Coal out for carbon count

New plants “must set CO2 limits”, US court rules

In the latest salvo in the intensifying US battle over the future of coal-fired electricity generation, the state of Georgia has blocked construction of a major new power station on the banks of the Chattahoochee River because the operating company failed to address its carbon dioxide emissions.

Dynegy, America’s largest coal plant developer, was denied a permit when Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore ruled that the company should have set limits on CO2 emissions from the 1,200MW facility – citing the 2007 Supreme Court decision [click here for background] recognising CO2 as an air pollutant that could be regulated. 

Dynergy immediately announced plans to appeal the decision. But environmentalists predicted the ruling will lead to reconsideration of other planned coal power plants, several dozen of which are in the pipeline nationwide. Coal produces about 30% of all US greenhouse gas emissions, and the Georgia decision could help push power companies to invest more quickly and comprehensively in technologies to capture and store carbon generated by their plants. “Thanks to this decision, coal plants across the country will be forced to live up to their clean coal rhetoric,” Bruce Nilles, director of the Sierra Club’s National Coal Campaign, told the Environment News Service.

“In a case that is being watched across the country, Judge Moore has sent a message that it is not acceptable for the state to put profits over public health,” said Justine Thompson, executive director of GreenLaw – the non-profit Georgia law firm which filed the legal challenge to the power plant permit on behalf of the Sierra Club and local green group Friends of the Chattahoochee. The Medical Association of Georgia and patient advocacy groups had also strongly opposed the power plant, which would produce nine million tons of CO2 emissions a year, as well as sulphur and nitrogen dioxides and particulates. – Polly Ghazi

Click here to read about the latest developments and debate surrounding the new coal-fired power stations planned for the UK. 

29 July 2008

Polly Ghazi