Analysis of new PA RPS

What began as an effort to have Pennsylvania become the 17^th state to enact a Renewable Portfolio Standard ended up with legislation (SB 1030) that is, without a doubt, the dirtiest "RPS" in the nation. The "Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard" was passed by the Pennsylvania General Assembly on November 20, 2004, the last day of the session. To view SB 1030, click here: SB 1030. Below is an initial analysis of SB 1030.

Summary: PA is first state to use a portfolio standard to promote dirty energy sources more than clean ones.

Tier I 8% by 2020   Wind energy Low-impact hydropower Coal-mine methane Burning of toxic landfill gas Poultry waste incineration Animal waste digesters Burning of trees and crops Solar energy (0.5% by 2020) Fuel cells Geothermal

Tier II 10% by 2020   Waste coal burning New coal plants (using gasification technology) Trash and industrial waste incineration Wood waste and paper mill waste burning Large-scale hydropower Energy efficiency

 

* PA's generation portfolio standard is essentially voluntary.

* PA is not the first coal state to pass an electric generation portfolio standard.

* Twenty ways in which SB1030 is weaker than RPS laws in neighboring states.

* Three ways SB 1030 is better than RPS laws in other states.

* SB 1030 will not cause PA to have "8 times more green energy."

* SB1030 will not cause 3,600 MW of new wind to be developed.

* Energy-efficiency may not undercut the dirty technologies in Tier II.

* SB1030 will not reduce air and water pollution, but could make it worse.

* Tier I (the "clean" category) will also help promote new polluting industries.

* Problems with waste coal burning.

* SB1030 does not address our addiction to foreign sources of energy.

* PA is the 17th state to adopt an electric generation portfolio standard.

 

Pennsylvania is first state to use a portfolio standard to promote dirty energy sources more than clean ones.

As outlined above, SB1030 has two groupings of technologies, Tier I and Tier II. Tier I is supposed to be the "clean" and "renewable" category (though it's not all clean or renewable) and should be the bigger category, like it is in states (NJ, MD, CT) where they have a two-tier Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS). Tier II is where the filthy technologies are (waste coal burning, new coal plants, trash incineration, wood and paper mill waste incineration, etc.).

The Tier I share went from 15% by 2020 (in a house draft amendment that never surfaced) to 12% in the first of three amendments made to SB1030, to 10% in an amendment made 6 days later to 8% in the final version adopted the same week. This means the share of Pennsylvania's electricity to come from the category that includes wind was nearly cut in half. At the same time, the Tier II share grew from 3.2% to 5% to 10% in the same 8-day span leading up to the Senate vote.

The legislature approved SB1030 with a filthy category larger than the supposedly clean category. Pennsylvania is the only state to have done this so far.

Pennsylvania's portfolio standard is essentially voluntary.

SB1030 was amended last-minute and the section called "force majeure" was completely rewritten. This section was originally written so that the obligation to develop "alternative" energy sources can be waived if there are "extreme deviations in expected renewable generation resulting from events that are impossible to control."

The section now allows the Public Utility Commission (PUC), on its own initiative, or at the request of an electric company, if they determine that there is not enough renewable energy available to meet the portfolio standard, to lower the obligation or recommend to the legislature that it be eliminated. This gives the PUC the ability to simply allow corporations to get away with not building the "alternative" energy capacity required in the bill by lowering the requirement if they fail to obey the intention of the legislation.

PA is not the first coal state to pass an electric generation portfolio standard.

Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas all have renewable portfolio standards and are also coal states. Unlike Pennsylvania, none of those states allowed fossil fuels to be part of their RPS laws. Pennsylvania is the 4th largest coal producer. Texas is 5th. Colorado is 8th. See list of top 10 coal producing states.

20 ways in which SB 1030 is weaker than RPS laws in neighboring states.

