Republicans Against Coal

Republicans Against Coal

By Chester Sansbury, REP South Carolina Coordinator, published in the May 19-25 edition of the Columbia, SC Free Times

The U.S. Dept. of Energy predicts that electrical power needs will continue to increase over the next 20-30 years. Population and economic growth are the reasons. Growth in the Southeast is expected to be greater than other regions. How this growth in the need for electrical power should be met remains controversial, but one thing is certain: it is hard to change a power delivery system that has developed over decades of capital investment and construction.

Regardless, continued and increased use of coal for power production, while perhaps cheaper per kilowatt-hour in the short term, will be more costly to society in the long term.

These long-term costs — which are not typically included in cost projections by utility companies and government agencies — include damage to human health, premature deaths, destruction of natural resources, loss of fresh water resources and destruction of ocean resources caused by acidification due to increased atmospheric carbon. Sea-level rise caused by rising temperatures attributable to carbon emissions will also cause tremendous loss in property value, and rising temperatures will cause more heat-related deaths.

These effects are observable now around the globe and are not simply based on computer models. As temperatures rise, more power will also be needed for air conditioning, adding even more to carbon emissions if we continue to promote the use of coal.

There are no simple solutions to the problems and challenges we face. However, a few things should be obvious:

It’s too late to completely stop the adverse effects of climate change. But if we continue down the same path, things will get worse faster. It’s already happening. We need to prepare for the looming problems.

We should do more to increase energy conservation efforts. We should choose natural gas over coal to meet short-term needs. We should stop building new coal-fired power plants.

There needs to be a cultural change in how we produce and use electrical power. We should rapidly and dramatically increase efforts to reduce power losses in our electrical transmission systems. We should develop ways to store electricity produced from renewable sources. We should dramatically increase efforts to better handle nuclear power plant wastes.

Who or what will motivate the changes we need? Right now, it looks like the most likely mechanism will be federal intervention. The Environmental Protection Agency has already begun by determining that greenhouse gas emissions are subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act.

The bottom line is the situation we have created has economic impacts to us all. It’s already happening. Doing nothing because of political partisanship is a very costly option.