The "Toxic Twenty": Keeping America's Lights On

Or we could do “cap and trade”: pay a poor person to freeze in the dark for you…

Hmm still begs a lot of questions as to why some states proportionally emit more than others (e.g. Texas generates most electricity, but is not the major emitter – is this due to the nature of the fuel?)

The first thing that crossed my mind was the fact that the “Toxic Twenty” looked a lot like a list of the nation’s top electricity generating States…

The first thing I did after reading this was to look at the names of the states. There’s a small correlation, but not a lot. Both have Pennsylvania at number three, but otherwise it’s all over the place.
eg. Number one on the “Toxic Twenty” is number twenty on the top net electricity generation list. Number two on the “Toxic Twenty” is number ten on the other list. The third on both lists is the same, but the fourth and fifth on the “Toxic Twenty” are eleventh and twenty third, respectively on the other list.
Looking the other way around, the top net electricity generating state is tenth on the “Toxic Twenty” list. Second is sixth on the “Toxic Twenty list, the fourth is forty first, and the fifth is sixteenth.
I’m sorry, but while the shape of the graphs may be similar, the “Toxic Twenty” list does not look like a list of the nation’s top electricity generating states.

Here in Texas, we have a saying for groups like the NRDC: “Y’all can freeze in the dark for all we care”
Freeze a Yankee
Freeze a Yankee
Drive seventy five
Let’s freeze em alive
Governor Briscoe promised us
If any Damnyankees raised a fuss
We’d cut off the gas
Cut off the oil
And let em all freeze and boil.
A rather popular song here in Texas during the mid-70s. I forget the singer, I was six years old but remember it well. And yes, ‘damnyankee’ is said that way. My dad, who knew his grandparents who lived through reconstruction, jokes that he was 16 years old before he realized that was atually two words. Not looking to argue The War Between the States, or Reconstruction, just an amusing point. To some.

What are the toxic chemicals. Just glancing at the graphics, one would guess that they are talking about millions of pounds of mercury. Missed the news about people in Kentucky falling over from mercury poisoning. I view this type of reporting with more than a little skepticism. Years ago American Cyanamid Company was the nation’s leader in “toxic” chemical disposal. Top Polluter. The company made this distinction because it was disposing of ammonium sulfate via deepwell injection and accounted for the chemical and the water. AmCy got a Region 6 environmental excellence award for this process. Still they were the biggest polluter. Reports like this are mostly BS

Tez says:
August 12, 2012 at 9:05 pm
Mt Tongariro, in the centre of NZ North Island, that erupted last monday was emitting 2100 tonnes per day of sulphur dioxide alone. I havent heard of any health warnings and there havent been any evacuations.
Just getting things in perspective, 10 days at that rate would beat Toxic Kentucky’s yearly production.
Also there is a 25 000km2 raft of pumice floating in the sea off the NZ coast. Thought to be from an under water eruption but no details on toxic gasses.
______________________________________
its rather interesting how eco nutters refuse to see that natural sources by far out toxify anything that man could do… yet they ignore it.. better yet i want to know how they plan to stop it…:)

I do not think skeptics do ourselves any favors by mocking good news of this sort.
Further, such a large decrease in supposedly deadly toxic chemicals now should make it possible to get reliable observational facts on the impact –if any– of their decrease. So, let’s see what develops there.
In the meantime, the above post rather reminds me of donning full armor to attack a hot fudge sundae.

Try cross-plotting the data in the histograms…could be more informative.

geo says:
August 12, 2012 at 9:33 pm
“I do not think skeptics do ourselves any favors by mocking good news of this sort. ”
So let’s ponder why “geo” thinks this is good news.
The NRDC report is called “Toxic power – How Power Plants Contaminate Our Air And States”.
a) He likes tocix stuff.
b) He loves attempts by green groups to shut down power generation.
c) He’s a marketing guy and thinks that branding states as “The Toxic Twenty” is a great memorable slogan.
Which is it, geo?

Geo, we are NOT mocking news, good or otherwise – we are mocking pure propaganda, which is exactly what the NRDC report clearly is… Mocking propaganda is always a healthy thing. In fact, most clear-thinking folks would consider the recognition of propaganda to be a sign of actual intelligence…

Edohiguma says:
August 12, 2012 at 7:56 pm
Though less sarcastic for a second… “emitting nearly 40.6 million pounds of harmful chemicals”. Classic. Oh my god! 40.6 million tons! About 20 million kilos! WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE! Classic approach. Throw around big, scary looking numbers.
1 Tonf = 1.016 metric Tonnes, to all intents & purposes they’re the same! i.e 40 million tons = 40 million tonnes more or less! I think you’ve slipped your units about a bit!
BTW the poison is always in the dosage!!!

