Coal

Coal in Court

President Barack Obama’s  administration cracking down on coal. Provisions of the Clean Air Act choked off the state’s coal mining industry long ago, but new regulations on coal-fired power plants — there are six large ones in Oklahoma — are forcing one of the state’s major utilities, Public Service Company of Oklahoma, to install expensive air scrubbers, and have driven the other, Oklahoma Gas & Electric, to court.

All this after the federal government made Oklahoma switch away from natural gas and back to coal during the Jimmy Carter Administration, because of fears of a natural gas shortage.

But why the government is going after coal is obvious, and another reason relying on coal causes problems for Oklahoma: It’s dirty — bad for your health and the environment.

The Sierra Club, with their Beyond Coal Campaign, and other environment groups have produced evidence of impaired lakes and rivers from dumping coal ash into waterways, and air fouled by toxic emissions. In other words, living near a coal-fired power plant is no picnic.

But moving away from coal and more toward natural gas and renewables is anything but cheap. A new natural gas plant can cost hundreds of millions of dollars. So can installing scrubbers at existing coal plants.

Initially, that costs the utility companies, but eventually it’s the customers who pay in the form of higher electricity rates.