired power plants

Agency chief Andrew Wheeler argues that Obama-era rules ‘placed heavy burdens on electricity producers.’ Critics call the changes unwarranted and potentially dangerous.

Washington Post, by Juliet Eilperin & Brady Dennis , Nov 3, 2019

The American Electric Power coal-burning plant in Conesville, Ohio. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday plans to relax rules that govern how power plants store waste from burning coal and release water containing toxic metals into nearby waterways, according to agency officials.

The proposals, which scale back two rules adopted in 2015, affect the disposal of fine powder and sludge known as coal ash, as well as contaminated water that power plants produce while burning coal. Both forms of waste can contain mercury, arsenic and other heavy metals that pose risks to human health and the environment.

The new rules would allow extensions that could keep unlined coal ash waste ponds open for as long as eight additional years. The biggest benefits from the rule governing contaminated wastewater would come from the voluntary use of new filtration technology.

Trump administration officials revised the standards in response to recent court rulings and to petitions from companies that said they could not afford to meet stringent requirements enacted under the Obama administration. They also reflect President Trump’s broader goal of bolstering America’s coal industry at a time when natural gas and renewable energy provide more affordable sources of electricity for consumers.

Under the Obama-era rule, coal ash ponds leaking contaminants into groundwater that exceeded federal protection standards had to close by April 2019. The Trump administration extended that deadline to October 2020 in a rule it finalized last year.

In August 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit instructed the EPA to require that companies overhaul ponds, including those lined with clay and compacted soil, even if there was no evidence that sludge was leaking into groundwater.

In a statement, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said the Obama-era rules “placed heavy burdens on electricity producers across the country.”

“These proposed revisions support the Trump administration’s commitment to responsible, reasonable regulations,” Wheeler said, “by taking a common-sense approach that will provide more certainty to U.S. industry while also protecting public health and the environment.”

Under the new proposal, companies will have to stop placing coal ash into unlined storage ponds near waterways by Aug. 31, 2020, and either retrofit these sites to make them more secure or begin to close them. Unlike the Obama-era rules, the EPA will allow greater leeway and more time for operators to request extensions ranging from 90 days to three years, until Oct. 15, 2023, if they can convince regulators that they need more time to properly dispose of the waste.

Moreover, if a company can demonstrate it is shutting down a coal boiler, it can petition to keep its storage ponds open for as long as eight years, depending on their size. Slurry ponds smaller than 40 acres could get approval to stay in place until Oct. 15, 2023, officials said, while larger ones could remain open until Oct. 15, 2028.

In a phone interview Sunday, American Public Power Association general counsel Delia Patterson said the proposed rules reflect the fact that it can take time to design, permit and construct new facilities that can pass muster.

“I think the EPA is actually acknowledging the reality of the situation. It’s just really not in anyone’s interest to rush this,” said Patterson, whose group represents publicly owned utilities that provide 15 percent of the nation’s electricity.

Environmentalists have sharply criticized the proposals, arguing that these containment sites pose serious risks to the public at a time when more frequent and intense flooding, fueled in part by climate change, could destabilize them and contaminate drinking water supplies that serve millions of people. The rules will be subject to public comment for 60 days.

During the past decade, Tennessee and North Carolina have experienced major coal ash spills that have destroyed homes and contaminated rivers, resulting in sickened cleanup workers and extensive lawsuits.

>>Extreme climate change has come to the United States

The question of how to handle coal waste, which is stored in roughly 450 sites across the country, has vexed regulators for decades. The Obama administration negotiated for years with environmental groups, electric utilities and other affected industries about how to address the waste, which can poison wildlife and poses health risks to people living near storage sites.

Lisa Evans, an attorney specializing in hazardous waste litigation for the environmental group Earthjustice, said allowing the electric industry to extend the life of coal ash pits represents a particular threat to low-income and minority Americans, who often live near such installations.

“Allowing plants to continue to dump toxic waste into leaking coal ash ponds for another 10 years will cause irreversible damage to drinking water sources, human health and the nation’s waters,” Evans said in an email. It was not surprising, she added, that the coal industry had lobbied against closing these storage sites. “Operating ponds is cheap. Closing them costs the utilities money,” she said.

