Climate Change

I work at the Cane Run power plant in Shively. The generating units use fossil fuel (coal) to produce electricity. The burning of coal produces a large amount of greenhouse gases putting coal plants in the crosshairs of environmentalists. At my current job I am responsible for monitoring plant emissions so it is important that I am knowledgeable about the bills that are being proposed by congress. Currently there is a bill in congress that has committed the US to reducing greenhouse gases to near Kyoto Protocol (the UN Framework on Climate Change) levels by 2030 and beyond. The Europeans are not happy with the bill as they believe it does not go far enough. Coal producers and consumers are concerned that it will kill their industries.

There is no doubt that my industry will be affected by this bill. Power Plants will have to improve their emissions control equipment most to the order of tens of millions of dollars per operating plant. It will be a costly venture, but one I would argue is needed. The argument against emission cuts is that it will make a lot of the older coal plants obsolete and that the technology available is not advanced enough to produce the cuts that the bill proposes. My take is that the technology is lagging not because the technology is beyond our capacity it's because the will isn't there. Like the movie Field of Dreams I believe that if you build it they will come. If it is legislated investment and thus the right technology will become available.