The following is a list of 20 ways in which SB 1030 is weaker than RPS laws in neighboring states, making it the dirtiest �RPS� in the nation:

1. Fossil Fuels: Pennsylvania is the first state to allow fossil fuels in a portfolio standard (with the occasional exception of fossil-generated hydrogen for fuel cells, which are allowed in some RPS laws, but are too expensive to compete anyway).
2. More Dirty Than Clean Energy: Pennsylvania is the only state with a dirty tier larger than the "clean" tier.
3. Easy Way Out: Pennsylvania may be the first to have a force majeure clause, allowing the PUC to reduce the law's requirements if companies fail to develop the proper amount of "alternative" energy. This clause could make it difficult for solar or wind power developers to get investors if the investors realize that the market provided in PA isn't guaranteed, like it is in other states.
4. Hydropower: Pennsylvania has no size limit on hydroelectric power in Tier I. Maryland limits it to 30 megawatts (MW). New Jersey doesn't even allow hydro in Tier I and limits Tier II hydro to 30MW. New York also has stricter hydro requirements. Pennsylvania is the only state to allow energy from hydroelectric pumped storage to qualify (it's allowed in Tier II), regardless of where the electricity came from to pump the water uphill.
5. Ocean Power: Maryland, New Jersey and New York all allow ocean-based energy sources. Pennsylvania doesn't.
6. Chicken Poop: Pennsylvania is the only state to promote arsenic-spewing poultry litter incinerators without qualification (New Jersey requires that it meet a "sustainability" review; Maryland (the state where this has been proposed) puts it in Tier II and allows it only if it won't compete with Purdue's pelletization facility in Delaware -- a far more environmentally-preferable option to burning the waste).
7. Burning Toxic Paper Pulp: Pennsylvania is the only state to use a portfolio standard to promote burning paper pulping industry liquors -- a toxic waste byproduct that can contain high levels of chlorine, creating dioxins when burned. New Jersey's law specifically bans it.
8. Fuel Cells: Maryland and New Jersey's RPS laws allow fuel cells to be used only if their hydrogen sources are produced with renewable fuels. Pennsylvania and New York don't place any limits on fuel cell fuel sources, allowing them to come from natural gas or other non-renewable sources.
9. Trash Incineration: Pennsylvania allows all existing trash incinerators to qualify and places no limits on them. New York doesn't allow trash incineration, recognizing that it's a source even dirtier than conventional coal power plants. New Jersey allows them, but places regulatory restrictions on them, including source reduction and recycling requirements. Maryland allows them, but ends their Tier II requirement in 2018, so that they're not subsidized forever. Maryland also places minimum recycling requirements on them. New Jersey and Maryland also have small-enough Tier II categories so that there's little room for incinerators from other states.
10. No Dirty Tier II in New York: New York's RPS has no dirty "Tier II" category. Their Tier II category is a small customer-sited category that consists only of wind, solar and fuel cells.
11. Larger new renewable requirement in New York: New York's RPS has larger requirements for new renewables. Their total RPS goal is 25% (they're already at 19%). Since all of the increase must be new renewables (with an exception for some existing ones if they prove that they're economically at risk of shutting down), this represents more new renewable energy than Pennsylvania's new law will create a market for.

12.  Public Purchasing System in New York: New York's RPS avoids the problematic market-based approach, by adopting a public, central procurement model, which is far more protective of consumers and which does away with the need for penalty fees for non-compliance.

13.  Penalty Fees to be Privately Managed: New Jersey and Maryland place penalty fees into public clean energy funds to be used to develop new renewable energy sources. Pennsylvania's law gives these penalty fees to a private cabal of corporate-friendly "environmentalists" to distribute for the development of "alternative" energy sources (which can include fossil fuels and other dirty technologies allowed in SB1030).

14. Dirty Tier is a Floor, not a Ceiling: New Jersey and Maryland (and other states with 2-Tier RPS laws, such as Connecticut) allow Tier I resources to be used to meet the Tier II requirements, providing cleaner options to fill the dirty tier with. Pennsylvania doesn't allow this.
15. No Extra Credit for Cleaner Energy: Maryland's RPS (and RPS laws in a few other states) gives extra credit for using the cleaner technologies within the Tier I requirement. Pennsylvania doesn't have this.

16.  Fails to Protect Green Energy Marketplace: New York's RPS has a separate track dedicated to supporting the voluntary green energy marketplace. Pennsylvania just joined New Jersey and Maryland in having a portfolio standard that allows double counting with green pricing programs, threatening the viability of the voluntary purchasing market. After all, who'd wants to pay more for something that's already required by state law?

17.  Fails to Prevent Double-Counting with Regulated States: New Jersey has limited protection against double-counting of energy sales from trash incinerators or hydroelectric dams in non-deregulated states like West Virginia where these energy sources are paid down by captive ratepayers.

