Campaign Updates

An April 24 article in the New York Times, "From Power Plant to Civic Renewal Centerpiece," chronicles visionary reuse of old power stations across the nation. Power plants unable to compete in current energy markets, or comply with environmental standards, are finding new life (and new revenue) in commercial, educational, and other applications.  In many cases, they're even beacons of green design. Here's an excerpt:

Rising prominently from the center of the site will be the restored Seaholm Power Plant, a massive Art Deco-style structure built in the 1950s that once burned oil and gas to supply much of the city’s power. Retail and office tenants will occupy the former plant’s 117,000 square feet of interior space. Its cavernous four-story turbine room will be dotted with displays on the plant’s history and the new energy-efficient designs featured in its makeover.

Reincarnating retired power stations is not new. The Pratt Street Power Plant, for example, part of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor redevelopment, is now filled with shops and restaurants. The Homan Square Power House in Chicago, which once supplied the Sears, Roebuck & Company headquarters, is now a public charter high school.

Besides Seaholm, two other redevelopment projects are in the planning stages: the Glenwood Power Plant in Yonkers and the Potomac River Generating Station in Alexandria, Va.

But the practice could become more common as more of the nation’s aging power stations shut down. The federal Energy Information Administration says installations representing 51 percent of all generating capacity were at least 30 years old at the end of 2012. Coal-fired plants could be the best candidates for retirement because 74 percent were built before 1980, according to the agency, meaning they are approaching the end of their typical life spans.

Extending the operation of such plants could require costly improvements to comply with the latest environmental regulations. Likewise, low natural gas prices and tax incentives for renewable sources of energy, particularly wind, are making it difficult for coal to compete.

For owners of older coal plants, the conclusion could be inescapable. “When they look at all the variables on the table and what it’s costing them to operate versus what they can sell their power for, many of them will say, ‘I don’t see a bright future here, and I’m going to call it quits,’ ” said Austin Whitman, a vice president at the energy consulting firm M. J. Bradley and Associates.

Check out the full article here.

Celebrate Earth Day 2013 with a Discussion about How Unions and Environmental Justice Activists Can Work Together…

Monday, April 22 at 7:00 p.m.

Holyoke Heritage State Park Visitors’ Center

221 Appleton St., Holyoke

(Behind the Merry-Go-Round—you can park in the Merry-Go-Round parking lot)

From the Keystone XL Pipeline to the Mount Tom Coal-Fired Power Plant in Holyoke:

Why Don’t We Get it Together to Demand Good, Union Jobs and a Healthy Future?

 
Panelists:
Jane McAlevey has spent two decades as an organizer in the labor and environmental justice movements.  She is also an accomplished scholar and author.  Last year, Jane’s article “Unions and Environmentalists: Get it Together!” was in the Earth Day edition of the Nation Magazine.  Jane urges environmentalists and union leaders to resist divide-and-conquer strategies used by the corporate right, and to join forces for a just and sustainable future. 

Jeremy Brecher is co-founder of Labor Network for Sustainability and author of more than a dozen books on labor and social movements, including Strike! and his latest book, Save the Humans?:  Common Preservation in Action.  He recently co-authored a manual called “Jobs Beyond Coal,” which has provided guidance to Holyoke organizers campaigning for a just transition from coal.  

Virgenmina Perez is a Neighbor to Neighbor leader and Holyoke resident dedicated to the local campaign to retire the Mount Tom Power Station and hold the plant’s owner, GDF Suez, accountable.  Virgenmina’s work is inspired by her father, who led a grassroots campaign against a polluting industry in her birthplace of Guayanilla, Puerto Rico. 

For more information, call Lara Shepard-Blue at 413-896-3015.

Spanish interpretation provided.

Mt. Tom Station, a coal-fired power plant in Holyoke, MA, has received approval to exit the wholesale capacity market for 2016-2017. New England’s electrical grid and systems operator ISO-New England accepted what is known as a Dynamic De-list Bid from the coal plant’s owner, GDF Suez, meaning the plant will not be obligated to run or receive any capacity payments from the forward capacity market. While the plant still has the option to run and be paid for electricity it produces, the act of de-listing means that the owner believes there is a significant chance it will not be economic for the plant to run during that year.

This news is particularly significant for two reasons:

●      submitting this type of de-list bid to leave the market for one year has been the first step on the path to retirement for two other coal-fired power plants in Massachusetts; and

●      the fact that the de-list bid was accepted by the grid operators shows that they have determined that Mt. Tom is not necessary for meeting electricity demand during that time period. This is a strong indication that Mt. Tom could permanently retire without any impacts on electric reliability for customers.

Image Credit: Frank C. Grace, www.trigphotography.com

Coal-fired power is dying, not only across the nation, but across New England as well.  The region’s coal-fired power plant fleet has started to succumb to the costs of operating a coal-fired dinosaur in the age of energy efficiency, growing renewable electricity generation, and--for now--low natural gas prices.

Predominantly coal-fired Brayton Point Station in Somerset, Massachusetts, is the state’s largest single source of carbon emissions (producing over 6 million tons in 2010). Another harmful pollutant emitted by Brayton Point is particulate matter, which is measured daily by monitors that continuously check the opacity of the soot coming out of the plant’s smokestack. Brayton has been violating their limits for emitting that soot, and failing to monitor their emissions of several other harmful pollutants. On December 13th, Conservation Law Foundation, Clean Water Action, and Toxics Action Center filed a notice of intent to sue Brayton's current owners, Dominion Resources, for those violations. CLF's upcoming lawsuit is just the latest in a growing list of bad news for Dominion and Brayton Point.