something like this: in the 1970’s, an Arab oil embargo created visible political realities, including long gas lines. Subsequently, then-President Jimmy Carter called for a new American energy independence. That policy encouraged construction of new electric generation facilities that burned the country’s most abundant fossil fuel-coal. It also mandated that no new natural gas-fired generation would be constructed and that existing natural gas-fired generation could not be operated after a certain date. America’s electric power utilities ramped up and built new coal-fired electric generation facilities all across the country. Coal represented a plentiful source of home-grown, low-cost electricity. But, in the ensuing time and particularly in the recent past several years, the EPA became increasingly focused on emissions’ associated with burning coal. Influential environmental protection groups like the Sierra Club agitated against coal as a generation resource. “Coal” had become increasingly out of favor, and those plants that burned it faced constrictive regulation. Specialized instrumentation, utilizing glass tubing called Today, one way electric cooperatives fight to mitigate or delay impingers, is used to collect those restrictive regulations is through their collective political condensed gases. WFEC arm, the National Rural Electric Cooperatives (NRECA). Recently regularly monitors emissions from its power plants to comply NRECA pushed passage of H.R.2401 (TRAIN) by the U.S. with EPA, federal and state House of Representatives which requires cost/benefit analysis of regulations. The recent tests proposed EPA regulations. NRECA maintained that, “Electric bills will provide a baseline to see how the plant lines up with cannot remain affordable unless EPA regulations are achievable more stringent emissions limits. with reasonable compliance timelines.” Whether TRAIN will pass the Senate remains to be seen. But, cooperatives believe providing reliable, reasonably-priced electricity for rural Americans is still a cause worth fighting for.
wfec
A testing chemist prepares a solution that will be used to collect information atop the Hugo Plant stack. Like WFEC, many coal-fired facilities are undertaking these same preemptive steps.
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