17 Mar STOP THE COAL TRAINS – Be There – Electric Utility Commission Meeting Tonight, March 17 at 5:30 at Austin Energy
To the Electric Utility Commission
Austin, TX
March 17, 2014
Please Stop the Coal Trains
The biggest greenhouse gas source in our energy portfolio is the Fayette Coal Plant. In fact – as of 2013 – Fayette ranks as the 5th largest source of carbon dioxide in Texas.
This is something that calls all of us to find ways to reduce these climate changing, drought causing, and hurricane enhancing emissions from our portfolio. I say ‘our’ because Austin Energy is our energy company – owned by the citizens of Austin and directed by our elected board of directors – the Austin City Council.
EUC advises Council on key energy matters. You took a stand last year, pushing a resolution to Council to seriously evaluate the options for retiring Fayette by 2018. The City Council passed such a resolution in June with a full report due by December 31. Yet, just two weeks from the due date, at an Austin City Council briefing – Larry Weis was still asking – “whether we want the CO2 to be completely gone or just gone from our portfolio?”
The Councilors were adamant that they all wanted the issue studied in serious detail and a strong majority echoed the statement of Mike Martinez who said, “The Number 1 Option for me is climate protection, so that means eliminating CO2 period!”
Their statements to Austin Energy about eliminating the pollution from Fayette were so clear and so compelling that I made a video for YouTube.
You can find it at: www.bit.ly/NoMoreCoal
I also have a four-minute video – significantly longer than I have to speak today, that shows the kind of train I’m talking about. It is 120 cars – over a mile long – and each car holds 80 tons of coal. That’s nearly 10,000 tons in total. It will all be burned at Fayette in less than a day and all the CO2 will be up in the atmosphere for generations to come. Please watch this video – it is just one continuous shot of one coal train – no fancy graphics or editorializing.
In four minutes, you’ll get a sense of scale of how much coal per day we are talking about – and how hard we have to work in this Generation Plan to find economically viable substitutes with wind, solar, efficiency, weatherization, demand response and storage.
I know you are working to make Austin’s future sustainable and affordable. This is the time I ask you to really dig in and make sure that it is a serious plan to move Austin Beyond Coal by 2018. Thank you.
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