The Herald Palladium's Debra Haight wrote a long article on the League/AEP meeting on coal. Because it is a popular topic, she emphasized the regulation issues, whereas that was not the emphasis of the speakers. Marc Lewis said they are in favor of clean air too--in fact AEP supported "cap and trade" --but want more time to install new equipment.
Coal will be king for long time, officials say
Power co. execs warn regulations will push up energy costs
By DEBRA HAIGHT - H-P Correspondent
Published: Saturday, November 12, 2011 2:02 PM EST
BUCHANAN - Coal will continue to be a major energy source for the country, but people could see electric rates go up if environmental regulations are put in place too quickly, two American Electric Power officials told a League of Women Voters forum Thursday.
The forum drew nearly two dozen people to the AEP Administrative Building in Buchanan. Speakers were Indiana & Michigan Power Vice President Marc Lewis and Gary Spitznogle, American Electric Power's director of new technology development.
Lewis and Spitznogle said AEP and other power companies are not anti-environment but would prefer to have a few more years to comply with strict new regulations on air and other emissions from the Environmental Protection Agency.
"We are lobbying Congress to have the EPA give us more time to comply," Lewis said. "For example, the sulfur and nitrogen oxide rules go into effect in 2012. We can't do this overnight and while we implement the new equipment we will have to increase rates. If we got two to three years, we could meet the new regulations, but we need time to do it."
While League member Jean Sharp spoke in favor of raising electric rates to encourage conservation, Lewis said most AEP customers don't feel that way.
"I fear not all customers are as understanding as you," he said.
He said AEP and other power companies would like to see a more rational approach taken to environmental regulations. He noted that court battles are already underway over EPA regulations, which power companies say are inaccurate information and conclusions.
"There have been some court battles to give people more time to comply and the EPA then has come up with more rules that are more stringent and less time to comply," he said. "We're not anti-clean air but we want time to implement new technologies."
While politicians and others have talked about the end of coal, Lewis said that coal will remain the leading source of electricity for decades to come. Coal provided 45 percent of the nation's electricity in 2009, and that percentage is projected to still be at 43 percent in 2035.
"The conventional wisdom is that coal will be dying out in the next 10 years with more electricity coming from natural gas as prices stabilize and more sources are found," he said. "While renewables will grow some, the future of nuclear energy is uncertain with what happened in Japan and the costs of building new plants. Our reliance on coal will be about the same."
As for which energy source is the most cost-efficient, Lewis said that nuclear is the least costly, followed by coal and natural gas. So-called renewable sources such as wind and solar continue to be both more costly and only intermittently available, he added.
He reported that China has become the world's largest user of coal and acknowledged that the United States is exporting a lot of its coal to that country, even though China mines a lot of coal itself. The reason is the coal they're importing from the United States is a higher quality than much of what they mine.
Spitznogle outlined work AEP and other power companies have done to cut down on carbon dioxide and other emissions that come from coal-fired power plants.
He called the concept of "clean coal" very much a moving target as the federal government changes which emissions it is most concerned with. For example, the emphasis used to be on sulfur, mercury and nitrogen oxide emissions, but now the concern is more about having low carbon dioxide levels.
He said AEP has instituted several measures over the years to clean up the air and other emissions from their power plants, including a recent effort to develop a "carbon capture and storage" method. That effort was ended when "cap and trade" proposals didn't pass Congress.
This article appeared in the December 2010 LWVBCC newsletter and has been circulated by LWVMI and the LWVUS leaders. Numerous local Leagues have asked for permission to reprint it in their newsletters.
It is not uncommon for outsiders, and even some members, to question how the League can be nonpartisan yet advocate on positions that, in the slice of time that is now, appear to be partisan. In the highly partisan climate that has developed in recent years, the League is one of the very few political organizations that is not in either the liberal/Democratic camp or the conservative/Republican camp. And we have members of all political persuasions and encourage them to get involved in politics. So members may be partisan but the organization is not. All this is hard for many to wrap their minds around.
The League is nonpartisan in that we do not endorse or support any political party or candidate for office. We don't rate legislators, we don't track their votes and we don't threaten them if they don't vote our way. Voter service is one of our main missions and we publish nonpartisan voter guides and hold candidate forums to help voters educate themselves beyond TV ads. Education is an important League function, and we try in our meetings and in this newsletter to inform our attendees/readers and stimulate them to think about issues in our world.
However, the League is also an advocacy group, and we have positions on issues that have been developed over the years since our founding in 1920 and are the result of study and consensus of the local Leagues nationwide. These positions are updated from time to time, but are basically consistent. The positions and platforms of the political parties, on the other hand, do change and at times they resemble our League positions, or not. But the League doesn't change or drop it's positions because they are currently those of one party or the other. And we do speak out!
An example is health care. The League has a position on comprehensive health care for all Americans. President Truman liked that idea too and President Eisenhower delivered a special message to Congress on January 31, 1955 recommending a comprehensive health program for Americans. Read it here. Lyndon Johnson got Medicare passed and that took the pressure off for awhile. But President Nixon encouraged HMOs as a way to rein in costs and provide health care for more people. Then President Reagan came along and decided the free market was the best way to manage health care and the Republicans have basically supported this idea since. But clearly both parties have been on both sides of the issue.
The key is not to confuse politics with position advocacy.
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