In his State of the Union, President Barack Obama made a forceful case for combating climate change. Ironically, he spoke less than a mile away from the Capitol Power Plant, the last coal-fired plant in the District and a major source of the city’s air pollution.
But, if the D.C. Council has its way, such a contradiction won’t exist when the next president gets up to address Congress. Last Tuesday, the council introduced the Coal-Fired Prohibition Act of 2013, which would ban the use of coal as a fuel source in D.C. by Jan. 1, 2016.
The Capitol Power Plant, located on E St. SE and S Capitol Street, has been in service since 1910 but has not provided electricity to the Capitol since 1952. Instead, its function today is to provide steam and chilled water to heat and cool 23 facilities on Capitol Hill including the Capitol Building. The plant is currently operating under an Environmental Protection Agency exemption from the Clean Air Act. The bill is intended to hold the Architect of the Capitol, Stephen Ayers, to previous commitments to end the use of coal at the Capitol Power Plant.
The commitment is an unfulfilled promise made in 2009 when then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) submitted a letter to the AOC calling for the plant to be completely coal-independent by the end of 2009. The AOC responded positively and announced it would move towards burning 100 percent natural gas, but such a change has not been made.
Councilmembers and environmentalists support the bill, citing the harms from emission of toxic carcinogenic pollutants. Because the plant has short smokestacks, the pollution more directly impacts nearby neighborhoods.
Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie (D-Ward 5) wrote in an email to the Voice, “I and others on the Council have been and are concerned about protecting the environment so that our residents, and especially our children, do not suffer the serious consequences of environmental neglect.” Councilmember Anita Bonds (D-At Large) concurred, writing “governments around the world must address the real threat to the planet from climate change.”
The AOC has made marked progress in reducing the plant’s coal usage. Eva Malecki, spokesperson for the AOC, said “[Coal usage] has fallen from using natural gas as energy 42 percent of the time in FY 2005 to using natural gas 92 percent of the time in FY 2012.” The AOC says that the plant needs to maintain a reserve of coal, saying coal is necessary in instances of interruption of emergency natural gas and oil supplies, abnormally cold conditions, or equipment outages and maintenance that requires use of backup fuel.
The AOC also said the delay in becoming coal-free stems from insufficient technological capacities. The plant runs on seven boilers, two of which can only run most efficiently on coal. If the plant was to move completely off coal, the AOC states that in order to support Capitol heating and cooling needs, the five other boilers would be run past capacity. “After more than 100 years in operation, significant investment is needed to replace aging infrastructure,” Malecki said. “Therefore, the AOC evaluated several options and chose construction of a cogeneration plant [as] the most environmentally and economically beneficial way for the AOC to meet its goal to use natural gas 100 percent of the time.” Construction of a cogeneration plant, which would run on natural gas and fuel oil in reserve, is complex and may take several years.
However, in letters from the AOC to Pelosi in 2009, Ayers wrote the AOC would require the modification of only one coal boiler to become completely coal independent, a process that he estimated would take a maximum of 18 months, and had been done before.
When asked about this discrepancy, Malecki said, “It became clear that investing in old, inefficient boilers—even if they were converted to use natural gas—was not a good investment.”
Green advocates are not convinced by this explanation and argue progress has been frustrated by political interests instead. “The choice of coal as a boiler fuel is driven by Members of Congress who represent coal-producing states,” wrote Jim Dougherty, Conservation Chair of the D.C. Chapter of the Sierra Club, in an email to the Voice.
Environmentalists hope more progress will be made. “I think that the District making the move away from coal is excellent example for Georgetown and other universities as well as cities to follow,” said Sydney Browning (COL ’15), cofounder of GU Fossil Free, a fossil fuel divestment campaign on the Hilltop. “But, the extraction of natural gas can also have extreme adverse effects on the environment and that must be taken into account.”
If the bill passes, it may conflict with federal law and the EPA exemption. “As with all pieces of legislation, we will have to look at it carefully to examine … whether there are any potential conflicts with Federal laws,” McDuffie said.
Even so, with no objections coming from the council thus far, the bill seems likely to pass. “We cannot be deterred by federal action when acting for the benefit of the residents of the District of Columbia,” Bonds wrote.
