Eisenhower-Era Power Plants, Be Gone

Time to Replace Eisenhower-Era Power Plants

Jul. 22 2011 - If you had to choose between a Model T and a new Ford Fusion, which would you buy? It’s a no brainer, isn’t it? You’d buy the Fusion, just as you’d choose a Blue Ray TV over a 1950s Black and White.

Most of us won’t put up with decades-old technology. Yet when it comes to our electricity, we’re stuck with last century’s dirty and inefficient power plants—even though cleaner and newer technologies are available.

It’s time for our electric power industry to embrace the 21st century with modern, cleaner power generation sources like wind and solar, natural gas and energy efficiency—and leave the 20th century’s increasingly uneconomic coal plants behind.

Rules to update the federal Clean Air Act this year are testing the power sector’s readiness to seize the future. After a long and heated debate, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finally enacted the so-called “cross-state air pollution rule,” which limits sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions, pollutants linked to asthma, bronchitis and heart attacks. read more>>>