Mansouri, Kavahn. “Midwest Coal-Fired Power Plants Are among the Country’s Worst Polluters, but They Don’t Break EPA Rules.” Nebraska Public Media, 11 Jan. 2022, https://nebraskapublicmedia.org/en/news/news-articles/midwest-coal-fired-power-plants-are-among-the-countrys-worst-polluters-but-they-dont-break-epa-rules/.
Missouri’s largest coal-fired power plant(called Labadie), located west of St. Louis, emits more pollutants than any other in the region, and in 2020 it was the second largest coal-fired pollutant. Those living near and around the power plant have now begun expressing concern over the area’s air quality. “Dirty clouds” can be seen from 3 miles away, filled with carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and more. Surprisingly enough though, this plant isn’t violating any rules. Jason Heitman, the EPA’s Emissions Inventory Lead for the region, says “We do have facilities that have very high emissions, but that has no bearing on if they are violating or doing anything. That could just mean they’re large facilities.” While this is true, a problem does lie here. The four states that make up region 7 are home to four of the 10 highest emitting power plants in the Country; Missouri has two of them. To combat this, coal scrubbers are being added to the plant to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions, and new changes will allegedly be rolling in in the near future.
This was a very interesting article to me, because I did not know that the midwest was home to more emissions than any other region in the United States. The midwest is also pretty republican, which leads me to believe many would not be keen on new regulations that may hurt their businesses for the sake of the climate. As for the Labadie plant itself, its sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions are allegedly 78 and 76 percent lower than Missouri’s and the EPA’s standards, respectively. These do, however, only apply to the full fleet and not individual facilities. This could be an issue, as some facilities may be producing far more emissions than others, and that would be a good place to start making changes. I do think it is good, however, that they have a goal for net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 for their plants. In my opinion, 2050 is a realistic goal where small changes can be made for a large end product. Sometimes leaders of these types of organizations make promises they can’t live up to, but 30 years should be enough time to execute any and all plans. I think it is good that they are already beginning to make changes, and I hope that they continue to do so.
I really liked your response to the article, and I think you make a good point when you say that 30 years should be a good target for net-zero emissions.
How many other power plants are in similar conditions and don’t violate the EPA?
There are power plants all over the U.S. that are better than these talked about in the article, but are also very old and outdated and still emitting tons of waste. When talking about going nuclear, I think we need to start by getting rid of these plants and replacing with nuclear, rather than just building more plants.
I completly agree with your response to the article and like how you included a timeframe for your solution.
I was wondering how “coal scrubbers” worked and if they could me added at a higher magnitude to combat the pollution.
While I believe a decent amount of power plants are now using coal scrubbers, I agree that we need to enforce it in all of our power plants. These scrubbers are an apparatus that cleans the gases passing through the smokestack of the plant, right before they’re emitted.