With Bloomberg Contribution, Sierra Club Hopes to Shutter Coal Plants

It's not like coal power plants don't have enough to contend with, including competitively priced, cleaner burning natural gas and new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations affecting not only new power plants but existing ones as well. Now, thanks to Bloomberg and matching donors, the Sierra Club will embark on a campaign to close half the nation's operating coal plants by 2017.

However, coal is hardly dying as an energy source.

Sources of U.S. Electricity Generation, 2013

Credit: DOE: Alternative Fuels Data Center. Source—U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

In fact, it's been on a comeback since 2012, according to annual data provided by the EIA.

All the more reason for an infusion of Bloomberg's big bucks.

"The single biggest reduction in carbon pollution in the U.S. has come by retiring and repurposing coal-fired power plants - and that's the direct result of our Beyond Coal campaign," said Michael R. Bloomberg in a Sierra Club press release. "Thanks to the community leaders who have spearheaded this work, the U.S. led every industrialized nation in reducing carbon emissions last year. But much more work remains, and today we are doubling down on what has proven to be an incredibly successful strategy for improving public health and fighting climate change."

"The target, based on a starting point in 2010 when there were 523 such plants, goes beyond the group’s initial goal to close a third of them by 2020," writes Timothy Cama of The Hill. However, that number appears to be at odds with EIA data referenced in a Sourcewatch overview. "As of 2011, the Energy Information Administration listed 589 coal-fired power plants in the U.S., down from 633 coal-fired power plants in 2002," according to Sourcewatch, a publication of the Center for Media and Democracy.

The Club claims credit for the shuttering of 187 coal plants since the Club's campaign was launched in 2011, notes Cama. 

On a related front, Obama's clean power plan rule, the "'Cornerstone' of his Climate Initiative," will be put to the test on April 16 before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, reports John Siciliano of the Washington Examiner. "Over a dozen states argue that EPA does not have the authority under the law to implement the rules." 

We reported last year on a Supreme Court ruling affecting new power plant rules (as opposed to existing plants, the topic of the above litigation). "Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Antonin Scalia joined the court’s moderates and liberals in a 7-2 vote to uphold most of an Environmental Protection Agency rule that requires new or rebuilt factories and power plants to use the 'best available technology' to limit their emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases," wrote David G. Savage, the Los Angeles Times Supreme Court reporter.