Clean Air and Energy: North Carolina became a national leader in sustainable energy when in 2007 it established a renewable energy portfolio standard, which requires electric utilities to switch over 12.5% of their output to renewable sources by 2021. Also, the Clean Smokestacks Act, signed in 2002 by Gov. Mike Easley, required power companies to reduce their smog- and haze-forming emissions by approximately three-fourths over the next decade.

Global Warming and Cliffside: Dr James Hansen, a world-renowned climate change expert of the Columbia Earth Institute in New York, sent a letter to Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, on March 25, 2008. Citing the lack of carbon sequestering technologies in the Cliffside plans, he warns Rogers that the coal-plant, “…will have to be shut down… [it's] a terrible, foreseeable waste of money.” He also criticizes Rogers claim that in the case of Cliffside, near-term energy needs trump future considerations. Those near-term needs, Hansen retorts, can be met with, “massive but feasible conservation and efficiency programs, cogeneration, solar, wind, and biomass generation.” He also lists several other benefits of energy diversification.

‘Captains of Industry’ will be pivotal in shifting the world’s energy sources away from dangerous, carbon-emitting sources to sustainable and responsible sources. And Duke CEO Jim Rogers has been an outspoken advocate of the need to control global warming emissions. But Duke Energy was part of a consortioum of coal and utility interests backing a group called Americans for Balanced Energy Choices. According to the Washington Post, ABEC spent $35 million in primary and caucus states to promote electricity generated from coal and to rally opposition to Congressional action to address climate change.

Public Health: In 2000, the North Carolina General Assembly lead the Southeast in voluntarily acting to curb emissions from the state’s 14 grandfathered-in coal burning plants. The “Clean Smokestacks Act” is on tract to significantly reduce ozone-forming and sulfur dioxide (acid rain) emissions.

But mercury, a particularly dangerous neurotoxin that affects developing children, remains a significant threat in North Carolina. Our state’s 14 coal plants account for about 70% of mercury emissions in the state. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Colombia ruled that the EPA erred in not forcing utilities to use the best available technologies to suppress mercury emissions. Duke plans to remove only 90% of the mercury from its Cliffside emissions when available technologies can scrub 98% of the mercury from a coal plant’s emissions. Furthermore, the air permit allows Duke to ignore nearly 60 other hazardous chemicals – dioxins, chromium, arsenic, cadmium, etc.

Coal-fired power plants have already gained notoriety in North Carolina for their contributions to bad air days. Emissions include ozone-forming NOx, which is the pollutant of concern for “bad air” days in which children and people with respiratory problems are urged to restrict activities. Coal-fired plants also are a primary source of acid rain forming SOx emissions, which harms surface waters and aquatic populations.

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There’s some recent converage in the Charlotte paper about the Queen City and ozone, mainly on the EPA’s ozone rules and how Charlotte has massaged its planning numbers to get federal road monies.

From a recent Charlotte editorial on ozone non-attainment:

Why should anyone take seriously the Environmental Protection Agency’s ozone rules if the rules let cities such as Charlotte use questionable projections in order to keep federal road money flowing?

As the Observer’s Steve Harrison reported Wednesday, local transportation planners, in following the complex EPA rules about transportation and emissions modeling, have over the years included projections that look just plain silly.