“Beyond Coal” Campaign
CONTACT:
Parker Laubach
Lead Organizer, Students for Environmental Concerns
847-721-5189
laubach1@illinois.edu
Students for Environmental Concerns and Sierra Club Announce "Beyond Coal" Campaign in Front of Abbott Power Plant
Representatives from the organizations Students for Environmental Concerns, Sierra Club and Prairie Rivers Network held a press conference this morning to kick off the "Beyond Coal Campaign" in front of Abbott Power Plant on the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign campus. Students for Environmental Concerns, the oldest environmental organization on campus, organized the coalition and hosted the press conference. Members of SECS delivered a Freedom of Information Act Request to University administrators regarding operations at Abbott. The event was to announce the beginning of a statewide partnership to lobby the University to make the transition from burning mostly coal at Abbott to burning natural gas.
The coal systems at Abbott power plant date back to the 1930s, and require extremely high levels of investment to keep operating reliably―The University of Illinois Energy Task Force commissioned a report that anticipated a need of approximately $205 million over the next 15 years, mostly needed for the coal system. Abandoning coal use would allow this money to be used to retire the campus energy debt, fund aggressive energy conservation, and install renewable energy.
Students for Environmental Concerns' lead coal organizer Parker Laubach said, "It makes no sense for the University to shovel money into the coal boilers when it has made a commitment to climate neutrality. Schools across the country, like UW-Madison, Cornell and Stanford have committed to stop burning coal―it is past time for us to show leadership here."
"The economic case for ending coal burning at Abbott is abundantly clear as the deferred maintenance costs are so high." says Students for Environmental Concerns' President, Anthony Larson, "This case can be made without even discussing the climate impact."
These maintenance costs are an opportunity for the University to demonstrate its commitment to sustainability by breaking its reliance on coal. Recent events show that sustainability is important to Illinois students. Last week, a referendum to raise the campus green fees passed last week with 77% of the student vote.
Transitioning to natural gas at Abbott is an important step in cutting the University's carbon footprint, will avert hundreds of millions in maintenance costs at the power plant, and is necessary in order to meet the University's goal of being carbon neutral by 2050.
6 comments
breanne
how much would it cost to update systems to effectively transition from coal to natural gas?
Luke
I took a tour of the Abbott Power Plant last year.
It wouldn’t cost anything to change the facilities to run off of natural gas. The Abbott Power Plant runs off of natural gas, coal, or oil—depending on how the energy market looks at a given time. When we were there, they were running both the coal and natural gas systems. They said that they haven’t used the oil boiler in decades.
Their natural gas turbine looks like a railroad boxcar sitting in their facility, and the exhaust gas passes through a heat-exchanger which makes steam to heat and cool the campus buildings. The coal power system does something similar—the hot steam goes to the turbines, then it goes to campus buildings to be turned back into water. This is called a Combined Heat and Power (CHP), and it’s one of the most efficient ways to do this kind of thing.
The plant manager told us that the plant’s primary job is to make steam to run the campus’ HVAC systems (the chillers run off of steam, too), and that the electricity is secondary.
I thing we should move beyond coal and natural gas (natural gas is only a halfway solution—half the CO2, and fracking probably is half as bad as mountaintop removal(I used to live on the VA/WV border)). But the bottom line is that coal/NG works and we’ve got to figure out a way to heat the campus and run all of the steam-powered equipment before it’s even a possibility.
A protest just isn’t going to have any impact when there are no other options. The protesters should probably hire a professional engineering group to asses how feasible it would be to heat/cool all of the buildings using geothermal heat-pumps with the electricity provided by a renewable power-source. By guess is that it would cost more than the university can afford, but the (much smaller) unversity where my brother teaches has been making progress on something similar.
Anyway, I’m quite sympathetic to the large-scale goal—but I’ve gotten down into the weeds on this issue enough to realize that public awareness and happy-thoughts aren’t going to do anything other than get the plant-manager to hand out more global-warming denialist “handbooks” to people who tour the plant. The solutions cost money, and a lot of it—my personal guess, givent he size of this university, is that a couple of billion dollars is probably in the ballpark. That’s a lot of money—but not as much as it sounds, since UIUC spends between $65 million and $85 million on energy every year.
Luke
P.S. The Abbott Power Plant can’t even come close to generating enough electric power to run the university, much less the town.
Interesting. But I’d like to know exactly what the carbon difference between coal and gas is. Anyone know the combustion chemistry? It strikes me that the CO2/Btu shouldn’t be that different, but I don’t know. Any leads appreciated.
Coal of course has other problems besides carbon; mercury being a major one, but also ash, sulfur, etc.
Fracking on the other hand, is not nearly as benign as proponents make it out to be. There are some nasty chemicals involved and groundwater supplies could be, some would say have been, polluted. NYC is especially worried about fracking shale in upstate NY areas where their water comes from.
The claims being made that fracking means we have centuries worth of gas in the US are also highly dubious. More needs to be known.
Luke
Stuart,
Here’s a breakdown of pounds of CO2 emitted per megawatt-hour generated: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_power_station#Carbon_dioxide
It’s Wikipedia, so it’s only a starting point for delving deeper into the issue—but their numbers agree with what I’ve read at other sources and their writeup is very concise.
Also, the plant manager was quite proud of the scrubber that they have for coal emissions. He said that it was one of the first ones installed in the USA, and it was installed so that they could burn Illinois coal (which is apparently dirtier than normal coal).