EPA contradicts their own statements. In ‘EPA Energy Star Fact Sheet’, the ‘national average mercury emissions’ by the electric sector is estimated 0.012 mg/kWh. (http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/promotions/change_light/downloads/Fact_Sheet_Mercury.pdf?1a93-2950)
I have made a new calculation with the figures of 2010.
– EPA (see NRCD’s report): Electric Sector Mercury Air Pollution: 68,199 lb, i.e. 30935 kg.
– NEI (Nuclear Energy Institute): Total Electricity Generation 2010 in US: 4,125,059,900 MWh.
So, the national average mercury emissions amount to 0.0075 mg/kWh for the year 2010. The figure of 0.012 is more than outdated.
On this wrong base, EPA told us that CFLs are more environment friendly.
– Mercury emission from electricity use of a CFL 13W: 0.013 kW x 8000 h x 0.012 mg/kWh = 1.2 mg. The mercury content in the lamp is 4 mg. The total mercury emission is 5.2 mg.
– Mercury emission from electricity use of 8 incandescent lamps (a life time of 1000 hours is estimated) of 60W: 0.06kW x 8000 h x 0.012 mg/kWh = 5.76 mg. An incandescent lamp contains no mercury.
I revised the EPA calculation using the recent figure:
– Mercury emission from electricity use of a CFL 13W: 0.013 kW x 8000 h x 0.0075 mg/kWh = 0.78 mg. The mercury content in the lamp is 4 mg. The total mercury emission is 4.78 mg.
– Mercury emission from electricity use of 8 incandescent lamps of 60W: 0.06kW x 8000 h x 0.0075 mg/kWh = 3.6 mg. An incandescent lamp contains no mercury.
I will not enlarge here on other subjects here: CFLs emit dangerous UV radiation, in a recent test (Test-Aankoop Belgium, May 2012) it was observed that no lamp reached half the full intensity of light within 30 seconds, the lifetime of the lamps does not appear to correspond to the promised lifetime on the packaging, the collection of broken bulbs is not always as it should, etc. More information can be found on my website (see my name).
Conclusion: CFLs should be banned immediately. These lamps are polluting more than incandescent lamps. The more the coal fired power plants will adopt the new rules, the more CFLs will become obsolete.

Took your data and calculated pollution per megawatt hour for those 20 states. Seems like Texas is almost the best of them, by that measure. Maybe we should tell the NRDC to focus on the 5 states with 10X as much pollution/mwh as Texas.
P/M Rank State D Rank Pollution E rank MWh P/M
1 Kentucky 1 40,564,585 20 5998 6763.018506
2 Ohio 2 36,405,858 10 9450 3852.471746
3 Delaware 20 2,942,946 47 781 3768.176697
4 West Virginia 5 18,101,675 23 4884 3706.321663
5 Indiana 4 26,234,197 11 8263 3174.899794
6 Virginia 12 9,474,271 30 3722 2545.478506
7 Michigan 7 15,543,430 15 7334 2119.365967
8 Pennsylvania 3 31,482,857 3 15797 1992.964297
9 North Carolina 8 14,634,490 13 7937 1843.831422
10 Tennessee 11 9,640,464 17 6331 1522.739536
11 Georgia 9 13,438,115 9 9745 1378.975372
12 South Carolina 13 9,343,200 16 6904 1353.302433
13 Maryland 19 3,126,022 32 2962 1055.375422
14 Mississippi 17 3,989,857 29 3843 1038.214156
15 Florida 6 16,662,542 2 16,955 982.7509289
16 Missouri 15 5,114,713 19 6267 816.134195
17 Wisconsin 18 3,574,179 25 4448 803.5474371
18 Alabama 14 8,291,061 4 10339 801.9209788
19 Texas 10 10,454,140 1 32572 320.9548078
20 Illinois 16 4,665,396 5 14685 317.6980592

The more FF powered generation the better as far as I am concerned.