18. Cost Recovery: Pennsylvania has overly generous cost-recovery, allowing energy companies to pass through the costs of paying non-compliance fees and failing to protect consumers against unreasonable charges. Maryland, on the other hand, allows compliance fees to be charged to ratepayers only if they show that paying the penalty fee is the least cost option, that insufficient resources are available, or that a provider defaulted on supplying credits.

19.  Transparency: New York's procurement will be entirely publicly run, subject to state freedom-of-information laws. Maryland's credit trading system will be managed in the public sector and the credit trading information will be made available to the public on the Internet. Pennsylvania's new law requires that the credit trading be administered by a private body (probably PJM) and requires public disclosure of a registry, but isn't subject to the full disclosure that comes with right-to-know laws.

20. Wind Turbine Siting: Maryland's RPS law sets up a technical advisory group to develop recommendations on siting, operational, and monitoring criteria for wind-turbine siting in order to reduce bird and bat kills. Pennsylvania doesn't.

Three ways in which Pennsylvania's "Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard" is better than RPS laws in other states:

1. Solar Share: SB1030 requires that 0.5% of Pennsylvania's energy come from solar by 2020 (if the force majeure clause doesn't kill this requirement). Arizona and Nevada have solar shares that are slightly higher (0.66% by 2007 and 0.75% by 2013, respectively), but Pennsylvania has the strongest solar share in the east (New Jersey's is 0.16% by 2008). Colorado is the only other state with a solar share so far (0.4% by 2015). Pennsylvania's large electric demand also creates the largest market for solar of these states. Unfortunately, Pennsylvania's solar share is the slowest-growing (it'll still be at 0.0203% in 2014 before making a 12-fold jump to 0.25% in 2015, then 0.5% in 2020).
2. Energy efficiency: Pennsylvania is the second state (after Hawaii) to include energy efficiency as an option.
3. Low-Impact Hydroelectric: Pennsylvania is the first to adopt a "low-impact" hydroelectric definition, setting some mild criteria for acceptable hydroelectric dams. Unfortunately, the size limit in earlier versions of the legislation was raised from 40MW to 50MW and -- before passage -- was ultimately removed entirely. Now, even large dams, if they meet "low-impact" criteria, can be used to fill the Tier I requirements.

Despite claims to the contrary, Pennsylvania will not have "8 times more green energy."

The claim that SB 1030 will cause Pennsylvania to have �eight times more green energy" assumes that:

• the geographic scope of the resources eligible to meet the Tier I requirement is the PJM territory rather than the much larger MISO-PJM territory that sprawls as far west as eastern Montana.
• the force majeure clause isn't used to reduce the Tier I requirement.
• 1% of Pennsylvania energy currently comes from Tier I technologies. The real number is somewhere between 0.22% and 1.5%, depending on how much capacity qualifies from the largest two categories of existing Tier I resources (hydropower and wood burning). Hydroelectric would need to qualify as low-impact (currently, none of it has been certified "low-impact"). Wood burners would have to meet the biomass energy definition. If the real number were 1.5%, that alone would drop the "8 times" to "5.3 times."
• all of the remaining 7% of the 8% Tier I requirement will come from new renewables, rather than from importing existing resources from other states. If only about 20% of the hydropower in the MISO-PJM territory qualifies as "low-impact," there will be little or no room left in Tier I for new wind power.
• new generation built to meet the Tier I requirement will be built in Pennsylvania (it's fine if it isn't, but out-of-state generation won't make the percentage of "green energy" in Pennsylvania go up).
• coal-bed methane (a fossil fuel) is "green energy."

SB1030 will not cause 3,600 MW of new wind to be developed.

Platts' Analytics group estimated that 3,600 megawatts (MW) of new wind energy capacity would be developed by 2016 to meet the Tier I requirements. It would be wonderful if this were true, but there are a few factors that Platts' analysis didn't account for:

• Force Majeure: The Platts study assumed that all of the portfolio standard requirements would be met and didn't account for the possibility that the Public Utility Commission might invoke the force majeure clause in SB1030, allowing them to reduce the requirements if energy corporations fail to develop the required amount of "alternative energy" resources. The existence of this clause could make it difficult for wind developers to find investors, if investors realize that the market provided in Pennsylvania isn't guaranteed, like it is in other states.
• Hydroelectric Power: The Platts study used a very conservative estimate of how much hydroelectric power would be competing with wind for the "8% by 2020" Tier I requirement. The amount of hydropower competing with wind could be much higher, depending on several issues:
• New vs. Existing: SB1030 has ambiguous language with regard to whether "low-impact" hydropower must be new or not. The "alternative energy sources" definition states explicitly that it includes "existing and new" sources, but part of the low-impact hydropower definition uses the term "incremental" -- indicating that perhaps it includes only new generating capacity at an existing dam. It doesn't define any date for which this new capacity must be installed, however.

