Fresh Loaf

The Rome News-Tribune is reporting that 30 years after Georgia Power’s Plant Bowen started belching out pollutants, one of the nation’s biggest carbon dioxide emitters has installed its first of four scrubbers at the facility.

The device — known as a flue gas desulphurization system — is estimated to remove 95 percent of sulfur dioxide from emissions. Its lone waste product — gypsum — will be sold to an Alabama rock wall company.

The article says that Georgia Power plans on installing 21 scrubbers on six of its coal-fired power plants. Each one will take three years to construct.

Bookmark It

MYANMAR: More than 100,000 people may be dead, and the junta still won’t let in foreign aid.

THERE’S A BAN KI-MOON RISING: U.N. secretary-general visits Atlanta today.

EXIT STRATEGY: TIME magazine on why it’s hard to imagine Clinton bowing out of this race after more than 20 years of Clintonian dominance.

WILDFIRES: Could spread like themselves again this summer in South Georgia. Sprouting trees are sucking up what little water there is, and even sparks from passing trains have already started small fires.

BRAND SPANKING NEWS: Atlanta-based Spanx sues British company S.P.A.N.K., alleging trademark infringement that could lead to consumer confusion.

CASEY AT THE BAT: Cagle now says he’d allow a Senate vote on Sunday alcohol sales.

CLAYTON BOE: Denies “knowingly and willingly” breaking the law.

RADIOHEAD: Thunderstorms are expected tonight, and you can’t bring umbrellas into Lakewood.

POWERS THAT WILL BE: If new nuclear reactors are added to Vogtle, Georgia Power expects rates to go up $12 a month in 2018.

DIGGING UP DIRT ON MAYOR: Archaeologists are excavating Brunswick mayor’s back yard after ancient pottery shards were discovered, some more than 1,000 years old.

Bookmark It

Woe is Georgia Power.

The energy heavy and subsidiary of Atlanta-based Southern Co. is advocating before the Public Services Commission today and tomorrow that it needs to raise its rates 3 percent because of the skyrocketing cost of natural gas and coal, the state’s predominant fuel burned to generate electricity. Customers would most likely see their bills go up $3 if the hike is approved.

Georgia Power says the rate hike will generate $222 million. Long the cheapest bang-for-the-buck source, coal’s prices have risen sharply, from nearly $40 a ton early last year to $90 a ton in today’s market, thanks to increasing demand from India and China. Two new coal power plants have been proposed for the state of Georgia. The mining and use of coal is also probably one of the stiffest middle fingers you can give to Mother Nature, but that’s another story.

In other news, the sun continues to shine and wind continues to blow.

Bookmark It

Tons of CO2 emitted in 2007 by Plant Scherer, a coal power plant outside Macon: 27,200,000

Since 2002, number of states with lower increase in CO2 emissions than Georgia: 48

Pounds of CO2 emission stopped annually by replacing three incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs: 300

Pounds of CO2 emission stopped annually by inflating your car tires correctly: 250

Pounds of CO2 emission stopped annually by setting your thermostat two degree cooler in winter and warmer in summer: 2,000

Pounds of CO2 emissions stopped annually by switching from average American diet to a vegetarian diet: 3,000

Minimum number people, businesses and municipalities turning off all lights for one hour on March 29 for Earth Hour: 160,000

U.S. home fires caused by candles between 2000 and 2004: 16,400

Sources: Environmental Integrity Project, National Fire Protection Association, www.earthhour.org, International Herald Tribune, www.stopglobalwarming.org

Bookmark It

Business magazine Portfolio has blessed Atlanta-based Southern Co. with a coveted spot on its list of top 10 corporate polluters. The parent company of Georgia Power is described by the glossy as such:

Southern provides power to more than 4 million customers, but its plants emit a mass of noxious gases across the southern United States. Analyzing E.P.A. data, the Environmental Integrity Project reports that Southern runs six of the 50 dirtiest power plants in the country in terms of sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and mercury released. Its Bowen plant in Georgia, run by subsidiary Georgia Power, is the biggest American sulfur-dioxide polluter. Southern owns the top three carbon-dioxide-emitting plants in the U.S., two of which rank second and third in mercury output as well. And five of its other plants are among the country’s top 50 nitrogen-oxide producers.

What the company says: Southern continues to invest billions of dollars to lower its chemical and greenhouse-gas emissions while also seeking out new ways to produce cleaner energy.

Way to go, Southern Co.! All publicity’s good publicity!

Bookmark It

It’s a wallet, you perverts!

