Informed Comment

140 nations meeting in Geneva have concluded an accord to limit mercury emissions, which must now be ratified by individual nations. It has implications for coal-fired power plants, among the most serious contributors to mercury pollution, as well as cement factories The treaty also seeks an end to mercury use in thermometers and batteries, and limitations on the transport of gadgets containing it. It put off a decision about artisanal gold mining, where the metal is deployed in small scale operations.

But coal is the most important villain here.

Mercury is a nerve poison and causes neurological and brain problems, as well as damaging the heart and kidneys. It is far more prevalent in the human environment, especially in water and fish, than before the industrial revolution. The UN has been discussing this issue for some time. Progress had been blocked by the Bush administration (sometimes you forget for a second how evil they were), but Barack Obama’s election in 2009 allowed the negotiations to proceed.

Coal provides over a third of US electricity now, down from 42% in 2011. The Environmental Protection Agency has to its credit begun insisting on filters to prevent mercury emissions at US coal plants, imposing costs that have caused many of them to close down. They can’t compete with increasingly inexpensive natural gas and wind if they have to invest billions to avoid poisoning us.

Unfortunately, the closing of the coal plants is not happening fast enough, and 1.4 gigawatts of new coal-fired power was installed in 2012. Coal is a major contributor to carbon dioxide emissions and disastrous climate change, in addition to the mercury problem.

CNTV reports:

I noted last Monday,

“The United Nations Environmental Program has just issued its [pdf] 2013 assessment of the mercury threat.

It finds that human-caused

“emissions and releases have doubled the amount of mercury in the top 100 meters [yards] of the world’s oceans in the last 100 years. Concentrations in deeper waters have increased by only 10-25%, because of the slow transfer of mercury from surface waters into the deep oceans. In some species of Arctic marine animals, mercury content has increased by 12 times on average since the pre-industrial period. This increase implies that, on average, over 90% of the mercury in these marine animals today comes from anthropogenic [human] sources.”

‘

Posted in Energy, Environment | 6 Comments

The US put in 13 gigawatts of new wind energy capacity in 2012, 5 of it in December alone, according to a Bloomberg study. The Office of Energy Projects report was a bit more conservative, but confirmed the general trend.

h/t Grist

Wind alone now accounts for 6% of US electricity generation!

Even the government figures showed that about half of all new energy generation in the US came from renewables in 2012, mostly wind turbines.

The US also put in about 1.5 gigawatts of new solar power last year.

In some markets, such as Texas, installing wind turbines for electricity generation is now actually cheaper than building natural gas plants! Reflecting this trend toward wind grid parity, more new wind capacity was added to the US electrical grid than natural gas, which was itself no mean shakes. Gas puts out less carbon dioxide than coal, but fracturing it from underground rock formations may release so much methane (a very potent greenhouse gas) that it is a wash with coal. Both coal and gas plants need to be mothballed as quickly as possible.

The bad news is that the US still generated 5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2012, the highest per capita in the OECD nations! We are poisoning the world and provoking catastrophic climate change, and all the good news about wind and solar doesn’t offset our massive contribution to looming environmental disaster.

Specially bad news is that 1.4 gigawatts of new, dirty coal power was brought online in 2012 in the US. That should be illegal! Coal is poisoning us and our world! Carbon dioxide in the quantities we are producing it is a toxin for the world. Not to mention that we are being mercury-poisoned by dirty coal emissions!

If you care about your children, call your state representative (look him or her up) and demand that building new coal plants be made illegal. Now! We don’t need it. Put in wind and solar instead. In many markets it wouldn’t even be more expensive, and if you count in the cost of nerve poisoning by mercury and loss of seaside real estate, wind is dirt cheap compared to coal!

Likewise, call your city council representative and demand that your city generate its own electricity with wind and solar, taking it off the coal grid (this is especially important in the Midwest, where typically 65 percent of electricity generation comes from coal). And if you can afford it, put solar panels on your roof. You can cut your electricity bill 20-40% even in the Midwest. And invest in crowdsourcing solar projects (Warren Buffett is investing in solar, why shouldn’t we?)

We can do this from the bottom up. We can’t wait for the backward Neanderthal tea partiers in our Congress, who practically eat lumps of coal for lunch and wash it down with a petroleum martini. There isn’t much time to bring the carbon down, America. 2020 is a deadline, and it is only 7 years off. Goals of being 20% green by 2020 won’t do it. We need a major national movement and transformation, on the scale of the Civil Rights movement. Because clean energy and a non-warming world are a basic civil and human right that we deserve and will only get it if we demand it.

Posted in Energy, Environment | 20 Comments