It is also likely to add to consumers’ costs. Last year, for example, a member of the Virginia State Corporation Commission estimated it could cost ratepayers as much as $3.30 a month over 20 years — between $2.4 billion and $5.6 billion — to clean up Virginia-based Dominion Energy’s 11 coal ash ponds and six coal ash landfills in the state.

>>Murray Energy files for bankruptcy as coal’s role in the power sector dwindles

The EPA’s proposals will retain several of the monitoring and public disclosure standards put in place in 2015, officials said, requiring companies to monitor nearby groundwater, publicly report the data and address any leaks that pollute area waterways. The “vast majority” of slurry ponds “are on the road to closure” under the new rule, an EPA official said.

Using monitoring data disclosed for the first time under the 2015 rule, a report published jointly earlier this year by the Environmental Integrity Project and Earthjustice found 91 percent of the nation’s coal-fired power plants reported elevated levels of contaminants such as arsenic, lithium, chromium and other pollutants in nearby groundwater.

The vast majority of ponds and landfills holding coal waste at hundreds of power plants across the country have leaked toxic chemicals into nearby groundwater at facilities from Texas to Pennsylvania to Maryland, according to that analysis. The report acknowledged, however, that the groundwater data alone does not prove drinking-water supplies near the coal waste facilities have been contaminated. Power companies are not routinely required to test nearby drinking water wells. “So the scope of the threat is largely undefined,” the report stated.

The EPA on Monday will also revise requirements for how power plants discharge wastewater, which contains some of the same kind of contaminants. Under the Obama administration, EPA staff had concluded it was feasible to prohibit any releases of such toxic materials by having the units continually recycle their water. The agency has now concluded this is much more costly than originally anticipated, and technological advances have made it cheaper to filter and capture the waste through a membrane system, officials said.

Under the new rule, plants would be allowed to discharge 10 percent of their water each day, on a 30-day rolling average. The administration projects the regulation would prevent 105 million pounds of pollutants from being released compared with the old standards because 18 affected plants would voluntarily adopt a more advanced filtration system. The administration also estimated it would save the industry $175 million each year in compliance costs and yield an additional $15 million to $69 million in annual public health and environmental benefits.

However, even if the 18 plants voluntarily adopted more advanced filtration techniques, they represent a minority of the nation’s total plants.

Elizabeth “Betsy” Southerland, former director of science and technology at the EPA’s Office of Water, said the proposed rule “relaxes the 2015 treatment requirements allowing increased selenium discharges and [the] release of contaminated water from coal ash handling. Even worse, it exempts a large number of plants from these relaxed requirements, allowing them to discharge more pollutants and continue disposing of ash in leaking ponds.”

Patterson said although it may be “just hard to understand” why companies need more time and flexibility, plant operators have no interest in contaminating nearby waterways. “They live in and around these communities,” she said.

Evans said environmentalists are likely to challenge the new rule on coal ash storage, and the federal government could again reverse course if a Democrat wins the presidency next year. She noted that, because 95 percent of coal ash ponds remain unlined, two-thirds lie within five feet of groundwater and 92 percent leak more than federal health standards allow, they could pose a risk to the public even as litigation winds its way through the federal courts.

“We have to hope that no wells are poisoned and no toxic waste is spilled in the interim,” she said. “Crossing your fingers is not a legal or sane way to regulate toxic waste.”

Coal industry, Keeping Watch on Earth News

Major Coal Plant Closures Show How Coal Industry Is Dying Faster Than Expected

August 20, 2019 Roger Straw

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.

Interesting Engineering – SCIENCE, by John Loeffler, Aug 18, 2019

Major Coal Plant Closures Show How Coal Industry Is Dying Faster Than Expected — 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?

Climate Change Crisis — *Source: NASA/GISS*

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.

Carbon dioxide, Coal industry, Keeping Watch on Earth News

And Now, the Really Big Coal Plants Begin to Close

August 18, 2019 Roger Straw

Old, small plants were the early retirees, but several of the biggest U.S. coal burners—and CO2 emitters-will be shuttered by year’s end

Scientific American, by Benjamin Storrow, E&E News, 16 Aug 2019

And Now, the Really Big Coal Plants Begin to Close — The Navajo Generating Station, near Page, Ariz., is scheduled to close this year. It’s one of the largest greenhouse gas emitters in the U.S. power sector. Credit: David Wall Getty Images

When the Navajo Generating Station in Arizona shuts down later this year, it will be one of the largest carbon emitters to ever close in American history.

