Move PA Beyond Coal
Dirty Coal is Making Us Sick - We have the Cure
Pollution from burning oil and coal spurs a host of serious health problems, inflicting children with asthma, stifling childhood development and cutting short thousands of lives. Oil and Coal are also destroying our nation’s economic health. By tying us to dirty 19th century energy sources, these corporate polluters are strangling our economy while wreaking havoc on our health.
Fortunately, the Environmental Protection Agency exists to enforce much needed safeguards to keep polluters from making us sick.
In the 40 years since Americans demanded its creation, the EPA has saved millions of lives by enforcing clean air and water standards. More than 1.7 million asthma attacks and $110 billion in healthcare costs were avoided in 2010 alone thanks to the agency’s efforts.
To corporate polluters like Big Oil and Big Coal, our health is worth less than their profits.
We need to hold corporate polluters accountable. We cannot continue to let them ruin our children’s health for the sake of an extra buck – they’re making us sick.
There is a cure. With the help of the EPA, we can clean up our air and water and protect our families by phasing out life-threatening oil and coal, while creating real jobs in America that will power a clean and prosperous future.
A Future Beyond Coal is up to YOU!
The Life of Coal is a dirty one. Get involved in the work to build a cleaner future!
“In 2007 U.S. power plants released 2.56 billion tons of carbon dioxide, equivalent to the amount produced by 449 million of today’s cars – that’s more than three times the number of passenger cars registered in the United States in the same year.”
That is one of the remarkable findings of a new report from Environment America titled “America’s Biggest Polluters – Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Power Plants in 2007”. This report follows a recent account of the trend of power plant emissions from 1990 to 2007.
Among the findings of the report are the following:
- Coal-fired power plants are responsible for a disproportionate amount of this pollution – though coal produced two-thirds of U.S. fossil fuel electricity, coal plants emitted over 80 percent of fossil fuel global warming pollution. Coal plants emitted about one-third of the nation’s total global warming pollution.
- With a total CO2 emission of 123,583,904 tons in 2007, Pennsylvania was fifth in the nation, behind Texas, Ohio, Florida, and Indiana.
- Many of the nation’s power plants are decades-old. Twelve of Pennsylvania’s twenty-two coal-fired plants are 50 years old or older.
- Old and dirty tend go hand-in-hand. Power plants built three decades ago or more produced 73 percent of the total global warming pollution from power plants in 2007.
A sigificant finding for Pennsylvania is that for the same amount of electricity produced, the amount of CO2 emitted from plants fueled by natural gas is about 65% that of coal-fired plants. This fact lends some support to the drilling of the Marcellus Shale deposits, if natural gas is seen serving as a transition towards a non-fossil energy economy.
Included among the nation’s 100 Dirtiest Power Plants are seven of Pennsylvania’s own ….
- 16 Bruce Mansfield (Beaver County), commissioned in Dec, 1975, 17,387,361 tons of CO2 in 2007.
- 34 Homer City (Indiana) Jun, 1969, 13,576,987 tons.
- 44 Conemaugh (Indiana) May, 1970, 12,124,919 tons.
- 45 Keystone (Indiana) Jun, 1967, 11,898,614 tons.
- 63 Hatfields Ferry (Greene) Jan, 1969, 10,173,499 tons.
- 72 Brunner Island (York) Jun, 1961, 9,380,958 tons.
- 76 Montour (Montour) Nov, 1971, 9,252,615 tons.
by Peter Wray - Conservation Chair of the Allegheny Group
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