The Coal Industry Targets Linden, N.J.

and the Atlantic Ocean

Peter Montague, Ph.D.peter@rachel.org

December 16, 2009

You can get these slides here:http://tinyurl.com/ya8q3w2

Detailed sources of information for this presentation can be found online, here:

http://tinyurl.com/lmgqfv

This is a story about the coal industry. Coal is in Trouble

• Coal emits far more carbon dioxide (per unit of energy) than any other source of energy. Coal produces 12% of all U.S. energy but 20% of all U.S. CO2.

For this reason, new coal plants are being canceled and old ones are being shut down.

In the last 5 years, at least 101 new coal plants have been canceled or delayed.

In desperation, the coal industry has begun to promote “clean coal.”

“Clean coal” means, simply, the familiar old coal industry with a new filter tacked on to capture most of the CO2 and bury it below ground somewhere, hoping it will stay there forever.

If the coal industry cannot get a commercial-scale “demonstration” of “clean coal” going soon, their future looks grim.

That is why they have brought the PurGen project to Linden.

PurGen: What is it?• A coal-based 750 megawatt IGCC electric power plant proposed for Linden, N.J. (Union County).

• It features “permanent” storage of 700 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) beneath the Atlantic ocean.

PurGen One (in red) on the Arthur Kill waterway in Linden, N.J.

PurGen One has three big problems:

1. Harmful air emissions in an area that already has bad air, creating new environmental injustices in Union, Hudson, and Essex Counties, and Staten Island.

2. “Permanent” carbon dioxide (CO2) storage beneath the ocean.

3. A $5 billion investment innon-renewable fossil fuels instead of renewable fuels.

1. Cumulative Impactson the Air in Union Countyand in Linden

Linden has 27 regulated facilities, about 18 times the statewide average(3.72 facilities per 1000 acres vs. 0.2).

Linden is home to 12 facilities required to report each year under the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). Between them they emit 3.2 million pounds of air toxics annually.

• The People of Color population of Union County, N.J., is 22.7% African American (vs. 14.5% statewide) and 25.1% Hispanic (vs. 15.9% statewide).

• Union County is already badly polluted. This is a cumulative impacts problem.

• In recognition of these facts, New Jersey has designated Linden an official “environmental justice” community because the people of Linden are dispropor-tionately burdened by pollution.

• N.J. DEP says soot in the air in Union County is 664 times as high as the level considered “healthy.”

• N.J. DEP reports that many other airborne toxicants and carcinogens are present in the air of Union, Hudson, Essex and Middlesex Counties at levels far above statewide averages.

• EPA says the cancer risk from 187 toxic air contaminants in Union county is already 41% above the national average.

• In Hudson County, the cancer risk is 86% above average; in Essex, it's 33% above and in Middlesex 17% above.

• PurGen would add more than 11.3 million pounds (5,662 tons) of toxic air pollutants, including 2,877 tons of nitrogen oxides, 67 tons of sulfuric acid mist, and 532 tons of soot (fine particles) into Linden’s

• air each year for the next 50 or 60 years.

• According to the American Lung Association (ALA), Union County ranks worst in the state for daily and long-term levels of fine particle pollution (soot).

Union County has 130,000 residents under the age of 18, and 65,000 age 65 and above.

Among these are 12,000 children with asthma, 32,000 adults with asthma, 13,000 with chronic bronchitis, and 7,000 with emphysema (= 33% of all children and elderly in the county).

Thus some 64,000 people in Union County are children with asthma or elderly with chronic bronchitis or emphysema.

American Lung Association of New Jersey estimates that about 20,000 Linden residents – about half of the City’s total population -- are younger than 19 or older than 64. If Linden follows the Union County pattern, then 1/3 of these 20,000 people (= 6,600 Linden residents) are presently living with asthma, chronic bronchitis or emphysema.

• So the PurGen plant would create new environmental injustices for people who are already burdenedwith injustices that the state has officially recognized.

• PurGen is unjust.

2. Bad investment priorities

• PurGen would cost $5 billion.

• Every dollar spent on coal and carbon sequestration is a dollar that cannot be spent on efficiency, conservation, and renewable energy.

• Coal industry scientists propose burying 2 trillion tons of CO2 this century. This would require 4000 projects the size of the PurGen project – at a cost of $20 trillion (at PurGen prices).

$20 trillion is half-again aslarge as the annual GrossDomestic Product (GDP)of the United States.

The entire “bank bailout”has, so far, cost $2 trillion.

• As coal and oil supplies are drawn down (and therefore become more expensive), sooner or later we will have no choice but to develop renewable sources of energy.

• Why not just skip the costly “carbon sequestration” phase and invest the $20 trillion in renewables?

3. CO2 Burial is Risky

• Global warming and ocean acidification are both caused by carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Coal is a major source of CO2 emissions.

• The obvious solution is to wean ourselves from coal.

• Instead, the PurGen plan is to make us more dependent on coal with a Rube Goldberg end-of-pipe “fix.”

• They say they will capture CO2, pressurize it into a liquid, pipe it 70 miles out to sea, then pump it 1.5 miles beneath the seabed, hoping it will stay there forever.

PurGen intends to bury 14 million tons of CO2 per year for 50 years, or 700 million tons total, hoping it will stay buried forever.

• Humans have never engineered anything intended to last forever. This is a new concept.

• We don’t even know how to pass important knowledge forward reliably from generation to generation to generation. How will we tell people 100 years from now where they must not drill?

• Scientists working on behalf of the coal industry say the CO2 will never leak back out of the ground.

• But what if we learn 50 years from now that they were mistaken?

• Are these scientists infallible?

• Instead of solving our CO2 problem, carbon sequestration passes the problem along to our children and to our children’s children -- to monitor and worry about and pay for.

• So carbon sequestration is risky, unjust, and immoral.

PSE&G 350 megawatt wind plant

36

Organizations Opposed to PurGen:

Arthur Kill Watershed AllianceBlueWaveNJClean Ocean ActionCornucopia Network of NJEdison Wetlands AssociationEnvironment New Jersey

Environmental Justice AdvisoryCouncil to the N.J. Departmentof Environmental Protection

Environmental Research FoundationEssex County Green PartyGreen Hearts Environmental MovementGreen Party of Monmouth County

NJ PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility)

NJ State Federation of Sportsmen’s ClubsNortheast Sustainable Energy AssociationPeople's Organization for Progress,

Central JerseyPhysicians for Social ResponsibilitySierra Club

• Get these slides here:http://tinyurl.com/ya8q3w2

• Sources of my information:http://tinyurl.com/lmgqfv

• My email: peter@rachel.org (Peter Montague)