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National Geographic
5 days ago
- Science
- National Geographic
High Cost of Cheap Coal: The Coal Paradox
A coal train rumbling across Montana is a mile and a half (2.4 kilometers) long yet carries barely a day's fuel for a large power plant. The U.S. burns more than a billion tons of coal a year. Photograph by William Campbell/Corbis Learn about the high cost of cheap coal, including pollution and global warming. On a scorching August day in southwestern Indiana, the giant Gibson generating station is running flat out. Its five 180-foot-high (54.9-meter-high) boilers are gulping 25 tons (22.7 metric tons) of coal each minute, sending thousand-degree steam blasting through turbines that churn out more than 3,000 megawatts of electric power, 50 percent more than Hoover Dam. The plant's cooling system is struggling to keep up, and in the control room warnings chirp as the exhaust temperature rises. But there's no backing off on a day like this, with air conditioners humming across the Midwest and electricity demand close to record levels. Gibson, one of the biggest power plants in the country, is a mainstay of the region's electricity supply, pumping enough power into the grid for three million people. Stepping from the sweltering plant into the air-conditioned offices, Angeline Protogere of Cinergy, the Cincinnati-based utility that owns Gibson, says gratefully, "This is why we're making all that power." Next time you turn up the AC or pop in a DVD, spare a thought for places like Gibson and for the grimy fuel it devours at the rate of three 100-car trainloads a day. Coal-burning power plants like this one supply the United States with half its electricity. They also emit a stew of damaging substances, including sulfur dioxide—a major cause of acid rain—and mercury. And they gush as much climate-warming carbon dioxide as America's cars, trucks, buses, and planes combined. Here and there, in small demonstration projects, engineers are exploring technologies that could turn coal into power without these environmental costs. Yet unless utilities start building such plants soon—and lots of them—the future is likely to hold many more traditional stations like Gibson. Last summer's voracious electricity use was just a preview. Americans' taste for bigger houses, along with population growth in the West and air-conditioning-dependent Southeast, will help push up the U.S. appetite for power by a third over the next 20 years, according to the Department of Energy. And in the developing world, especially China, electricity needs will rise even faster as factories burgeon and hundreds of millions of people buy their first refrigerators and TVs. Much of that demand is likely to be met with coal. For the past 15 years U.S. utilities needing to add power have mainly built plants that burn natural gas, a relatively clean fuel. But a near tripling of natural gas prices in the past seven years has idled many gas-fired plants and put a damper on new construction. Neither nuclear energy nor alternative sources such as wind and solar seem likely to meet the demand for electricity. Where guests are guardians Meanwhile, more than a quarter trillion tons of coal lie underfoot, from the Appalachians through the Illinois Basin to the Rocky Mountains—enough to last 250 years at today's consumption rate. You hear it again and again: The U.S. is the Saudi Arabia of coal. About 40 coal-burning power plants are now being designed or built in the U.S. China, also rich in coal, could build several hundred by 2025. Mining enough coal to satisfy this growing appetite will take a toll on lands and communities. Of all fossil fuels, coal puts out the most carbon dioxide per unit of energy, so burning it poses a further threat to global climate, already warming alarmingly. With much government prodding, coal-burning utilities have cut pollutants such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides by installing equipment like the building-size scrubbers and catalytic units crowded behind the Gibson plant. But the carbon dioxide that drives global warming simply goes up the stacks—nearly two billion tons of it each year from U.S. coal plants. Within the next two decades that amount could rise by a third. There's no easy way to capture all the carbon dioxide from a traditional coal-burning station. "Right now, if you took a plant and slapped a carbon-capture device on it, you'd lose 25 percent of the energy," says Julio Friedmann, who studies carbon dioxide management at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. But a new kind of power station could change that. A hundred miles (161 kilometers) up the Wabash River from the Gibson plant is a small power station that looks nothing like Gibson's mammoth boilers and steam turbines. This one resembles an oil refinery, all tanks and silvery tubes. Instead of burning coal, the Wabash River plant chemically transforms it in a process called coal gasification. The Wabash plant mixes coal or petroleum coke, a coal-like residue from oil refineries, with water and pure oxygen and pumps it into a tall tank, where a fiery reaction turns the mixture into a flammable gas. Other equipment removes sulfur and other contaminants from the syngas, as it's called, before it's burned in a gas turbine to produce electricity. Cleaning the