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Study shows mercury scrubbers at Oregon power plant lower other pollution, too
Oregon State University, July 8th, 2015
Air pollution controls installed at an Oregon coal-fired power plant to curb mercury emissions are unexpectedly reducing another class of harmful emissions as well, an Oregon State University study has found.
Portland General Electric added emission control systems at its generating plant in Boardman, Oregon, in 2011 to capture and remove mercury from the exhaust. Before-and-after measurements by a team of OSU scientists found that concentrations of two major groups of air pollutants went down by 40 and 72 percent, respectively, after the plant was upgraded.
The study was published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology this morning.
The Boardman plant, on the Oregon side of the Columbia River about 165 miles east of Portland, has historically been a major regional source of air pollution, said Staci Simonich, environmental chemist in OSU's College of Agricultural Sciences and leader of the study team.
Bye-bye renewable energy in Cali, hello power plants in Ohio
Danielle Wente, July 8th, 2015
Now that it is officially a player in Ohio’s power plant community, Dynegy Inc. wants to say good-bye to its renewable energy plants in California and completely move into the Midwest.
After spending $2.8 billion on 11 Midwest power plants and adding significant growth to its portfolio, Dynegy’s CEO Bob Flexon says the company is going to take a serious look at the region. During an interview with Bloomberg, Flexon explained that due to the glut in solar energy and California market prices taking hits, Dynegy will eventually leave California.
According to Flexon, ISO New England and PJM Interconnection LLC, in which Ohio is included, are more successful at compensating generators. California, on the other hand, is not. Generators in California have said that fossil-fuel plants are struggling to make money due to the state’s market design. As reported by Bloomberg, Flexon said, “PJM’s wholesale auction for power capacity in a few weeks should provide generators an ‘uplift’ in revenue.”
Counterpoint: A win for power plants and consumers
Hal Quinn, July 4th, 2015
Monday’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court regarding power plant emissions is a welcome vindication of common sense that is missing in much of the Obama administration’s regulatory actions. The high court effectively put the nation’s regulator in chief on notice that ignoring the costs of its actions is neither reasonable nor appropriate and won’t be tolerated.
This is precisely what the Environmental Protection Agency failed to do in its power plant regulation. As Justice Antonin Scalia noted in his majority opinion, “It is not rationale, never mind ‘appropriate,’ to impose billions of dollars in economic costs in return for a few dollars in health benefits.”
Legal scholars may debate the meaning of these words for future EPA actions. But most Americans would view them as a common sense admonition. In our everyday lives, most of us recognize what regulators too often ignore: that every benefit comes with a cost, and the value of that benefit cannot be known unless its costs are considered.