The End of Coal Energy?

Okay, it might be a little bit early to proclaim the end of coal-based electricity, but the Sierra Club recently scored a huge legal decision in that direction.

In a case with national implications, the Environmental Appeals Board of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ruled today that the EPA had no valid reason for refusing to require that best available control technology be used to limit carbon dioxide emissions from a coal-fired power plant proposed in Utah.

The Sierra Club went before the Environmental Appeals Board in May to request that the air permit issued by EPA Region 8 for Deseret Power Electric Cooperative's proposed waste coal-fired power plant be overturned because it failed to require controls on carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming.

As permitted, Deseret Power's 110 megawatt Bonanza plant would have emitted 3.37 million tons of carbon dioxide each year. It would be located next to the existing Bonanza Power Plant on Bureau of Indian Affairs land.

This basically sets a legal precedent that could potentially be used to prevent any new coal-fired power plants from being built that do not have controls to limit carbon dioxide emissions. In most cases, meaningful carbon capture and storage controls are extremely expensive and put the cost of coal-based energy well above natural gas, geothermal, and utility scale wind energy. We will see how this plays out, but this is a huge victory for reducing CO2 emissions, and eventually eliminating the ability of corporations to externalize the costs of pollution in general.