LA: Powered by Dirty Coal
LADWP stands for Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and it is the largest city-owned utility in the United States with 1.45 million electricity customers.
Currently, the city of Los Angeles owns shares in two coal plants: Navajo and Intermountain Power Project. In 2006, Navajo Generating Station and Intermountain Power Project released a combined total of 36,107,111 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.
The Navajo generating station alone uses 8 million tons of coal a year which translates into 25,000 tons of coal per day when all units are fully running. Additionally, each year the plant uses nearly 8 billion gallons of water from Lake Powell for cooling – a shocking number in water starved Los Angeles. Our dependence on coal is responsible for significant pollution and human health impacts at every phase of its life cycle.
The department has already been taking strides towards a cleaner energy usage during Villaraigosa’s first term. While renewable energy made up only three percent of LA’s power supply in 2005, as of July last year the figure was 8.5% and the city is on track to have 20% by 2010.
“We applaud Mayor Villaraigosa’s bold decision to move Los Angeles beyond coal,” said Bruce Nilles, director of the Sierra Club’s efforts to end coal-fired power plants. “The decision to replace coal with cleaner energy alternatives is key to boosting job creation and economic growth.”
“Solar LA serves as more than a blueprint to a greener LADWP,” Mayor Villaraigosa said. “By sparking a broad movement to solar energy across a city of 4 million residents, we are priming the pump for Los Angeles to become a world leader in the solar industry and delivering on the vision of re-making Los Angeles into the cleanest, greenest big city in America.”
If this plan is completed by 2020 then LA will generate a tenth of Los Angeles’ power through solar energy by 2020. LADWP will put in 400 MW of roof-top solar systems on city-owned properties by 2014. It will also obtain 500 MW of utility-scale solar power from projects developed under agreement by third-party solar developers.
“L.A. has everything it takes to make this [solar plan] work,” said Villaraigosa, standing alongside environmentalists, union leaders and City Council members. “We have the sun in abundance. We have the space. We have the largest municipal utility in the country.”
Navajo Generating Station is a 2250 megawatt coal-fired power plant located on the Navajo Indian Reservation near Page, Arizona.
The plant consists of three 750 MW units that provide power to Arizona, Nevada, and California. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power owns 21% of the power generated by the plant. The station has three 236 meter high chimneys, which are the tallest structures in Arizona. It was assembled during the 1970s and began producing commercial power in 1975. The construction costs were $650 million, with an additional $420 million for new environmental scrubbers.
According to Clearing California’s Coal Shadow from the American West, Navajo Generating Station releases more than 19 million tons of carbon dioxide per year. In 2004, it was the nation’s fifth largest power plant emitter of carbon dioxide and eleventh largest emitter of nitrogen oxides.
The power plant is served by coal mined at the Kayenta Mine near Kayenta, Arizona and hauled by the Black Mesa and Lake Powell railroad. The Kayenta mine ships about 8 million tons of coal each year to the power plant, which uses up to 25,000 tons of coal per day when all units are fully running. Each year the plant also uses nearly 8 billion gallons of water from Lake Powell for cooling.
The Navajo Generating Station is located about 25 kilometers from the Grand Canyon National Park. In 1987, a National Park Service study demonstrated that the plant impacts the air quality at the park and contributes to the wintertime haze at the Grand Canyon. In 1991, as a result of years of litigation by environmental organizations and citizen activists, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency required a 90% reduction in sulfur dioxide emissions from the plant.