The University could meet ~80% of the peak steam load with natural gas right now, most of the time, the coal systems are unnecessary. They would have to do enough energy conservation to get the peak load low enough to use only the gas systems to meet demand, but they could make that happen in a couple years, if they wanted to. Natural gas (because there is a lot more hydrogen in there compared to coal) has about 55% of the carbon footprint of coal - switching Abbott over completely would cut Abbott’s emissions by about a quarter. Abbott represents around 2/3rds of the University’s emissions, because of purchased electricity, transport, and so on.
The big advantage of abandoning the coal systems are that they are really old and will need a lot of investment to keep them running. Some of the gas equipment is less than 10 years old, where as the coal equipment has stuff in there that dates back to the 1930s. If they pulled this off, they could save at least $100 million or so over the next decade or so. We don’t generally look at the full costs of things - including all of this in the decision making would make the coal vs. natural gas decision a lot easier to make. Saving that $100 million or more could easily subsidize gas use, and still fund a lot of energy conservation. Not enough of course, but a first pass by some consultants the University hired, estimated that 30% of campus energy use could be eliminated by a $150 million investment - and after reading their study, I think their numbers are very conservative.
Most Recent SPlog Comments
“Smile Politely sports writer announces candidacy for city government.”
Snell and the little Hitlers of the neighborhood association need to chill out. Legitimate businesses should have the freedom to exist without having to endure the slings and arrows of ignorant and misguided opposition.
And without bloodshed. Sounds like the Savoy trustees aren’t as narrow-minded as some of their whiny pants constituents. Do you think quack Snell is already planning an asinine counterattack or is he still laying low after those “threats” against his person?
Excellent. I am glad sometimes American dreams are encouraged, rather than stifled.
Dollars to waffles says the study session will conclude that there is parking available in the Hill Street Parking Deck.
I can see requiring them to plug meters where they park, but the license fee thing sure sounds like some established business doesn’t like the competition and has an in with the city gummint staff.
This is pretty much ridiculous. However, I would hope that local businesses that aren’t opposed would step up and allow the Crave Truck in their private parking lots. That won’t solve the licensing issue though… (Insert not-so-subtle reference to Snell being behind the grand conspiracy to kill…
How convenient.
Sick Boy was pretty good with computers.
Most Popular SPlog Articles (60 days)
- Tim Johnson is leaving Congress at the end of term
- Three local bands make national news
- Win a signed poster by Sigur Rós
- Local news headlines for Friday, May 11
- Chambana Moms awaiting dads’ return from store with gallon of milk, pack of smokes
- Local news headlines for Thursday, May 10
- Singer/songwriter Bill Mallonee is in town this weekend.
- Stories & Beer returns Saturday the 14th
- C-U Tweets of the Week
- We bought a new server, along with some whiskey and cigarettes
Most Recent Comments
Looking forward to trying this place!
I’m in the middle (or the beginning or end, depending on how you look at it) of re-reading Slaughterhouse Five. What a great companion column.
Get yours early. The Rave’s CD will be available at Exile and at The C-U Flea on Saturday. C-U Flea details here: http://www.smilepolitely.com/news/sp_radio_podcast_c-u_flea_arrives/
I don’t know about Gerard and a random police sargeant. My (mild) outrage is based on this: “...he worked closely with Champaign City Clerk Marilyn Banks to make sure he was licensed properly as a transient food peddler, filling out the necessary paperwork and paying a $225…
Local Yocal pretty much nails it here. I suspect there will be merchants who oppose food trucks because they arguably don’t pay their fair share to locate their trucks in high traffic (high rent) areas. The food trucks take away business from rent payers, park in city…
Oh nice! I’d totally vote for Matt Campbell!
“Smile Politely sports writer announces candidacy for city government.”
I also got to visit Big Grove Tavern during the soft open and definitely enjoyed the pork belly the most of all the dishes I sampled. The cheesy grits and the vinegary pickled vegetables were a perfect compliment to the rich pork belly.
The Alan Partridge lookalike on the right in the first small photo has nothing to condescend to anyone about. AH HA!
Snell and the little Hitlers of the neighborhood association need to chill out. Legitimate businesses should have the freedom to exist without having to endure the slings and arrows of ignorant and misguided opposition.
represent, Matt.
Yeah, I’d agree that Transporter Room 3 is the worst house venue I’ve ever seen.
Food trucks are the start-up, small businesses of the future for those unable to afford real estate. No surprise, that merchants who pay rent, utilities, and maintenance on a property would despise the traveling competition. Or developers who build more empty retail spaces would want to close…
Not so much far-right Tea Party as a balanced, moderate viewpoint between letting businesses succeed and protecting society with reasonable regulations. In spite of what the city reps are saying, the interpretation of policy on this issue certainly has changed. Letting a business start up under one…
I think it’s neat that SP has turned rightward, now espousing a Tea Party-style frustration with government regulations & taxes.
This makes me so sad. (Happy to live in Urbana, though!) Crave Truck has been a GREAT addition to the food choices in C-U, and it’d be a travesty to chase them away. This town should be supporting small businesses. I’m glad to hear that they’ll still…
*slow. clap.* Still offering no threat of intelligence…. I know I said I thought you should just write this whole column yourself next year, Isaac, but now that you’ve gone and taken a “part deux” run at it, I’d like to modify my request: Best Music 2013,…
Actually, it’s kind of nice, the quiet. John Heoffleur’s engaging commentary/dialogue is sorely missed, however. In lieu of someone intelligent saying something, I’ve compiled a list of Honourable Mentions: BEST ROCK BAND: Take Care ::these gentlemen have four completely different sets at their disposal right now (which…
What? Echo! (Echo!) Where’s the dischord and dissent?
This weekend will mark the first appearance of Kayla Brown’s Fire Doll Candle booth at the Market. Check it: http://www.facebook.com/firedollcandles
Facebook
Twitter
Full Site
Oh nice! I’d totally vote for Matt Campbell!