unburned syngas is cheaper and more effective than trying to sieve pollutants from power plant exhaust, as the scrubbers at a plant like Gibson do. "This has been called the cleanest coal-fired power plant in the world," says Steven Vick, general manager of the Wabash facility. "We're pretty proud of that distinction." The syngas can even be processed to strip out the carbon dioxide. The Wabash plant doesn't take this step, but future plants could. Coal gasification, Vick says, "is a technology that's set up for total CO2 removal." The carbon dioxide could be pumped deep underground into depleted oil fields, old coal seams, or fluid-filled rock, sealed away from the atmosphere. And as a bonus, taking carbon dioxide out of the syngas can leave pure hydrogen, which could fuel a new generation of nonpolluting cars as well as generate electric power. The Wabash plant and a similar one near Tampa, Florida, were built or refurbished with government money in the mid-1990s to demonstrate that gasification is a viable electricity source. Projects in North Dakota, Canada, the North Sea, and elsewhere have tested the other parts of the equation: capturing carbon dioxide and sequestering it underground. Researchers say they need to know more about how buried carbon dioxide behaves to be sure it won't leak back out—a potential threat to climate or even people. But Friedmann says, "For a first cut, we have enough information to say, 'It's a no-brainer. We know how to do this.'" Yet that's no guarantee utilities will embrace the gasification technology. "The fact that it's proved in Indiana and Florida doesn't mean executives are going to make a billion-dollar bet on it," says William Rosenberg of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. The two gasification power plants in the U.S. are half the size of most commercial generating stations and have proved less reliable than traditional plants. The technology also costs as much as 20 percent more. Most important, there's little incentive for a company to take on the extra risk and expense of cleaner technology: For now U.S. utilities are free to emit as much carbon dioxide as they like. Cinergy CEO James Rogers, the man in charge of Gibson and eight other carbon-spewing plants, says he expects that to change. "I do believe we'll have regulation of carbon in this country," he says, and he wants his company to be ready. "The sooner we get to work, the better. I believe it's very important that we develop the ability to do carbon sequestration." Rogers says he intends to build a commercial-scale gasification power plant, able to capture its carbon dioxide, and several other companies have announced similar plans. The energy bill passed last July by the U.S. Congress offers help in the form of loan guarantees and tax credits for gasification projects. "This should jump-start things," says Rosenberg, who advocated these measures in testimony to Congress. The experience of building and running the first few plants should lower costs and improve reliability. And sooner or later, says Rogers, new environmental laws that put a price on carbon dioxide emissions will make clean technology look far more attractive. "If the cost of carbon is 30 bucks a ton, it's amazing the kinds of technologies that will evolve to allow you to produce more electricity with less emissions." If he's right, we may one day be able to cool our houses without turning up the thermostat on the entire planet.
Boston Globe
01-07-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
MTA-backed campaign behind MCAS question did not disclose $2.4 million in contributions until Election Day, breaking state law
Voters But in making its pitch, state regulators said, the campaign behind it did not publicly disclose some $2.37 million when it was supposed to under state law. Advertisement The so-called Yes on 2 campaign, for example, took $800,000 in donations from a variety of teacher labor groups, including $500,000 from the National Education Association and $50,000 from the Boston Teachers Union PAC on Oct. 21. But the campaign didn't publicly disclose those contributions, and others, until Nov. 5, Election Day itself. State law dictates that, in a two-week span ahead of Election Day, ballot question committees are required to disclose any contributions within 72 hours of receiving them. That means the campaign should have publicly filed notice of the donations nearly two weeks earlier on Oct. 24. Advertisement The MTA also poured in nearly $1.6 million in so-called in-kind contributions on Nov. 1, most of it to cover advertising costs. Those contributions also didn't show up in public reports until Election Day, according to OCPF. The campaign instead should have filed so-called late contribution reports to disclose those and the other contributions, state regulators said. That lag may appear small, but the days ahead of Election Day typically are the most intense stretch for campaign spending as more casual voters begin weighing their choices, and others are hustling to The group's 'failure to file the required late contribution reports frustrated the public's interest in accurate and timely disclosure of campaign finance activity,' William Campbell, OCPF's director, wrote in a June 24 letter to the campaign. The Committee for High Standards Not High Stakes Max