The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission acknowledges that the legislation is ambiguous and that this issue is unresolved. There is no time frame in which this giant loophole will be resolved one way or another. Platts assumed that the definition limits hydro to only new capacity, which resulted in a far smaller amount of hydro capacity competing with wind in their model.

• No Size Limit: Earlier versions of SB1030 put a 40MW cap on the size of "low-impact" hydropower. This was changed twice in last-minute amendments, first by raising the cap to 50MW, then by totally removing the cap. Hydropower of any size can now qualify for Tier I. An 80 MW dam in West Virginia is currently undergoing "low-impact" certification.
• Low-Impact: Corporations have an easy time co-opting and controlling environmental organizations. The "low-impact" certification standards are controlled by a non-profit organization. If it turns out that the "low-impact" criteria are difficult for a large number of hydroelectric dams to meet, energy corporations will have an economic incentive to influence the criteria in order to avoid the more expensive option of developing wind power or other Tier I resources.
• No Real Competition with other state RPS laws: Since no other state RPS has a "low-impact" hydropower criteria, any dams meeting "low-impact" hydropower criteria can fetch a higher price for their credits by serving Pennsylvania's Tier I requirement. All other states place a size limit on hydropower in their main or first tier, so they won't compete with Pennsylvania's Tier I for most hydropower capacity. Wisconsin and Minnesota set a limit of 60MW. New Jersey doesn't even allow hydropower in its first Tier and limits their smaller Tier II requirements to small hydro (under 30MW). Maryland's Tier I requirement limits hydro to those under 30MW. 99% of Manitoba's substantial hydro capacity is over 60MW. Of the remaining hydro in MISO-PJM, 58% is over 60MW and 71% is over 30MW, ensuring that most hydropower will be ineligible for other states' requirements, making it easy for Pennsylvania's "clean" tier to fill up with cheap hydropower, leaving little or no room for new wind power.

If only about 20% of the hydropower in the MISO-PJM territory qualifies as "low-impact," there will be little or no room left in Tier I for new wind power.

• Geographic Expansion: Another large variable is the geographic scope of where energy sources can come from. The larger this territory, the more existing generation can be used to fill up the Tier I requirements with cheap hydroelectric, landfill gas and coal-mine methane power, again shrinking the share left for new wind power.

SB1030 states:

"Energy derived only from alternative energy sources inside the geographical boundaries of this Commonwealth or within the service territory of any regional transmission organization that manages the transmission system in any part of this Commonwealth shall be eligible to meet the compliance requirements under this act."

The main regional transmission organization (RTO) covering Pennsylvania is called PJM Interconnection. PJM was originally named after "Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland" though it has also included Delaware, Washington, D.C. and a tiny slice of Virginia (the southern tip of the Delmarva Peninsula). It has since expanded to include the new "PJM West" (including most of western PA, all of West Virginia, much of Ohio, and parts of Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee) and -- more recently -- "PJM South" (most of the rest of Virginia and the northeast part of North Carolina).

All throughout the process of developing a portfolio standard in Pennsylvania, the talk was all about PJM. However, technically, a small portion of western Pennsylvania is in the Midwest ISO (MISO) -- a regional transmission organization (RTO) that controls energy flows in all or parts of 15 states and 1 Canadian province (Manitoba, with huge amounts of hydropower).

SB1030 permits energy from anywhere within PJM or MISO to be used to meet the portfolio standard, meaning that even power from Manitoba, Canada or from eastern Montana can qualify. See the map of MISO-PJM territory.

There is enough existing capacity (mostly hydropower and landfill gas) in this large territory that even the competition from RPS standards and RPS-like goals in 6 other states doesn't prevent Tier I from being filled with cheap and existing power sources, leaving little to no space for new wind power. This problem will be exacerbated if the PJM or MISO RTOs expand or if the Commerce Clause is used to challenge the geographic limit.

