(This image of a coal-fired power plant is from ecology.com.)The title of this post may sound amazing, but it is true. The United States has more than 6,000 power plants, but a tiny fraction of less than 1%, the dirtiest 100 plants, produce about 1/3 of all the carbon pollution produced by all of the nation's power plants. And even more amazing, they account for about 1/5 of the nation's carbon pollution from all sources. That means that just closing those 100 power plants, and doing nothing else, would cut the carbon pollution of the United States by 20%.
Another statistic is even more revealing in showing just how dirty some American power plants are. If you just take the 50 dirtiest power plants in America, they would account for 2% of the entire world's carbon emissions (equal to the emissions of about 120 million cars) -- and in fact, those 50 power plants produce more carbon emissions than all but six of the world's countries (China, United States, India, Russia, Japan, and Germany).
And what is the biggest offender in those plants. It is their burning of coal. All of the dirtiest 50 power plants, and 98 of the dirtiest 100 power plants, burn coal to produce their energy. Unfortunately, this is not likely to change since the United States has a huge supply of cheap coal -- which we are not only using in our own plants, but also shipping to China (the only country producing more carbon pollution than the United States).
The EPA has proposed limiting carbon emissions from power plants to 1,000 lbs. per megawatt-hour (a cap that all of those 100 power plants currently exceed -- averaging 3,000 lbs. per kilowatt-hour). This cap has not been approved yet, but it should be -- and all of those 100 dirtiest power plants should be closed.
NOTE -- If you would like to see a list of those 100 dirtiest power plants, you can go to this website. Ten (10%) of those plants are in the state of Texas (which has demonstrated no desire to control any pollution).
