Description: Eagle Valley, a coal-fired power plant, exemplifies why grandfathering highly polluting power plants was the Clean Air Act’s tragic flaw, delaying natural gas
This is the Eagle Valley power plant in Martinsville, Indiana. Its four coal-fired generators were built in the 1950s.
Back then, the generators had an expected useful life of about 30 years.
No major source of electricity pollutes more than an old coal plant. Compared to a state-of-the-art natural gas plant, the average coal plant emits over 100 times more sulfur dioxide, five times as many nitrogen oxides, and twice as much carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour. Meanwhile, renewable sources of energy, like wind turbines and solar panels, emit no pollution at all.