Page, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. A spokesperson for the union also didn't immediately respond to messages. The ballot question was among the intensely fought state campaigns last fall. It pitted them against some Congressional Democrats, including Senator Elizabeth Warren, and the MTA, which argued that requiring high schoolers to pass the MCAS unfairly penalized students with disabilities or who are not fluent in English. Advertisement In wake of November's vote, the state has embraced a The changes, which the state education board Graduation requirements for the class of 2025 were left up to individual districts, and Healey has Advertisement The slate of temporary measures, however, has not settled the ongoing debate about what the state should require of its students. Some groups, such as the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, argued the interim regulations are not rigorous enough, the Globe has reported, while the MTA took issue with them allowing some students to still graduate by passing the state test. Matt Stout can be reached at
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Yahoo
Fourth person faces murder charge after Regina's third homicide of 2025
Regina police conduct a death investigation on the 800 block of Victoria Avenue in the early morning of April 24, 2025. (Credit: KAYLE NEIS) A 19-year-old woman is the fourth person to be charged with first-degree murder in relation to the death of William Allan Campbell. The Regina Police Service (RPS) sent out a news release Tuesday indicating that Priscilla Irene Cyr of Regina has been charged. The release states that an investigation led police to the woman, who was arrested at approximately 5 a.m. on Tuesday after a warrant had been issued. Cyr is scheduled to make her first appearance on the charge in Regina provincial court Wednesday morning, according to police. The other three people facing murder charges have already appeared in court. They include two adult males (Keli Stonechild and Dontay Bellegarde) as well as a 16-year-old boy whose name cannot be released in keeping with the Youth Criminal Justice Act. ADVERTISEMENT The case began after police responded to a call about an injured man on April 24 at around 5:30 a.m. Officers were dispatched to the 800 block of Victoria Avenue, where they located Campbell. He was pronounced dead a short time later. According to Tuesday's news release, an additional three individuals have been charged with lesser offences in relation to Campbell's death. RPS considers it the city's third homicide of 2025. Related The Regina Leader-Post has created an Afternoon Headlines newsletter that can be delivered daily to your inbox so you are up to date with the most vital news of the day. Click here to subscribe. With some online platforms blocking access to the journalism upon which you depend, our website is your destination for up-to-the-minute news, so make sure to bookmark and sign up for our newsletters so we can keep you informed. Click here to subscribe.
Yahoo
27-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Akron at 200: A rude proposition, Naughty Nina and Dairy Mart
As Akron celebrates its bicentennial in 2025, we're looking back at two centuries of headlines. Visit every Sunday morning throughout the bicentennial year for a look back at the week in Akron history. Here's what happened April 27 through May 3 in local history: 1825: Ohio residents William Campbell, Christian Deardorff, William Henderson, Abraham Shane, Elias Wade, Jacob Waltz and John Williams donated to the construction fund for the Ohio & Erie Canal, which would pass through the future village of Akron. Bonds ranged from $25 to $50 (roughly $704 to $1,400 today). 1875: As passengers waited to catch an Akron train, Sill Larkins entered the ladies room of the Hudson Depot and made an insulting proposition to a woman seated there. She called the ticket agent, who happened to be Mayor R. Bosworth. He had Larkins arrested and then sentenced him to 10 days at Summit County Jail in Akron with only bread and water for food. 1925: Four men played feminine roles in 'Naughty Nina,' a musical comedy at Central High School in Akron. University of Akron athletes Joe Schoch, Kenneth Mason, Herbert Shinn and Fred Moshovitz donned dresses for the Laughing Mask Club production. Eight other men played chorus girls. A silver cup was presented to the sorority that sold the most tickets. 1975: Members of the Odd Fellows collected 5,000 signatures in their fight to save their historic temple at 277 E. Mill St. from being torn down. The Akron Board of Education acquired the 1870s building with a plan to demolish it for parking for Central-Hower High School. The building was spared destruction. Today, the historic Andrew Jackson House ishome of the GAR Foundation and Knight Foundation. 2000: Dairy Mart, based in Hudson, announced plans to sell off 246 of its 601 convenience stores — most of which were in Ohio. Ten years earlier, the company had 1,400 stores. It also planned to cut about 70 of its 4,000 positions. Most would come from headquarters, where 200 worked. The retailer had lost $4.3 million dollars in the previous quarter. Mark J. Price can be reached at mprice@ Vintage photos: 100 years of Akron spelling bee This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: This week in Akron history for April 27, 2025
