Wonk Room » Report: ‘Yes We Can’ Move Away From Coal In The Southeast

Report: ‘Yes We Can’ Move Away From Coal In The Southeast

By Guest Blogger on Mar 5th, 2009 at 6:01 pm

Report: ‘Yes We Can’ Move Away From Coal In The Southeast

Our guest blogger is Kalen Pruss, intern with the Energy Opportunity team at the Center for American Progress, and a junior at the University of Michigan majoring in environmental studies and history.

A new report finds that the Southeast will benefit from a national renewable electricity standard (RES), despite the complaints of one of region’s largest utilities that there’s not enough sun, wind, or other renewable energy to move away from coal. Southern Company, the giant parent company of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Gulf Power, has actively lobbied against an RES for years, using empty excuses to prevent renewable energy development:

Renewables like solar power and wind turbines often catch the public eye, but challenges with their consistent and widespread use in the Southeast persist.

In 2007, Southern Co. protested a 15% by 2020 RES bill championed by Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), claiming that that compliance would cost $4 billion to implement by 2030, because “the Southeast is short on wind and sun, unlike the Midwest and Southwest.” “We’re not opposed to renewable energy,” Southern’s CEO David Ratcliffe claimed, just a “sort of a one-size-fits-all federal mandate that would be very difficult for us to achieve with any economic sense.”

In fact, Southern Co. has spent only a measly $6 million on research and investment over the last five years, while annual profits grew in 2008 to a whopping $1.74 billion despite the economic downturn. A heavy user of coal-fired electricity, Southern Co. is the most polluting utility in the U.S. when it comes to carbon dioxide, and “runs six of the 50 dirtiest power plants in the country in terms of sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and mercury released.” Southern Co.’s 172 million tons of annual carbon dioxide emissions — the same as the entire nation of Venezuela — make it the only U.S. utility to rank in the top ten carbon-emitting utilities worldwide.

A new Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) study busts the myth that the Southeast can’t produce clean energy. “Yes We Can: Southern Solutions for a National Renewable Energy Standard” finds investment in renewables to be an economic boon to the region:

The Southeast has been portrayed as a region that will face significant cost and difficulty meeting a national RES due to scarce access to renewable energy resources. This assertion is simply inaccurate. The Southeast has sufficient renewable energy resources to comply with a strong RES. Developing our region’s renewable energy potential and meeting an RES will actually benefit the region.

With investment from companies like Southern Co. and federal funding for renewable energy and efficiency (such as the $6.145 billion in the recovery package), SACE found that the Southeast could produce 15% of its electricity from renewables by 2015, and 25% by 2025. The implementation of an RES would also spur job growth in a region now suffering 7 to 8% unemployment. For example, one 20 MW biomass power plant creates an average of 177 jobs and $11.07 million in additional economic activity. North Carolina’s implementation of an RES will create 41,000 net jobs, SACE estimates. Despite the protestations of coal-fired executives, the Southeast is ready and able to become a leader in the shift toward green energy and green jobs.

The Center for American Progress explains how a national renewable energy standard (RES) would help usher in a green energy economy across the nation.

Comments
6

6 Responses to “Report: ‘Yes We Can’ Move Away From Coal In The Southeast”

Anders Says:

The whole notion that the Southeast is not suitable for renewable energy, I agree, is crap. However, there is certainly a valuable point to that a national standard for renewable energy production would simply not work.

The United States is enormous, and the suitable renewable energy source in the northwest is surely very different than from the southeast, and that must be taken into consideration rather than to say that, for instance, that all states in the country must produce #% renewables from wind.
March 5th, 2009 at 9:48 pm
grassfarmer Says:

Lots on non-facts. Take a look at the output requirements for energy in the U.S. and then you might have a different opinion of what will work. Coal will never be pushed aside by sun or wind. Only nuclear will make an impact on coal use.
To keep fiddling with energy output in this country will lead to serious problems for all of the population.
March 5th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
mbarnato Says:

The patchwork electrical transmission system across the US and Canada make implementing a renewable energy standard very difficult. It will take huge technical advancements and investments to transform the entire system. But it’s all vital for the fabric of our country and we’ve got to make that commitment. CA currently struggles with implementing a RPS (renewable portfolio standard) for alternative energy sources used here. Too bad so much opportunity and productive funding were lost and wasted during the Enron mad money years of deregulation, but we won’t go there…
March 6th, 2009 at 7:08 am
JohnInCackalakey Says:

I notice that all three of my fellow commenters seem to be speaking from the root assumption of centralized, fossil-reliant electricity.

The fact of the matter (dictated by thermodynamics) is that we simply cannot continue this 20th century electricity system. This is not a thing we can just mull-over and dabble with. For both economic and climate reasons, we MUST transition away from coal towards decentralized generation of wind, solar, geothermal, small-hydro, and biopower. All of this must be built upon massive investments in energy efficiency and demand reduction.

Nuclear is a dumb, complicated way to boil water. Plus it is prohibitively expensive.

When we all come to terms with the fact that we CAN return to generating electricity on the scale of rooftops, neighborhoods, communities, and counties, we will begin to see the amazing benefits it will bring. We’ll get job creation, increased resilience to natural disasters or terrorism, healthier tree farms and forests, cleaner air, lower natural gas prices and more stability in other energy prices, etc., etc.

If we shy from this massive task, America will surely lose our tenuous economic position in the world.
March 6th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Anders Says:

John,

I’m afraid you misunderstood me. I am going on the assumption that a renewable energy electricity throughout the country is very possible. My only concern is that there is a belief that the same type of RE must be applied throughout the country. With a smart grid technology system and the storage capacity for renewable energy required, I believe that the only path toward a realistic RE system is the application of multiple energy sources (all renewable). We must therefore approach this issue by defining different “Renewable energy regions,” regions in which the most feasible source of renewable energy is the same.

Thoughts?
March 6th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
JohnInCackalakey Says:

Anders,

Sounds like we’re on the same page, or at least in the same chapter of the book. I’m absolutely with you about the need to seize every viable renewable resource!

Nobody (other than the overly simplified media) is saying every state has to implement the same kinds of renewables.

I’m not sure about defining regions. Sounds too complicated, and I don’t see the need. I see nothing in the current RES / RPS proposals that prevents specialization based on locally appropriate technologies. (Also, that argument plays into the utilities hands.)

NC has a good number of old dams which could be given new equipment for micro-hydro, or be re-powered. We’ve got some hog waste we need to convert to methane. And we’ve surely got more poultry litter than ought to be land-applied. But more importantly, we’ve got working forests where biomass is left on the ground. That’s our major un-tapped resource.

Also, every single landfill in the country should be capturing methane for heat or electricity. Where no need currently exists, we ought to incentivize people to build greenhouses on-site (or the like).

Schools, hospitals, and other large buildings in wood-rich locations ought to be built with wood fired cogen systems, combining heat, power and cooling (using absorption chillers).

All Southern states need to determine verifiable means of measuring the electric-offset benefits of solar thermal (i.e., rooftop water heating). That would give us quite a boost.

And we need a smart grid to enable all these diverse sources to get paid fair prices for their energy, while allowing the utilities to manage the grid safely, and while enabling consumers to see real-time pricing (to incentivize energy efficiency).

Until we force the utilities to act, they will continue to rely upon 19th and 20th century technologies. They are regulated monopolies formed to serve the common good, afterall. Let’s get them back on track with the new definition of common good — cheap, reliable, AND clean electricity.

A national RES is the best tool at hand to move the utilities in the right direction.

Sincerely,

John
March 16th, 2009 at 11:58 am