{"id":8496,"date":"2014-04-23T08:38:25","date_gmt":"2014-04-23T12:38:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=8496"},"modified":"2014-04-23T08:40:57","modified_gmt":"2014-04-23T12:40:57","slug":"fpl-already-dirtying-georgia-air-at-plant-scherer-and-a-pipeline-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2014\/04\/fpl-already-dirtying-georgia-air-at-plant-scherer-and-a-pipeline-too.html","title":{"rendered":"FPL already dirtying Georgia air at Plant Scherer: and a pipeline, too?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nGeorgia Power’s Plant Scherer is #1 among the U.S. dirtiest power plants.\r\nBut FPL owns most of one of the four units there,\r\ndirtying Georgia’s air for Florida’s power.\r\nThe same FPL that wants the fracked methane Sabal Trail pipeline\r\nthrough Georgia, destroying Georgia’s environment.\r\nIt’s time for Georgia to say no to destroying Georgia’s environment\r\nfor a company in another state.\r\n

\r\nThomas Stackpole wrote for Mother Jones 11 September 2013,\r\n\r\n1 Percent of America’s Power Plants Emit 33 Percent of Energy Industry’s Carbon<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\n<\/a>\r\nLess than 1 percent of US power plants produce nearly a third of the\r\nenergy industry’s carbon emissions, according to a new report\r\nreleased Tuesday. “If the 50 most-polluting U.S. power plants were\r\nan independent nation,” reads the report from Environment America\r\nResearch & Policy Center, an independent nonprofit, “they would be\r\nthe seventh-largest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world, behind\r\nGermany and ahead of South Korea.” The vast majority of the top 100\r\noffenders—98 of them in fact—are coal plants.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n

\r\nHere are the top 10 dirtiest plants in the states, and their yearly emissions:\r\n

    \r\n
  1. \r\nGeorgia Power Co.’s Scherer Coal plant, Georgia (21.3 million metric tons)\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

    \r\nAccording to\r\n\r\nGeorgia Power<\/a>,\r\nFPL owns 76.4% of Unit 4 at Plant Scherer.\r\nThe other 23.6% is owned by JEA, \r\nJacksonville Electric Authority, also dirtying Georgia’s air for\r\nFlorida’s power.\r\n

    \r\nStackpole also wrote:\r\n

    \r\n

    \r\nThe United States has been trending away from coal, and a recent\r\nspate of bankruptcies and closings have thrown the future of\r\ncoal-fired plants, and their potential for profit, into question. If\r\nthe new EPA standards don’t change the US energy landscape, it’s\r\npossible that glut of cheap natural gas and looming expensive\r\nupgrades for coal plants will.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

    \r\nYes,\r\n\r\n“modernization” of coal plants<\/a>\r\nis one of FPL’s excuses for\r\nthe Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline\r\n\r\nand also conveniently for another pipeline<\/a>\r\nright from the end of the Transco, Sabal, FSC chain to the sea\r\nwhere there’s a port approved for LNG export.\r\n

    \r\nThis current “modernization” excuse is\r\nvery similar to FPL’s excuse for buying Plant Scherer Unit 4 twenty four\r\nyears ago, when Tracy Kolody wrote for the Orlando Sun Sentinel 1 August 1990,\r\n\r\nFpl Makes Power Play Utility Offers To Buy Georgia Plant<\/a>,\r\n

    \r\n

    \r\nFlorida Power & Light Co. is seeking to buy a rural Georgia power\r\nplant as the utility copes with a tight supply of electricity and an\r\nupcoming shutdown at the Turkey Point nuclear plant.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

    \r\nYet Turkey Point still isn’t shut<\/a>.\r\nAnd now there are mutters of “modernization” through fracked gas\r\nas how Turkey Point will go away.\r\n

    \r\nHow about instead Florida should get on with\r\n\r\nsolar power on rooftops\r\nand solar farms<\/a>\r\nlike\r\n\r\nSabal Trail’s own RR10 inadvertently demonstrates would require much less acreage<\/a>,\r\nwould not require eminent domain takings of private property,\r\nand would be far less environmentally damaging,\r\nwith no danger of leaks or explosions.\r\nSolar plus wind off the coast and a little water power can\r\n\r\nas a recent Stanford study demonstrated<\/a>,\r\npower every U.S. state, especially the Sunshine State,\r\nplus the sunny states of Georgia and Alabama.\r\n

    \r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nThe century-old cozy baseload capacity utility model has had its day.\r\nIt’s time to stop throwing money into\r\n\r\nthe utility “death spiral”<\/a>\r\nof refusal to deal with the disruptive challenge of ever-cheaper\r\nsolar power, even after they’ve been told by their own think tank,\r\nEdison Electric Institute, and Citi GPS, and Wall Street, and Stanford.\r\nIf the utilities won’t do it on their own initiative,\r\nwe the people need to insist.\r\n

    \r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nGreen solar power is winning.\r\nLet’s not let a backwards utility take our land for its\r\nlosing rearguard attempt to hold back the future.\r\nThe future of solar power is already here.\r\nLet’s get on with it.\r\n

    \r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Georgia Power’s Plant Scherer is #1 among the U.S. dirtiest power plants. But FPL owns most of one of the four units there, dirtying Georgia’s air for Florida’s power. The same FPL that wants the fracked methane Sabal Trail pipeline through Georgia, destroying Georgia’s environment. It’s time for Georgia to say no to destroying Georgia’s […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[556,141,216,14,16,203,8,18,6124,6687,23,24,55,36],"tags":[8779,8745,8753,8704,8706,8751,1763,8701,8708,2014,8702,12,7,562,6076,975,8713,8714,1408,6,8727,8716],"class_list":["post-8496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-air","category-co2","category-coal","category-economy","category-environment","category-florida","category-georgia","category-georgia-power","category-natural-gas-2","category-pipeline-2","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","category-water","category-wind","tag-air","tag-co2","tag-coal","tag-economy","tag-environment","tag-florida","tag-fpl","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-power","tag-jea","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-natural-gas","tag-pipeline","tag-plant-scherer","tag-renewable-energy","tag-solar","tag-turkey-point","tag-valdosta","tag-water","tag-wind"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-2d2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8496"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8499,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8496\/revisions\/8499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}