FW: New 'Clean Coal' Plants To Clean Out Suburbanite's Wallets In Chicago West 'Burbs?

Sadly ironic in Batavia's case. In the 1800's, they had three windmill manufaturers there.

Dan

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From: Qualogistics@aol.com
Sent: July 18, 2010 6:24 PM
To: aquarianm@gmail.com
Cc: siobhankolar@hotmail.com
Subject: It "sounds like a sequel to the Music Man!"

For your energy blog if you have not added it already. A recent story in the DH. And here is Paul Sjordal's assessment on the topic preceding the link to the article.

 

Clean coal dream a costly nightmare: Five Chicago suburbs and dozens of other Midwest towns in power-plant deal now face the prospect of rising electricity bills "As the Prairie State Energy Campus rises out of a Downstate field, its price tag already has more than doubled to $4.4 billion — costs that will largely be borne by municipalities including the suburbs of Naperville, Batavia, Geneva, St. Charles and Winnetka. The communities are locked into 28-year contracts that will require higher electricity rates to cover the construction overruns, documents and interviews show. Municipal officials told the Tribune they expect costs to soar even higher before the plant begins operating next year. … Each year, it will churn more than 13 million tons of heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere, an amount equivalent to adding 2 million cars to the nation's highways. Most U.S. power plants emitting that much climate-change pollution date to the 1960s and '70s. The pollution also could make the plant more expensive to operate. Climate and energy legislation pending in Congress would slap a price on greenhouse-gas emissions, requiring Prairie State's owners to spend hundreds of millions more a year. Local officials didn't account for those costs when buying into the plant."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-coal-plant-20100710,0,3747005.story

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You are into music more than me so maybe you can confirm this. The above story reminds of the musical/movie (Music Man?) where a "snake oil salesman" of a guy convinces a town to invest all their money into a band. The same has happened here with the above towns and taxpayers having to pay Millions more of their tax dollars because they believed in the fallacy of "clean coal."

#2 Siobhan has some info on an upcoming meeting on the smart grid that should be of interest for your blog on energy. 

Don Kirchenberg
630-853-7650