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100th Coal Plant Defeated!
Case Updates:
July 15, 2009
Great news! As of July 8, 2009, 100 coal plants have been defeated or abandoned since the beginning of the coal rush! For the past six years the Sierra Club and its allies have been running a hard-hitting campaign to expose the dirty truth about coal. Tremendous grassroots pressure, rising costs, and upcoming federal carbon regulations all contributed to the demise of the 100 plants. That movement has kept well over 400 million tons of harmful global warming pollution out of the air annually, making significant progress in the fight against global warming. Stopping 100 new coal plants has also kept thousands of tons of asthma causing soot and smog pollution, as well as toxins like mercury, out of our air and water.
The latest plant to fall was a massive 900MW plant in Utah. The Intermountain Power Project was scrapped just days after Los Angles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced that LA would be coal free by 2020. The energy from this proposed plant would have supplied power to LA. Leading up to the monumental achievement were the announcements that Basin Electric Power Cooperative was abandoning its plan to build their South Dakota NextGen plant, and Northern Michigan University giving up on their dirty coal plant in favor or a cleaner wood burning plant.
However, the fight is not over. ““The coal industry is still pushing forward with plans for dozens of new plants and pouring money into slick advertising campaigns and lobbying efforts,” said Bruce Nilles, Director of the National Coal Campaign. “So while the coal rush may be entering a new phase in some parts of the country, it is far from over.”
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See other "Stopping the Coal Rush" cases.