Environmental Research Foundation  [Printer-friendly version]
August 31, 2009

A FEW SIMPLE FACTS ABOUT THE PROPOSED COAL PLANT IN LINDEN

A Massachusetts company, SCS Energy, has proposed a modern
750-megawatt coal power plant in Linden, NJ (Union County), called
PurGen One.

The coal plant will capture its own carbon dioxide gas (CO2), plus CO2
from other emitters, compress the CO2 into a liquid, pipe it 70 miles
out to sea, and then pump it a mile and a half beneath the floor of
the Atlantic Ocean. During the life of the plant, it will bury a
trillion pounds (500 million tons) of CO2. This is called "carbon
capture and sequestration" or CCS for short. It is a huge experiment
and the people of Linden (and all of northern NJ, plus Staten Island)
are the guinea pigs -- and so are the fish in the sea.

1. This coal plant will make bad air pollution worse

* Union, Hudson, Middlesex and Essex Counties already fail to meet
minimum federal health standards for air pollution. The NJ Department
of Environmental Protection (DEP) estimates that soot alone is causing
594 deaths (plus 16,590 cases of asthma) each year in these counties.
Furthermore, in addition to soot, there are hundreds of other
chemicals in the air that exceed levels that the DEP considers safe.

* The cancer risk from 187 toxic air contaminants in Union county is
already 41% above the national average. In Hudson, the risk is 86%
above average; in Essex, it's 33% above and in Middlesex 17% above.

* US Environmental Protection Agency has identified 2,312 major
"environmental hazards" in New Jersey. Ranking counties by the number
of these hazards per square mile, Hudson is #1, Union is #2, Essex is
#3, and Middlesex is #4. Along with Staten Island, these are the
counties that would be most directly impacted by a new coal plant in
Linden. These counties already have far more than their fair share of
pollution and the health problems that go with it.

* Based on a similar modern coal plant being built in Indiana, we can
estimate that PurGen One will add 11.3 million pounds (5,662 tons) of
air pollution to Union County each year, including 104 tons of
volatile organic compounds (VOCs), 2,877 tons of nitrogen oxides, 67
tons of sulfuric acid mist and 532 tons of soot (fine and ultrafine
particles).

2. The PurGen coal plant will create new environmental injustices. In
2004, New Jersey state government designated Linden an "environmental
justice" community because Union County is excessively polluted and is
22.7 percent Black (56% higher than the statewide average) and 25.1%
Hispanic (57% higher than the statewide average). So the PurGen One
power plant will be adding new contamination to an area where Blacks,
Hispanics, and people of below-average income are already
disproportionately burdened by pollution. This is unjust.

3. Today, there is only one actual sub-seabed CCS experiment ongoing;
called "Sleipner," it has been conducted since 1996 in the North Sea.
In Norway, the Sleipner project has been pumping one million tons of
CO2 per year (1/10th of the size of the PurGen proposal) into the
Utsira formation, a geologic layer beneath the North Sea. Now it turns
out that the Utsira formation has been leaking. And Sleipner's CO2 has
moved through the formation at a rate 25 times as fast as was
predicted. Furthermore, a study by the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate
has reversed previous estimates of CO2 storage capacity in the Utsira
formation from "able to store all European emissions for hundreds of
years" to "not very suitable."

4. At least 1.8 million people live within 10 miles of the proposed
coal plant. This is about the most densely populated region of the
United States. Collecting and processing a trillion pounds (500
million tons) of CO2 in such a densely-populated area could pose
serious public health hazards. CO2 is odorless, colorless, tasteless,
and heavier than air. If it escapes, CO2 can form an invisible puddle
that excludes oxygen, asphyxiating everything in its path, including
plants, animals, and people. In 1986, in Camaroon, CO2 escaped from a
lake and smothered 1,746 people in their sleep. Can a trillion pounds
of liquid CO2 be processed in Linden without any accidents or leaks?

5. Coal is the most-polluting and most environmentally damaging energy
source, bar none. It destroys the land, pollutes water, and creates
massive amounts of toxic by-products, some of which take the form of
deadly air pollution, and some of which take the form of solid waste.

Over its 50-year lifetime, the PurGen One plant will process at least
98 million tons of coal. Toxic chemicals in the coal will be released
into the environment as solid wastes. These will include 816 tons of
arsenic, 15 tons of cadmium, 11.4 tons of mercury, 1,702 tons of
nickel, 395 tons of radioactive thorium, 3,018 tons of chromium, and
1,088 tons of toxic lead. Because of PurGen One, these toxicants will
be mined from deep in the earth and eventually distributed into the
environment that we (and other creatures) inhabit. Maybe 100 years ago
no one would have given this a second thought -- but today we know
better. Toxic chemicals released into the environment can eventually
get into the food chain.

Because of all this, plans for at least 101 coal power plants in the
US have been canceled in the last few years. The coal industry is
getting desperate. Their response is a PR campaign for so-called
"clean coal" -- meaning their untested plan to capture and bury CO2
below ground.

The purpose of CCS -- the ONLY purpose, really -- is to salvage the coal
industry by diverting investment away from clean, renewable sources of
energy. (We can invest in coal with "carbon sequestration" (CCS) or we
can invest in renewable, truly-clean energy like conservation, solar
and wind, but we can't afford to invest in both.)

6. CCS will be exceedingly expensive and every dollar spent on CCS is
a dollar that cannot be spent on renewable sources of clean energy
like solar, wind and geothermal. To make a real dent in the
global-warming problem by burying CO2 in the ground would require
massive investment. A consultant to the Linden coal plant has said we
might need to bury 2 trillion tons of CO2 this century. That would
require 4,000 projects the size of the Linden coal plant, which is
currently estimated to cost $5 billion. Four thousand projects, each
costing $5 billion, would require an investment of $20 trillion -- half
again as large as the annual gross domestic product (GDP) of the
United States.

Even if these costs could be cut in half, an investment of $10
trillion is stupendously large. (The entire bank bailout has so far
cost $2 trillion.)

And even if we spend the $10 or $20 trillion, we will still inevitably
run out of affordable coal because coal is not a renewable resource.
Then we'll have to invest again -- in conservation, solar, wind and
geothermal power.

7. SCS Energy has been misleading the people of Linden, claiming that
the coal plant will bring 150 jobs and an investment in Linden of $4.5
to $5 billion. The truth is, the vast bulk of the money would be spent
far from Linden. The major manufactured components of the plant, and
related engineering services, would be provided by companies located
in Indonesia, in the Netherlands, in England, in Louisiana, in
Georgia, in Texas, and in other places far from Linden. If the company
is not telling the truth about the money, what else are they not
telling the truth about?

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All sources of information for this fact sheet can be found online at
http://tinyurl.com/lmgqfv

For more information contact:

Environmental Research Foundation (New Brunswick, NJ):
purgenfacts@gmail.com

Essex Greens: essexcountygreens@gmail.com