Want Action Now? Adopt Your Local Coal-Fired Power Plant

How we can get a big part of the US carbon economy to turn off. Practically. Safely.

Over the past few years, I've been very impressed with The Sierra Club's "Stop the Coal Rush" Campaign to halt new coal-fired power generation in the US. It has been very effective: using legal action, protests, ad campaigns - a host of actions - it had the effect of making coal 'dirty' for the public. The Sierra Club is one of the few big organizations willing to address the facts: we have to phase-out coal to halt global warming. I've attached the Google Earth KMZ file for the Stop the Coal Rush Campaign so you could plot the locations of all the coal plants The Sierra Club is tracking.

Expanding this program to include PHASING OUT EXISTING COAL POWER PLANTS is a logical and necessary next step. Realistically, people need the power supplies, so we have to be smart about this.

I've spent the past few days trying to estimate what it would take to get 80% less CO2 from the US Power supply system in 10 years, as a case study in global de-carbonization. My answer:

Adopt your Local Power Plant.

I started with the amazing CARMA.org database of 53,981 global power plants (KMZ file also attached below), and then narrowed it to the US power plants (3,897 of them). This very cool database started out as one of those special Google-employee special projects to show everyone what a real mashup of all powerplant databases would look like in a Geographic Information System (GIS). My management process was as follows, simplified to be much like a large construction project spread over ten years:

Years 1 to 3: Organization. We would need to organize one group to ‘shepherd’ each major power plant in the US from coal/oil to renewable power. That means about 4,000 groups. This is a small fraction of the total number of environmentally-focused groups in the US.

Years 3 to 5: Planning. Communities would need to assess the real requirements for the shutoff of a major power plant. This is not trivial. Climate activists can complain, but we like having electricity. Planning for the phase-in of substitute power supplies would have to assure that we have:

• A mix of practical and locally-relevant renewable energy options identified;
• Reliable power must be established before we turn off old coal plants’ boilers;
• Job-training and job placement for coal-era workers – these folks may be angry. We need to stand with coal-era workers every step of the way. We enjoyed the fruits of their work for decades, and now it’s our turn to responsibly help coal-era workers find better opportunities in the renewable energy future.

Years 5 to 7: Finance and Legal. We have to pay for all this, and I think we can, especially with the new forward-fruitfulness bonds now being used for fast infrastructure shifts (see Dr. David Martin’s STCO Bonds financing paper HERE). Also, Climate Bonds or "Green Bonds" are also a good proposition. Second, we’ll have to deal with the inevitable lawsuits.

Years 5 to 10: Construction - and Coal-Boiler Shoutoff. All parties have to take responsibility here. Power consumers need to insist on shutting down boilers as renewables are built; industry needs to insist that consumers support the build-out of renewable supplies. As we get renewables online, we shut off old coal boilers.

Remember, until the boilers actually shut off, the carbon emissions continue...

The attached chart is the draft result. After looking at a lot of scenarios, my summary:

1. Phasing out coal is the key to it all. We have to phase-out essentially all coal and most oil-fired boilers at US power plants in 10 years. Renewables must directly substitute for coal/oil based power. In this context, I worry that soft economic forces like marginally higher carbon costs won't work - they're too slow. Natural gas can replace some carbon-based fuels, but the bottom line is: we need to stop using coal for electric power.
2. Good news: Renewable energy can substitute for carbon-based power in 10 years - I think we can build-out wind, solar, small hydro and geothermal quickly (the US wind power industry is 100% above the most optimistic build-out projections).

We could do this.

Cheers,

Kevin