• RTO Expansion: The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has been seeking since their December 1999 order to encourage formation of a handful of national regional transmission organizations (RTOs). They have put forth a vision of about 5 RTOs for the entire country and are currently working on helping PJM, MISO and other grid operators standardize their systems, to ultimately facilitate more mergers. They have sought to have PJM merge with the New York and New England grid operators to form a single Northeast RTO. Efforts have also been made to merge MISO with the Southwest Power Pool (SPP), which would have extended MISO as far as parts of Texas and New Mexico. To date, these efforts have fallen through, but by 2020, when the portfolio standards reach their goal, it's perfectly possible that additional mergers could make it easier for providers to meet the goals through imports rather than building new wind power.
• Interstate Commerce Clause: If a corporation wanted to sell credits from New York, Florida or some other state outside of the PJM and MISO territories into Pennsylvania's portfolio standard, SB1030 wouldn't allow it. However, the Commerce Clause of the federal Constitution has been used routinely to strike down geographic limitations in state laws, such as laws aiming to prevent the dumping of out-of-state waste. If a Commerce Clause challenge were brought by an energy corporation seeking to provide credits from outside PJM or MISO, it's possible that the geographic scope would be broadened to the entire Interconnection (all states east of the Rocky Mountains).

Energy-efficiency may not undercut the dirty technologies in Tier II.

 

This may only be wishful thinking. The proposal by environmentalists to set a cost definition for energy efficiency never made it into SB1030. That proposal would have guaranteed that credits for energy efficiency would be so cheap that they can easily undercut the power generating competition in Tier II. Instead, it is up to the Public Utility Commission to develop rules that will determine how competitive efficiency measures can really be within Tier II. These rules are to be developed in early 2005 and finalized by mid-May 2005.

Efficiency measures will have to compete with power from existing large hydroelectric dams and trash incineration. These facilities already operate economically (hydro) or with captive waste markets (incinerators), making it possible for these facilities to charge as little of a premium as they must in order to undercut efficiency. Efficiency is likely to have some minimum real cost, which could make it difficult to undercut hydropower and trash incineration. New waste coal burners may also be able to undercut efficiency, since they are being built large enough that they can operate economically without subsidy, unlike the existing fleet of waste coal burners, which are small and uneconomical (more below).

Electricity suppliers -- the ones who will be choosing which of the Tier II options to use -- have an inherent conflict of interest that causes them to dislike efficiency measures. After all, these corporations make more money if their customers use more electricity.

Energy corporations may choose to fill up their Tier II requirements with hydropower, trash incineration and waste coal, rather than mess with efficiency, since they know they can pass on costs to their customers. The cost-recovery provisions of SB1030 are so generous that costs can be recovered without being deemed just and reasonable, and without having to be the lowest-cost option. Because of this, it's not unreasonable to think that companies may pursue waste coal over efficiency, even if waste coal is more expensive.

 

SB1030 will not reduce air and water pollution, but could make it worse.

 

Unsupported and unsupportable claims have been put forth about how SB1030 will "help clean our air and water", that "the waste coal plants in Tier II will help reduce water pollution", that "there's nothing in Tier II that makes existing air emissions worse" and that �between now and 2020, Pennsylvanians would avoid approximately... 67 million tons of carbon dioxide; 59 thousand tons of nitrogen oxide; and almost 600 thousand tons of sulfur dioxide."

 

SB1030 will help to keep open 16 uneconomical small waste coal power plants in Pennsylvania and West Virginia that release 9.2 million tons of carbon dioxide, 55 thousand tons of nitrogen oxides, and 19 thousand tons of sulfur dioxide every year. On the basis of these three pollutants alone, it seems SB1030's support for waste coal will undo most of the supposed air quality benefits its proponents claim it will create.

The claim about SB 1030 not making "existing air emissions worse" is carefully worded, but it is not true. Unfortunately, SB1030 can make our air andd water pollution worse.

