Global Warming In the News

SOMERSET — With a man-sized penguin outside in the cold trying to draw people in, members of an environmental coalition tried to rally opposition to plans by NRG Energy to turn its coal-fired power plant into a facility that uses superheated gas to turn coal and biofuels into synthetic natural gas.

Although the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection has given the proposal a green light, environmentalists are appealing the decision, contending that NRG should be required to comply with its original promise to either shut the plant down or covert to clean natural gas by 2010.

“The state is allowing NRG to break its promise,” said Sylvia Broude, of the Toxics Action Center.

NRG says the process, using cutting-edge technology that has been used in a plant in Japan, will dramatically reduce pollution from the coal-fired plant and that the plant is needed to produce energy.

But critics say the proposed gasification process is untested. And although the new process would produce less pollution than now, it will still add more climate-changing carbon dioxide into the air than a plant that burns natural gas.

Broude called the NRG gasification process “dirty and dangerous and untested,” and “an incinerator in disguise.”

At a news briefing before the meeting, the opponents repeatedly focused on an even more insidious threat, disputed by NRG, that the plant could — and most likely will — be used to burn construction and demolition debris, releasing all kinds of toxic chemicals in the air.

In fact, NRG’s state permit does not allow such debris to be burned.

At the news conference, the activists grudgingly confirmed that such incineration would not be possible without additional state approval.

Yet because NRG has permission to burn clean biomass such as wood chips, they said, it’s an easy step for them to shoehorn the state into getting approval to go with the dirtier material, which might be laced with deadly chemicals such as dioxin, mercury, lead and arsenic.

“We have had enough environmental and health insults put on us by the State of Massachusetts,” David Dionne, a founding member of the Massachusetts Clean Air Coalition, told the crowd of nearly 100 people at AmVets Hall. “The debate is whether we move forward with a carbon-based economy or a sustainable future with renewable energy.”

Joseph Carvalho, another founding member and an anti-LNG activist, said data from the American Lung Association show that the area has higher-than-normal respiratory problems and premature deaths, and the upgraded plant would do nothing to help that.

Broude said that compared to having the plant burning just natural gas, the plasma gasification process would increase asthma attacks, lung problems, and “even premature death.”

Winston Vaughan, a field organizer for Environment Massachusetts, said NRG talks about the reengineered plant being able to pull out and store carbon dioxide in the earth, a process called “sequestration.”

But the rock structure makes sequestration impractical in the region.

“Allowing this proposal to go forward instead of repowering with cleaner fuel or shutting down as previously proposed would signal that the Department of Environmental Protection is not as serious about reducing global warming pollution as their public statements would suggest,” Vaughan said. “This makes no sense in a state that is trying to be a leader in environmental technology and environmental policy.”