A Massachusetts company, SCS Energy, has proposed a
750-megawatt coal power plant in Linden (Union County) called PurGen One.
The coal plant will capture its own carbon dioxide gas
(CO2), plus CO2 from other emitters, compress the CO2 into a liquid, pipe it 70
miles out to sea, and then pump it a mile and a half beneath the floor of the
Atlantic Ocean. During the life of the plant, it will bury a trillion pounds
(500 million tons) of CO2. This is called "carbon capture and
sequestration" or CCS for short. It is a huge experiment and the people of
Linden (and all of northern NJ, plus Staten Island) are the guinea pigs - and
so are the flora and fauna of the sea.
All environmentally-aware people in New Jersey should unify to fight
this coal plant, and here’s why:
1. This coal plant will make bad air pollution worse:
. Union, Hudson, Middlesex and Essex Counties already
fail to meet minimum federal health standards for air pollution. The NJ
Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) estimates that soot alone is
causing 594 deaths (plus 16,590 cases of asthma) each year in these counties.
In addition to soot there are hundreds of other chemicals in the air that
exceed levels that the DEP considers safe.
. The cancer risk from 187 toxic air contaminants in
Union county is already 41% above the national average. In Hudson, the risk is
86% above average; in Essex, it's 33% above and in Middlesex 17% above.
. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has
identified 2,312 major "environmental hazards" in New Jersey. Ranking
counties by the number of these hazards per square mile, Hudson is #1, Union is
#2, Essex is #3, and Middlesex is #4. Along with Staten Island, these are the
counties that would be most directly impacted by a new coal plant in Linden.
These counties already have far more than their fair share of pollution and the
health problems that go with it.
. Based on a similar coal plant being built in Indiana,
we can estimate that PurGen One will add 11.3 million pounds (5,662 tons) of
air pollution to Union County each year, including 104 tons of volatile organic
compounds (VOCs), 2,877 tons of nitrogen oxides, 67 tons of sulfuric acid mist,
and 532 tons of soot (fine and ultrafine particles).
2. The PurGen coal plant will create new environmental
injustices. In 2004, New Jersey state government designated Linden an
"environmental justice" community because Union County is excessively
polluted and is 22.7 percent Black (56% higher than the statewide average) and
25.1% Hispanic (57% higher than the statewide average). So the PurGen One power
plant will be adding new contamination to an area where Blacks, Hispanics, and
people of below-average income are already disproportionately burdened by
pollution.
3. Today, there is only one actual sub-seabed CCS
experiment ongoing in the world. Called "Sleipner," it has been
conducted since 1996 in the North Sea. In Norway, the Sleipner project has been
pumping one million tons of CO2 per year (1/10th of the size of the PurGen proposal)
into the Utsira formation, a geologic layer beneath the North Sea. Now it turns
out that the Utsira formation has been leaking. And Sleipner's CO2 has moved
through the formation at a rate 25 times as fast as was predicted. Furthermore,
a study by the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate has reversed previous estimates
of CO2 storage capacity in the Utsira formation from "able to store all
European emissions for hundreds of years" to "not very
suitable."
4. At least 1.8 million people live within ten miles of
the proposed coal plant. This is about the most densely populated region of the
United States. Collecting and processing 500 million tons of CO2 in such a
densely-populated area could pose serious public health hazards. CO2 is
odorless, colorless, tasteless, and heavier than air. If it escapes, CO2 can
form an invisible puddle that excludes oxygen, asphyxiating everything in its
path, including plants, animals, and people. In 1986, in Camaroon, CO2 escaped
from a lake and smothered 1,746 people in their sleep. Can a trillion pounds of
liquid CO2 be processed in Linden without any accidents or leaks?
5. Coal is the most-polluting and most environmentally
damaging energy source, bar none. It destroys the land, pollutes water, and
creates massive amounts of toxic by-products, some of which take the form of
deadly air pollution, and some of which take the form of solid waste.
Over its 50-year lifetime, the PurGen One plant will
process at least 98 million tons of coal. Toxic chemicals in the coal will be
released into the environment as solid wastes. These will include over 800 tons
of arsenic, 15 tons of cadmium, 11 tons of mercury, 1,702 tons of nickel, 395
tons of radioactive thorium, 3,018 tons of chromium, and 1,088 tons of toxic
lead. Because of PurGen One, these toxicants will be mined from deep in the
earth and eventually distributed into the environment that we (and other
creatures) inhabit. A hundred years ago few would have given this a second
thought - but today we know better. Toxic chemicals released into the
environment can eventually get into the food chain. Because of all this, plans
for at least 101 coal power plants in the US have been canceled in the last few
years. The coal industry is getting desperate. Their response is a PR campaign
for so-called "clean coal" - meaning their untested plan to capture
and bury CO2 below ground. The purpose of CCS is to salvage the coal industry
by diverting investment away from clean, renewable sources of energy.
6. CCS will be exceedingly expensive and every dollar
spent on CCS is a dollar that cannot be spent on renewable sources of clean
energy like solar, wind, and geothermal (plus conservation). Making a
significant dent in the global-warming problem by burying CO2 in the ground
would require massive investment. A consultant to the Linden coal plant has
said we might need to bury 2 trillion tons of CO2 this century. That would
require 4,000 projects the size of the Linden coal plant, which is currently
estimated to cost $5 billion. Four thousand projects, each costing $5 billion,
would require an investment of $20 trillion - half again as large as the annual
gross domestic product of the United States. Even if these costs could be cut
in half, an investment of $10 trillion is stupendously large. (The entire bank
bailout has so far cost $2 trillion.) And even if we spend the $10 or $20
trillion, we will still inevitably run out of affordable coal because coal is
not a renewable resource. Then we'll have to invest again - in conservation,
solar, wind and geothermal power.
7. SCS Energy has been misleading the people of Linden,
claiming that the coal plant will bring 150 jobs and an investment in Linden of
$4.5 to $5 billion. The truth is, the vast bulk of the money would be spent far
from Linden. The major manufactured components of the plant, and related
engineering services, would be provided by companies located in Indonesia, in
the Netherlands, in England, in Louisiana, in Georgia, in Texas, and in other
places far from Linden. If the company is not telling the truth about the
money, what else are they not telling the truth about?
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All sources of information for the above can be found
online at:
http://tinyurl.com/lmgqfv
For more information contact:
Essex County Greens: EssexCountyGreens@gmail.com
or
Environmental Research Foundation (New Brunswick, NJ):
purgenfacts@gmail.com