This is because Tier II includes support for the following new pollution sources:

• New Coal-Burning Power Plants -- There are about 100 new coal-fired power plants planned in the U.S. Some of these are the "clean coal" kind that uses gasification. SB1030 includes "integrated combined coal gasification technology" in Tier II. These types of coal burners will qualify for Tier II credits in Pennsylvania. It's possible that the electricity-generating part of the proposed coal-to-oil refinery in Schuylkill County will qualify. Similar coal-to-oil refineries are planned for western Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Illinois.
• New Waste Coal-Burning Power Plants -- There are 3 large new waste coal burners planned for western Pennsylvania communities, as well as proposals in West Virginia. The largest waste coal burner in the nation is proposed for Greene County, PA. See the section below for more info on waste coal.
• Paper Pulp Liquor and Wood Waste Burning -- SB1030 includes the following in Tier II: "by-products of the pulping process and wood manufacturing process including bark, wood chips, sawdust and lignin in spent pulping liquors."

Pulping liquors are toxic byproducts from pulp and paper mills that contain chlorinated chemicals, including dioxins. Burning this waste releases dioxins, formaldehyde and other hazardous contaminants.

Industrial-scale wood waste burners are also air-pollution sources and can have indirect impacts on the wood material supply, causing increases in logging on our state and national forests. The largest wood burning "biomass" power plant in the nation is currently planned for southeastern Ohio and has specifically been watching the policy developments in Pennsylvania, hoping to sell �green� power into the state. The power plant would be located near the Wayne National Forest and has listed logging operations in the forest as a possible source of fuel.

Tier II will also support existing trash incinerators. All three of the proposed portfolio standard bills in Pennsylvania started off with explicit prohibitions of the use of incineration. However, when SB1030 was amended, the prohibition was eliminated and existing trash incinerators were explicitly added to Tier II.

The Harrisburg incinerator is a nationally-known environmental racism issue and has drawn the attention of several national civil rights leaders, since it's located in a low-income, minority community, very close to the largest public housing projects in the region. For years, the incinerator was the most polluting dioxin source in the nation. The incinerator is now closed, but is being replaced with a new (larger) incinerator that is permitted to release up to 600 tons of air pollution each year, without using state-of-the-art pollution controls to limit fine particulate matter and without using the modern air monitoring equipment that can provide continuous emissions data on dioxin, mercury or other toxic metals. This new incinerator will qualify as an "existing" facility under SB1030. By supporting this economically dismal operation, SB1030 will help it operate longer that it would otherwise.

Pennsylvania's largest trash incinerator is also located in a poor, African-American community (the city of Chester, just southwest of Philadelphia). It's one of the largest incinerators in the country. Chester is a textbook case of environmental racism that has literally been studied in college classrooms around the nation.

By indefinitely creating a market for power from trash incineration, SB1030 will enable all of these incinerators to economically operate longer than they otherwise would.

 

Tier I technologies pollute, too.

Tier I (the supposedly clean category) will also help promote new polluting industries. Although they are likely to represent a small proportion of the power generation used to meet the Tier I requirement, these technologies have pollution consequences much larger than their power generation would indicate. They are:

• Landfill Gas: Landfill gas is far more than methane. Landfill gas is contaminated with hundreds of toxic chemicals, including mercury and many chlorinated organics, which can form dioxins when burned. For these reasons, landfill communities in Pennsylvania have rejected the notion that burning landfill gas is "green" or "renewable" energy. Toxins ought to be filtered out and isolated prior to burning landfill gas. The economic incentives for landfill gas burning will cause more landfills to be managed for gas production. Since less than half of landfill gas can be captured in gas collection systems, this will result in more landfill gas escaping and poisoning local communities and the global climate. The new mega-landfill planned for Centre County would be Pennsylvania's first "bioreactor" landfill -- designed for intensive gas production.

�         Coal-mine methane: Coal-mine methane is natural gas (a fossil fuel) that is trapped inside active or abandoned coal mines. A similar source, coal-bed methane has been linked with soil and well water contamination, increased risks of mine fires, buildup of explosive gases under buildings and homes, subsidence, noise pollution and decreased property values. SB 1030's definition of coal-mine methane is loose enough that full-blown coal-bed methane operations may also be able to qualify. Efforts to keep coal-mine methane in Tier II with the other fossil fuels failed. There is already an 88 megawatt power plant in Virginia burning gas from coal-mine methane and coal-bed methane. Additional operations are likely to be developed in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Illinois. The definition in SB 1030 is weak enough that the larger (and more destructive) category of coal-bed methane may be included if they decide that any part of the operation involves an active or abandoned mine.

