The proposed coal-fired power and fuel manufacturing plant in Wiscasset would throw Maine's energy policy into reverse. It would careen our state back down the unsustainable energy road that our policy makers have recently rightly steered us off of.
Quite simply, building a coal-fired power plant would be disastrous for Maine. We cannot afford to increase our global warming emissions nor invest in more fossil fuel-based energy, when solutions to global warming and our energy needs are available today to be tapped, in the form of clean renewable energy and energy efficiency.
Further, the environmental degradation caused by coal extraction and overall financial risk of coal plants make this plant even worse.
Science is clear that Maine faces dramatic consequences — of which rainy winters, more scorching summer days and rising sea levels are only a foretaste — if we fail to rein in our emissions of global warming pollutants like the carbon dioxide released from the burning of fossil fuels.
But science is also clear that what we do now to reduce emissions can make a difference — not in stopping global warming entirely, but in avoiding the worst consequences of a warming world.
That's why Maine has set a path to a new energy future: the entire Northeast has agreed to cut emissions from electricity production, and Maine leaders have sought to boost energy efficiency programs, capture efficiency before adding more power plants, and set a goal of getting 10 percent new renewable energy by 2018.
Building a coal power and fuel manufacturing plant would be the complete opposite of the course to a new energy future.
There is no viable technology to capture and store carbon dioxide, which the proposal's backers fail to mention. Coal gasification is no more efficient than the natural gas plants we already have in the state. Those plants pump an average of 900 pounds of carbon dioxide pollution into the air per MWh of electricity produced.
If the new plant were to remain idle half the time over the course of the year, it would still produce at least 1.5 million tons of carbon dioxide pollution, increasing the state's power plant sector emissions by nearly 30 percent.
