Two More Signs the Coal Industry Is Caving to Reality

While the coal industry lobby in Washington seeks to rebrand its product as “clean,” and the fate of climate change legislation in Congress remains hostage to partisan maneuvering, two recent decisions by local power companies show a lower carbon future slowly taking shape.

Biomass magazine reported yesterday that the Georgia Public Service Commission has approved plans to convert Georgia Power’s 164-megawatt coal-fired power plant located near Albany, Ga., into a 96-megawatt, 100 percent wood-fired biomass plant. The result will be a carbon neutral plant with significant reductions in certain emissions pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxide and mercury, according to Georgia Power.

The decision trumps the company’s traditional ideological stand. Joseph Romm at Gristmill notes that Southern has long led industry opposition to national renewable energy standards which would require power companies to obtain electricity from solar, wind or other green resources.

In Wisconsin, Alliant Energy made a similar decision earlier this month. After the state Public Service Commission rejected its application to build a coal-fired plant, the company announced that it will dramatically boost its purchase of wind power. “The PSC expressed concern over carbon, and we listened,”  an Alliant spokesman told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. The company canceled another coal plant in Iowa earlier this month.

The argument that there are no practical alternatives to coal appears to be dying by a thousand cuts.

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