Coal impurities vary substantially by region/mine.
Installed pollution controls are also all over the lot,
Some our coal fired generating assets are also more then 80 years old.
If I look at coal consumption by state I don’t see any correlation between quantity of coal burned and rankings in NRDC’s list. I.E Texas burns 100 Million tons of coal per year and Kentucky only burns 40 million tons.
http://www.eia.gov/coal/annual/pdf/table26.pdf

This is what happens to the State and the economy when you outsource your electric production and make super tight regulations . . . broke Cities, Counties and even the State governments.
http://capoliticalnews.com/2012/08/12/grimes-calif-regs-killing-lumber-manufacturers-and-jobs/

@Keith.: “Freeze A Yankee” was by the Folkel Minority. What a blast from the past.

Offhand, I’d say those 20 states (40% of 50) generating 62% of the electricity contain far less than 62% of the population.
It’s easy to reduce your emissions if you just move your power stations and factories out of state.

Just a couple a clarifications:
Many power stations in the west burn low sulfur coal from Wyoming’s Powder River Basin or local lignite (like in Texas), also low sulfur. That reduces the amounts of acids released in comparison to higher sulfur coals in the east.
Many of the differences in emissions are being averaged out as older coal stations are being shutdown and replaced with natural gas. 2011 had a very large switch over from coal to gas, so all of the “toxic” emissions will be lower in the US in the next report.
And since people are aquainted with statistic here, think about it: You can never win. There will always be a “toxic twenty” to bash industry over the head no matter how much it is reduced by controls. The NRDC will not even be satisfied with zero, they always need a mission to exist.

A dirty little secret that the enviro-lefties and their media lackeys don’t want us to know about is that air quality has been steadily improving for decades in the US. This means that we don’t have to gut our economy to “save the planet”. Even the EPA’s graphs say so:
http://www.epa.gov/airtrends/index.html

David, I accept that the top electricity produces are also high in producing pollution, but what I was commenting on was the attempted correlation. If you don’t look at just the lists, but where states appear on the lists, the lists do not strongly correlate. Only Pennsylvania matches. Texas, the top electricity producing state, is way down on the list of pollution producers. In other words, it produces it’s electricity in a low pollution-efficient way. Kentucky, on the other hand, is in the reverse position.
Duncan’s list, showing pollution per mega-Watt, is a much, much better approach to take. And, as expected from the original data, Kentucky tops the list.with a rate that is roughly double the next state on the list.
So I stick by my statement – the lists do not share a strong correlation. If they did, Texas should have been one of the top states for pollution, not way down at tenth place. Out of the top eight electricity producing states, only one is in the top eight pollution producers (not a strong correlation there). It’s only when you include the ninth, tenth and eleventh from both lists do you increase the correlation from one out of eight to four out of eleven – still not a great correlation.
The information is useful to compare, because you’re right that electricity production does mean producing pollution, but the information you’ve provided shows that most of the top electricity generating states produce their electricity in an efficient manner, and that most of the pollution being produced is NOT by those top electricity generating states (apart from Pennsylvania).

“Michael Kelley says:
August 13, 2012 at 10:59 am ”
The other secret is that the Clean Air Act was completely unncessary…because pollution levels were coming down on their own due to local ordinances and other forms of local regulation. There was never a reason to centralize the pollution controls because in the end people dis-like pollution and it effects locals more then anyone else.
But you are correct, pollution levels have been decreasing but they have been doing so for the last 100 years.

benfrommo, that makes a lot of sense. The linked report in turn links to a NRDC report which claims to use the publicly available figures given to the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory (TRI).
My next question was then what constituted a toxic chemical, because I wondered if they included CO2 in that list. However, while I’m not absolutely sure, I couldn’t find it when I did a search on the TRI so I presume not.
So all this report is doing is confirming that coal powered electric generation produces significantly more pollution than the alternatives such as natural gas or nuclear. I’m a little surprised at how much more, but then I’ve never looked into the details that closely, so I suspect it’s not a surprise for anyone working in the industry.

NP on the reports, as for what I was really trying to show was how generalized and how third grade level this analysis was, and in turn I guess they based their findings on what the EPA does…which is the same level. Some have likened it to propaganda which I would tend to agree with.
Basically, all they do is say “pollution of this type is THIS bad” and then monkey with weights on different “exhaust” types to give the results they desire. You could create a chart of “20 worst states” based on any weight you wanted to, and they indeed do based on what I thought they would…..They hate coal most, and NG they dislike, but say its “tolerable” because of knee jerk reactions. No actual science used, so in effect yes the toxic 20 is just some “who’s who list of who produces the most coal fired electricity”. And the more you use nuke or hydro or renewables, the better, but the rest has to be NG because very few new nukes are going up and electricity usage will only increase unless our economy indeed goes down the toilet because in the end the two variables economic expansion and energy usage have always been directly related to one another.