Despite a lack of substantive action on climate change in Copenhagen or, yet, in Washington, environmental groups are celebrating victories from 2009 over one of climate change’s biggest culprits.
Coal releases more carbon dioxide emissions per unit of
energy produced than any other fossil fuel, but it also provides more than half the United States’ electricity supply. It is possible, however, that this past year has marked the turning point away from that reliance on coal.
Seminole Electric dropped plans to build a new coal-fired power plant in Florida late last week, in part because of the likelihood of future regulation of greenhouse gases. That canceled plant was just one of many. The Sierra Club announced Monday that 26 coal-fired plants were “defeated or abandoned” in 2009 — the largest number since 2001, it says, when the number of proposed coal plants spiked at 150.
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