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Plans for 150 New Coal Plants Scrapped: Transition to Clean Energy Picks Up Steam
Case Updates:
February 3, 2011
Purdue University has cancelled plans for a new campus coal-fired power plant, making the plant the 150th to be defeated or abandoned since the beginning of the coal rush. Thanks in part to the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign, not a single new coal plant has broken ground in the last two years, and the industry has announced plans to phase out over 50 existing plants.
Purdue was the only university in the country planning to build a new coal plant. As of April 2010, the university had obtained all necessary environmental permits, authorized the necessary capital expenditure, and even set a construction start date. In response, Sierra Club, through litigation and grassroots organizing, campaigned to stop the Purdue coal expansion and transition the university to cleaner energy alternatives. Sierra Club and its Student Coalition’s efforts were vindicated when, on February 3, 2011, a committee of the Purdue University Board of Trustees passed a resolution to cancel plans to add a new boiler to the existing Wade coal-fired power plant. The university announced that it would develop a new energy plan to determine how the campus should be powered into the future.
Sierra Club and its Student Coalition will continue to push the university to follow the lead of nearly a dozen other schools and commit to ending its dependence on campus coal plants by switching to cleaner energy sources.
Details and Documents:
Plans for 150 New Coal Plants Scrapped
February 3, 2011, Sierra Club Press Release
News Articles:
University decides against new boiler
February 7, 2011 by Joshua Sabik, The Exponent
More Info:
See other "Stopping the Coal Rush" cases.