Ohio Decides Coal Is a Bad Deal
On September 17, 2007, Andrew Wetzler walked into city hall in Oberlin, Ohio, to attend a meeting of the city council, fact sheets and presentation materials in hand. Earlier that year, Wetzler, an NRDC attorney, and other staff members from the newly formed Midwest office had fanned out to attend council meetings in nearly a dozen cities and towns across the state — from Oberlin to Westerville to Yellow Springs — to oppose the building of a new coal plant in Meigs County, in southeastern Ohio. The 960-megawatt coal-fired plant, proposed by American Municipal Power (AMP), would emit seven million tons of carbon dioxide each year. It would also pollute the air and water by releasing particulate matter, which can contribute to asthma and other respiratory problems, and sulfur dioxide, which can lead to acid rain. "It was a bad deal — environmentally and economically," says Shannon Fisk, an attorney in the Midwest office. AMP, an energy cooperative owned by its members — in this case, cities and towns across Ohio and neighboring states — wanted to finance the construction of the plant by locking member municipalities into long-term "take or pay" contracts. These contracts would require members not only to foot the bill for construction but also to commit to paying for the electricity the plant generated — no matter the cost. AMP assured its members that the plant would be relatively cheap to build and operate and provide an affordable source of electricity. But in reality, projected construction costs were rapidly rising and the expected operating costs were increasing significantly as well, thanks to the prospect of federal climate change legislation and new coal ash disposal rules, and a hike in the cost of coal. At the city council meetings, NRDC staffers made the case that the economics of building a new coal plant didn’t make as much sense in the long term as other available alternatives, such as wind and solar. Initially it looked like a losing battle, as city after city signed up with AMP despite NRDC’s advocacy efforts. "We knew we were up for a challenge in the heart of coal country," Fisk says. But in the fall of 2009, as AMP was preparing to break ground, its contractors estimated that construction of the new plant would be more than 167 percent higher than the initial projection in 2005, rising from $1.5 billion to nearly $4 billion. At a committee meeting in November 2009, AMP’s Ohio members decided to cancel the plant. Fisk believes that NRDC’s efforts laid the groundwork for community leaders to recognize a bad deal when they saw one. "Our message all along was that the plant would cost too much and that there were better alternatives," he says. "We were really the first ones to make this argument in Ohio." AMP’s plan for a new coal-fired power plant was one of 150 such proposals made during the Bush administration. As of today, 110 of them have been canceled. "People are realizing that the economic future of energy is in efficiency and renewables, not dirty nineteenth-century coal," says Fisk. NRDC is currently challenging another new coal-fired plant proposal in Ohio. Wetzler, who was living in Columbus in 2007, believes that having a presence in the Midwest helped NRDC achieve its goals. "I think we would have received a far chillier reception if we had flown in from Los Angeles or New York and tried telling these folks what to do," he says. The decision to cancel the plant could ultimately prove a boon to AMP’s Ohio members on several fronts. "There’s a great opportunity to make better choices here," says Thom Cmar, an NRDC staff attorney in Chicago. The plant was supposed to reduce members’ reliance on electricity from the wholesale market. But "saving energy through energy-efficiency programs is by far the cheapest option," says Dylan Sullivan, an NRDC energy advocate in Chicago. Ohioans will not only save money by not building the plant; they will also have one less source of pollution and carbon emissions fouling their air and water. "This is one more small step toward a sustainable energy future," says Cmar. "If it wasn’t for our willingness to really jump in and fight this thing on the ground, it wouldn’t have happened." Fisk believes that the decision to cancel the new plant sends a message far beyond Ohio. "It’s one thing when a state like California decides not to build a coal plant," he says. "But when a state in the heart of coal country decides not to do it — that’s a pretty strong statement."
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