The giant coal plant on Arizona’s high desert emitted almost 135 million metric tons of carbon dioxide between 2010 and 2017, according to an E&E News review of federal figures.

Its average annual emissions over that period are roughly equivalent to what 3.3 million passenger cars would pump into the atmosphere in a single year. Of all the coal plants to be retired in the United States in recent years, none has emitted more.

The Navajo Generating Station isn’t alone. It’s among a new wave of super-polluters headed for the scrap heap. Bruce Mansfield, a massive coal plant in Pennsylvania, emitted nearly 123 million tons between 2010 and 2017. It, too, will be retired by year’s end (Energywire, Aug. 12).

And in western Kentucky, the Paradise plant emitted some 102 million tons of carbon over that period. The Tennessee Valley Authority closed two of Paradise’s three units in 2017. It will close the last one next year (Greenwire, Feb. 14).

“It’s just the economics keep moving in a direction that favors natural gas and renewables. Five years ago, it was about the older coal plants becoming uneconomic,” said Dan Bakal, senior director of electric power at Ceres, which works with businesses to transition to clean energy. “Now, it’s becoming about every coal unit, and it’s a question of how long they can survive.”

Coal plant closures have been a feature of U.S. power markets for the better part of a decade, as stagnant demand, low natural gas prices and increasing competition from renewables have battered the coal fleet.

In previous years, most retirements were made up of smaller and lesser-used units (Climatewire, April 27, 2017). That means the emissions reductions were less substantial.

In 2015, the United States closed 15 gigawatts of coal capacity, or roughly 5% of the coal fleet. That still stands as a record amount of coal capacity retired in one year.

Yet the emissions reductions were modest by today’s standards. The units retired in 2015 emitted a combined 261 million tons in the six years prior to their retirement, according to an E&E News review of EPA emissions data. On average, they annually emitted about 43 million tons over that period.

Contrast that to 2018, when almost 14 GW of coal was retired. Those units emitted 511 million tons of carbon between 2010 and 2015. Their combined average annual emissions rate was 83 million tons.

The trend figures to be even more dramatic this year.

SMALL PLANTS ARE GONE

The U.S. Energy Information Administration expects almost 8 GW of coal to retire in 2019, or a little more than half the capacity retired in 2015. Yet the units retired this year emitted more than their 2015 counterparts. Between 2010 and 2015, their combined emissions were 328 million tons, giving them an annual emissions average of 55 million tons.

Other factors are also at play in the retirement of coal’s behemoths. In some cases, federal air quality regulations or an exodus of customers may have contributed to the closure, said John Larsen, who leads power-sector analysis at the Rhodium Group, an economic consulting firm.

The Navajo Generating Station is a case in point. The plant had already planned to shut down a unit to comply with federal smog regulations. Two utilities with a stake in the facility had either divested from the plant or plan to do so. And the plant’s largest customer announced it could buy power on the wholesale market for less.

“You notice the average size of retired plants going up over time. There are not a lot of small plants left, period,” Larsen said. “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 several caveats to consider. Units scheduled for retirement generally produce less in the years running up to their closure, meaning the plants that closed in 2015 once emitted more than they did near the end of their lives.

There’s also this: The vast majority of super-polluters have no closure date in sight. That’s because massive coal plants generally benefit from large economies of scale. Because they crank out power around the clock, their cost of generating electricity is relatively cheap.

“The coal plants remaining have generally installed all the environmental controls,” Larsen said. “There are no additional regulatory threats, or they are cost-effective in a world where gas is $2.50 per MMBtu.”

Another caveat: Coal plant closures don’t guarantee power-sector emissions reductions on their own. In 2018, power-sector emissions increased for the first time in many years because electricity demand rose, prompting natural gas generation to spike (Climatewire, Jan. 14).

But if there is a notable trend with the current round of plant closures, it is this: The large coal plants closing today are in places like Arizona, Pennsylvania and Kentucky.

“You’re not seeing climate policy close these plants,” said Mike O’Boyle, director of electricity policy for Energy Innovation, a nonprofit that advocates for a transition to clean energy. “Coal plants are becoming more expensive to operate over time.”

Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from E&E News. E&E provides daily coverage of essential energy and environmental news at www.eenews.net.

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