James Bruggers, jbruggers@courier-journal.com 7:14 p.m. EDT September 30, 2014
Power plants top Kentucky’s biggest sources of climate pollution, according to just-released data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
There’s no surprise there.
But a prominent chemical plant in Louisville’s Rubbertown area — Dupont Louisville Works — is in the top ten biggest climate polluters in Kentucky for its emissions of hydrofluorocarbons, which the EPA say are actually more potent than carbon dioxide when it comes to heating up the atmosphere.
The EPA released its fourth year of Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program data, detailing greenhouse gas pollution trends and emissions broken down by industrial sector, geographic region and individual facilities. In 2013, reported emissions from large industrial facilities nationwide were 20 million metric tons higher than the prior year, or 0.6 percent, driven largely by an increase in coal use for power generation, the agency said.
That figure intrigued me because conventional wisdom is that we’ve been burning more natural gas (which has less impact on the climate) and less coal.
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There is a lot of data to look at, and this is just my first crack at it. I started by doing a quick search of top emitters in Kentucky and Indiana, then top emitters in Louisville Metro, or Jefferson County.
Kentucky Utility’s Ghent plant topped all of Kentucky’s largest industrial sources of a several greenhouse gases, with 12.8 million metric tons released in 2013, the most current year for which the data is available. That’s up 12 percent from the year before. LG&E’s Mill Creek plant in Louisville ranked third, with 7.9 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions, a 20 percent decrease since 2010, according to the data.
But Dupont, the long-time Rubbertown chemical plant, ranked 7th, emitting 4,1 million tons, nearly all of that hydrofluorocarbons. That number was down from about 6 million pounds in 2011.
So what are hydrofluorocarbons and what impact do they have on the climate?
From the EPA:
Unlike many other greenhouse gases, fluorinated gases have no natural sources and only come from human-related activities. They are emitted through a variety of industrial processes such as aluminum and semiconductor manufacturing. Many fluorinated gases have very high global warming potentials (GWPs) relative to other greenhouse gases, so small atmospheric concentrations can have large effects on global temperatures.
HCFCs can have a global warming potential of between 140 to 11,700 times that of carbon dioxide, EPA says. The larger the global warming potential, the more warming the gas causes, according to EPA. The agency explains it this way: “For example, methane’s 100-year GWP is 21, which means that methane will cause 21 times as much warming as an equivalent mass of carbon dioxide over a 100-year time period.”
Statewide rankings for Kentucky:
1) Ghent power plant, 12.8 million metric tons.
2) Paradise power plant, 12.1.
3) Mill Creek power plant, 7.9.
4) H.L. Spurlock power plant, 7.8.
5) Trimble County power plant, 7.3.
6) Shawnee power plant, 7.2.
7) Dupont Louisville Works chemical plant, 4.1.
8) R.D. Green power plant, 3.6.
9) East Bend power plant, 3.5.
10) Coleman power plant, 3.3.
Two southern Indiana power plants ranked among the top ten greenhouse gas emitters in Indiana:
1) Gibson power plant, 16 million metric tons.
10) Clifty power plant, 5.8 million metric tons.
I am living in Kentucky as poor as dirt...but it is still better than any place else, so welcome to KENTUCKY! 