For our climate change series, Thin Ice, we’ve been looking at changes expected if winters continue to be warmer and shorter.
But what if climate change could be slowed by cutting greenhouse gas emissions, including from the second-biggest human-made source — electricity generation?
The Milwaukee-area utility We Energies is promising additional reductions, but there are questions about whether the cuts will be enough and who will pay the bill. There’s hardly a better place to listen and look at the We Energies Oak Creek coal-burning power plant than the parking lot at the publicly accessible fishing pier north of the plant.
The pier is open during daylight from March 15 to November 15, weather permitting.
Company executive Vice-President Dan Krueger joined us there recently and explained a loud sound we could hear.
“That’s the air quality control system that’s scrubbing out nitrous oxide, sulphur dioxide, mercury from the system. It’s one of the cleanest, lowest emitting coal plants in the United States," Krueger says.
But while We Energies has cut some air pollutants in recent decades, it’s still a relatively high emitter of carbon dioxide — the main greenhouse gas contributing to climate change.
The utility says it wants to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 80% by 2030, compared to 2005 levels, and halt the use of coal as an energy source by the end of 2032.
To begin with, We Energies plans to shut down the four oldest of the six coal-burning units at Oak Creek over the next two years and add more renewable energy from sources like big solar energy farms and wind turbines. But Krueger says to meet peak demand for electricity, the company has to add a recently announced billion-dollar natural gas plant at the Oak Creek property.
“The plants are not a one-for-one replacement. They’re there to provide this provable ability to run a plant when needed. But the intention is these natural gas plants will run as little as possible. And that’s part of our approach to meeting our CO2 reduction goal and also partially a reflection of new rules we expect to come. Coal plants like the one you see here typically run 50-70% of the time. The new gas plants we’re proposing would run 10-20% of the time," Krueger says.
The proposed EPA rules would limit carbon emissions from new natural gas plants, but significantly, the agency recently decided to leave out existing gas plants.
Even so, environmental groups are raising concerns about adding a new natural gas plant at Oak Creek. They note that gas production and distribution release methane, a more potent greenhouse gas that doesn’t stay in the atmosphere as long. Burning natural gas also produces methane.
There are also dollars and cents questions about the We Energies natural gas proposal and transition to cleaner energy sources. Tom Content is the executive director of the Citizens Utility Board. He says once the power company files more information, he’ll be looking to see if this plant and other proposed gas-fired generators around Wisconsin make good financial sense. That’s because ratepayers are still helping fund some of the company's coal-fired plants.
“The older Oak Creek plant that’s shutting down, ratepayers were asked to pay nearly $900 million for pollution controls to keep that plant going, and now they are jettisoning that plant and moving to natural gas instead. There’s a lot going on with this company with their planning, and their plans have changed considerably in recent years," Content says.
Content says besides maintaining older plants, ratepayers are also getting hit with development costs for solar farms that haven’t come online yet.
That pinch point for customers has triggered more activism in recent years from groups that want to change who controls the electric utility.
“Hey hey, ho ho, We Energies has got to go!" chanted more than 100 members of the Milwaukee Democratic Socialists of America and other groups who met outside Milwaukee City Hall on March 1 to deliver to Mayor Cavalier Johnson thousands of petitions calling for We Energies to become a publicly-owned energy utility.
Coalition Spokesperson Andy Barber says that, among other concerns, We Energies is too slow with cleaner power.
“We need meaningful community-driven environmental policy and action. And that’s not going to happen with We Energies and their profit motivation," Barber says.
The activists are still trying to recruit an elected city leader who is powerful enough and willing to take on the big power company. We Energies says its investor-owned model has a robust partnership with the city on things like solar power and the industry clout to bring in repair crews from elsewhere when there are big local power outages.
But if there is more warming of winters and widespread effects of climate change, citizens will likely keep the hot spotlight on power companies to do better.