The Associated Press reports that Atlanta-based Southern Co., parent company of Georgia Power, Alabama Power, God-We-Have-So-Much Power, and other utilities, spent more than $14 million last year on lobbying the U.S. Congress, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Energy Department and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Bookmark It

Georgia Power, the largest subsidiary of energy juggernaut Southern Company, announced that it’s accepting proposals from wind- and solar-power providers, which the company will in turn sell to its Georgia customers. Yippee! Zero-emission energy for we!

Well, possibly. According to a Georgia Power representative, there are few providers in the state, as Georgia has historically been a region not too suitable for solar- and wind-power generation. (The company did recently find, however, that wind power would be feasible along the coast.) You’ve got until October of next year to hook those pretty pinwheels in your garden up to a battery and make our world a clean and spiffy place. And yourself a buck. Click on the link above to get the 40-page proposal.
Has Georgia Power not thought about contacting the Manns? That 45-foot-tall eco-monster of a turbine they built in Grant Park might just pay off.

Bookmark It

Several local civic groups and activists including members of Atlanta WAND, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, Sierra Club’s Georgia Chapter, and singer Emily Saliers of the Indigo Girls will rally outside the Atlanta office of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission at 2 this afternoon.

Those rallying are opposed to Southern Company’s plan to build two new nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle, plans that must be approved by the NRC. They point out that nuclear power is not only unsafe, but it also consumes huge quantities of water. In his Aug. 22 cover story about Southern Company’s nuclear strategy, CL’s Scott Henry noted that an expanded Plant Vogtle would consume more water each day than the entire city of Atlanta.

Here’s the press release:

(more…)

Bookmark It

A new coal-fired power plant hasn’t been built in the Peach State in decades; for the past few years, natural gas has been the energy source of choice. And now, with millions of dollars in federal incentives available, it appears nuclear energy is on the ascendancy. Georgia Power this year submitted early paperwork to expand its Plant Vogtle nuke facility.

But don’t count out the black stuff yet. Even as it’s crunching the numbers for Vogtle, our hometown energy monopoly is planning to put in a bid for a new coal plant. If coal turns out to be significantly less costly for Georgia consumers than nuclear, then coal it will be!

Georgia Power spokeswoman Carol Boatright says the company hasn’t settled on the type of plant it will propose. The options are to use new “clean coal” technology that reduces sulfur and carbon discharges — or to build a traditional, old-fashioned “pulverized coal” plant with some pollution controls.

The proposal will be delivered to the Georgia Public Service Commission, the entity responsible for regulating utilities, by Nov. 1, Boatright says.

Sierra Club lobbyist Neill Herring says he’s not surprised by the news that Georgia Power is considering another coal plant, given the company’s long history of burning the stuff. Its Plant Scherer near Macon is one of the biggest coal plants in the United States and has often been cited as the country’s single largest source for carbon dioxide emissions — the gas blamed for global warming.

If coal is selected over nuclear, then Georgia Power should be made to take advantage of the latest coal-gasification technology that screens out pollutants, says Sara Barczak, safe energy director for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

In fact, the utility would be required to adhere to current clean-air standards in any plant it builds, says PSC Chairman Bobby Baker, who adds that it’s a sensible business move for Georgia Power to cover its bases by submitting competing proposals to meet the state’s future energy needs.

Bookmark It

The AJC, in today’s CityLife section, reprised a story CL did last month about Georgia Power’s plans to put an electrical substation in the old Pullman Yard on the edge of Kirkwood.

The AJC story says Georgia Power originally wanted to use four acres of the 28-acre site, which would have meant tearing down several of the historic buildings. But, since the land is owned by the state of Georgia, which, as CL noted, planned to sell the property, the utility could not simply condemn it and instead had to scale down its plans.

]If the land is eventually sold to a thoughtful developer who preserves the old warehouses, is it too much to hope that everybody will be happy with the outcome?

Bookmark It

NPR reporter Nell Boyce went on a quest to find the biggest producer of greenhouse gases in the United States. It turns out the government has twisted itself in a pretzel of convoluted rules and laws that make it almost impossible to determine which companies are the big bad boys in the pollution business.

That differs from other industrial nations, such as Canada, that have a registry with the idea of creating new limits for industrial polluters.

However, Boyce did find that the most egregious offender in Canada is a coal-fired power plant in Ontario. And that if the No. 1 culprit in the United States is also a coal-burning generating plant, then we have clues about who wins the prize. An old law requires power plants to report their greenhouse emissions.

Boyce found: “[T]he EPA says that for the past three years, the company at the top of that list has been the Robert W. Scherer Power Plant near Macon, Ga.”

Georgia Power, which runs Plant Scherer, is likely so distressed at the NPR report that it’s probably busy buying a few more congressmen and senators, who will then eradicate the requirement that the company report its pollution.

Bookmark It