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A Responsible Electricity Future: An Efficient, Cleaner and Balanced Scenario for the US Electricity System 5/10/2005 responsibleelectricity.pdf

Executive Summary

As the new home of MASSPIRG's environmental work, Environment Massachusetts can be contacted regarding this report.

The US Electricity Industry Today: Risky Business

Most of the electricity consumed in the US today is generated by a few types of power plants that pose significant risks to electricity customers and society in general. For example,

• Fifty percent of US electricity generation today comes from coal, which is responsible for some of the greatest environmental damages facing our society, including climate change, acid rain, fine particulate matter, mercury buildup, regional haze, and pollution from mining and waste.
  
  
• Twenty-one percent of US electricity generation today comes from nuclear power plants, which create risks regarding the cost of disposing nuclear waste, risks associated with power plant outages, and risks of routine and accidental radionuclide releases either from fuel mining, power plant operation, or spent fuel transport and disposal, in addition to the threat of a major accident.
  
  
• Eighteen percent of US electricity generation today comes from natural gas and oil power plants, which contribute to air pollution and other environmental problems and are prone to extreme price volatility.
  
  
• The majority of electric generation capacity is located at large central station power plants, which can impose increasing strains on the US transmission system, strains that translate into transmission constraints, compromising reliability and creating pressure to site and construct additional power lines.

Unfortunately, most of the new power plants and transmission projects being planned and built today are only increasing the risks posed to society from the electric industry. The vast majority of new power plants built in recent years and planned for the next several years are natural gas combined-cycle units, and the markets for that fuel are becoming increasingly volatile. In fact, the heavy demand for new gas power plants is a major contributing factor to that volatility which has strained the economics of other natural gas-dependent sectors of the economy.

In the past year, there has been a dramatic increase in plans to build new coal plants, which will only serve to increase the US reliance upon fossil-fuels with high environmental impacts. Figure 1.1 below presents the US government’s forecast for CO2 emissions from the electricity industry through 2025, and indicates how the increased reliance upon fossil fuels will lead to significant increases in this important greenhouse gas.

Increased air emissions from fossil-fired power plants will not only increase environmental damages, they will also increase the costs of complying with future environmental regulations, costs that are likely to be passed on to all customers. Power plants built today can generate electricity for as long as 60 years or more into the future. Therefore, it is essential that new power plants be chosen with a long-term perspective that considers not only today’s construction and operating costs, but also considers the short and long term consequences for environmental quality and public health.

In recent years there has been dramatic progress in the development of less risky generation facilities, especially wind turbines, biomass facilities and distributed generation technologies. There also have been important advancements in the efficiency with which electricity is consumed by customers (i.e., in their homes and businesses) and much more such end-use efficiency remains to be tapped. However, despite this progress these less risky technologies still only represent a small portion of the total electricity resources in the US.