�         Poultry waste incineration: A 39 megawatt power plant is planned for eastern Maryland that would involve incinerating poultry litter -- a waste stream that is documented to have high levels of arsenic from the use of arsenic-containing growth promoters used in the industry. Through a loophole in the "biomass" definition, this polluting power plant could become economically viable to build. Maryland placed this in Tier II and only allows it to be used if it won't compete with Purdue's pelletization facility in Delaware -- a far more environmentally preferable option to burning the waste.

• Animal waste digesters: Pennsylvania is being invaded by hog factories. Power from burning the gas from anaerobic digestion of factory farm animal waste qualifies as Tier I. Using energy from factory farm waste digesters is not renewable. Promoting digesters could help maintain and expand factory farming operations in the region, while not resolving the underlying problem of excessive animal waste production.
• Burning of trees and crops: Power plants like the Viking Energy wood burner in Northumberland County, PA could count as Tier I, if the trees they burn are from tree farms. This is a facility that tried multiple times to burn tires.

Problems with burning Waste Coal.

There are cheaper and cleaner alternatives for remediation of waste coal piles that don't involve burning.

SB1030 will help promote the building of the 3 huge new waste coal burners planned for western Pennsylvania, including the nation's largest, planned for Greene County.

Burning waste coal puts out just as much global warming pollution as normal coal-burning does, so it's hard to justify this as part of a "renewable" or "clean" energy bill when Pennsylvania is already responsible for 1% of the entire world's greenhouse gas emissions.

SB1030 will also help keep the existing fleet of waste coal burners going.

Thirteen of the 14 existing waste coal burners are too small to operate economically. When their PURPA-era power contracts expire (2 already expired; the remainder expire between 2008 and 2020), they'll be losing money if they aren't propped up by the Tier II incentives in SB1030. Tier II is all about keeping dirty and economically non-viable waste coal burners operating when their power contracts run out. One of the facilities whose contract expired is losing $4 million a year and may have to shut down. It'll likely be able to stay open now that SB1030 has passed.

Waste coal burners release cancer-causing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and other air pollutants, while turning every 100 tons of waste coal into 60-80 tons of highly concentrated toxic ash that is dumped in Pennsylvania communities without any liners to protect the groundwater.

Burning waste coal necessitates feeding more than 6 times as much mercury-contaminated fuel into a burner to produce as much energy as a similarly sized coal burner. This mercury and many other toxic metals will ultimately poison the groundwater when the toxic ash is dumped throughout the state.

Proponents of waste coal burning claim that it's the only viable solution to "removing" waste coal piles to protect groundwater from acid drainage from those piles. However, the ash that the waste coal is turned into has been documented to have exacerbated acid drainage problems at ash dumping sites in Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

Information on the alternatives to waste coal burning can be found on www.truthaboutgob.org and at www.energyjustice.net/coal/wastecoal/ (see the section on beach grass at the bottom of the page).

 

SB1030 does not address our addiction to foreign sources of energy.

SB 1030 backers have repeatedly discussed SB1030 in the context of making Pennsylvania independent of foreign sources of energy. SB1030, as well as Renewable Portfolio Standards in other states, creates standards for the electricity sector, not the transportation and heating fuel sector, which is where most oil is used. Only 2% of Pennsylvania's electricity comes from foreign oil -- the use of which could easily be ended, since Pennsylvania produces 45% more electricity than is consumed in the state. Pennsylvania's energy primarily comes from domestic coal sources (55%) and nuclear power (36%). 3.5% comes from natural gas, which is almost entirely (98%) from North America, but which could increasingly come from overseas if liquefied natural gas facilities are built to import gas now that North American gas production has peaked.

PA is the 17th state to adopt an electric generation portfolio standard

In addition to Pennsylvania's "alternative energy" portfolio standard, the following 16 states have actual renewable portfolio standard (RPS) laws: AZ, CA, CO, CT, HI, IA, MA, MD, ME, NJ, NM, NY, NV, RI, TX, WI.

See REPP's RPS map. They list 16 states with RPS laws and three others (HI, IL and MN) that are in a category similar to where PA was before SB1030 passed... no state law, but some RPS-like voluntary or regional standards. Illinois has a goal. Minnesota has a "good faith objective." Hawaii adopted enforceable state standards in June 2004.

 

For additional information, contact Mike Ewall at: 215/743-4884