The first big victory against coal power plants in Virginia came a few days ago in a town of about 300. In a statement of independence, environmental justice, and the power a few people can have on the biggest issues facing our environment today, town councilors voted 3-2 to retain their zoning rights regarding a coal power plant proposal and essentially prevent the plant from being built (at least for now).

Big coal brought in all their artillery of propoganda, promises for jobs and a better living environment, and tax revenues for the town, but small groups of informed and regional activists, along with residents willing to listen and think for themselves, helped to stop this process from moving forward in its normal way in the small town of Dendron, VA. They came up with clever tactics and got enough support from the people in the area to make the decision-makers not only listen but vote in a significant and landmark way.

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I live in Michigan and our Governor has been paying a lot of lip service to environmentally-friendly practices and energy-conservation and so has our regional utility, Consumers Energy. However, that’s about it. The same thing is also going on in Seattle.

Recently, Consumers announced it will build a new 800 megawatt coal buring power plant near Bay City Michigan. A Consumer’s spokes person said the plant will have lower emissions than existing plants. This isn’t impressive. The spokes person also stated that wind and solar were not economically viable options for Consumers.
The problem that I have with Consumer’s economic analysis of this matter is that it does not seem to take into consideration the environmental cost of the pollution the coal burning plant will generate. I haven’t seen the financial plans for this new plant but I doubt this cost is considered in the analysis. What Consumers and other utility companies should say is that coal plants are more lucrative for them because they don’t have to pay for any of the environmental costs.
I am sure that wind and solar will eventually become more cost-effective even if one does not consider the environmental costs of operating a power plant. However, in the meantime wouldn’t it make sense to place an operating tax of some sort on power plants that would be commensurate to the level of pollution they create? This seems more reasonable than requiring us to give up our clean environment as a subsidy to the utility companies.
Besides, there will never be any incentive for consumers to reduce their energy consumption if the true cost of the power is not reflected in the cost consumer’s actually pay.