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Electric Power Plants Although we often think of electricity as being clean (electric cars, electric lawn mowers, electric heat) the source of electricity generation can be very dirty. Power plants generate electricity by burning various types of fuels. In the U.S., most electricity is produced from coal (54%), followed by nuclear (21%), hydropower (11%) and natural gas (9%). Power plants emit many pollutants including several that are measured by the U.S. EPA: sulfur dioxide (ingredient in acid rain), nitrogen oxides (component of ozone), particulate matter (smog component), and carbon dioxide (cause of global warming).
Coal-fired units produce more than their share of pollution, accounting for 96% of sulfur dioxide emissions, 93% of nitrogen oxides, and 88% of carbon dioxide emissions from the electric industry. Most of the coal-fired units in the U.S. were built before the Clean Air Act of 1970 and fall under the grandfather loophole, exempting them from strict new emission standards. Consequently, grandfathered power plants emit four to ten times the pollution of cleaner, modern power plants.
In the Houston-Galveston (H-G) area, power plants are the largest industrial source of nitrogen oxides (NOx) (29.4% of total point sources), the class of pollutants under attack by the State Implementation Plan. (See related article on page 1.) Although there are only 9 boiler power plants in the eight county area and hundreds of other industrial facilities, the 9 power plants alone produce 196 of the 668 tons of total NOx emissions per day from industry. More than half of the 196 tons come from four coal-burning units at the W. A. Parrish power plant in Sugarland, ranking it as the twenty- eighth worst power plant in the country for NOx emissions.1 The Parrish power plant produces approximately one-third of the electricity for the H-G area. Ironically, there are no air monitors in Fort Bend County where W. A. Parrish is located.
In 1999, Texas legislation for the deregulation of power plants was accompanied by rulings to eliminate grandfathered power plants. Older power plants will be required to reduce NOx emissions to 50% and sulfur dioxide emissions by 75% of 1997 levels by the year 2003. In addition, under the State Implementation Plan (page 1) industries, including grandfathered power plants, must reduce NOx emissions by 90% by 2007. Electric utilities now must either retrofit or replace old electric generating units to achieve the required reductions.
Cleaning up grandfathered and coal-fired power plants and using renewable and less polluting sources of energy is necessary to reduce the health effects of power plant emissions. NOx emissions contribute to the formation of ground-level ozone, a nagging problem in the H-G area and one that aggravates allergies and asthma and causes respiratory problems, especially among the young, the elderly and those who exercise outdoors. Particulate matter is another power plant pollutant of concern in the H-G area. A recent report by the Clean Air Task Force estimated that 201 people in Houston die prematurely each year due to fine particle pollution from electric power plants.2
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