New Frontier » Coal http://blog.new-frontier.com Solutions for an Accelerating World Wed, 01 Sep 2010 20:38:21 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Put a Cap on Mercury http://blog.new-frontier.com/2009/10/26/put-a-cap-on-mercury/ http://blog.new-frontier.com/2009/10/26/put-a-cap-on-mercury/#comments Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:00:37 +0000 Nate http://blog.new-frontier.com/?p=271 There are a lot of unknowns regarding the Clearn Air Act, but it looks like a cap on mercury similar to those on sulfur and nitrogen is likely.

The Environmental Protection Agency, resolving a lawsuit aimed at cutting the flow of mercury and other toxic substances from coal- or oil-burning power plants, has agreed to develop standards by late 2011 for limiting such emissions.

John Walke of the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of a dozen groups involved in the litigation, said that as of last December, when the suit was filed, only 28 percent of the coal-burning power plants in the United States had basic scrubbers for such pollution, which he called “a two-decade-old technology.”

This week the National Academy of Sciences reported that the annual cost of health damage related to emissions from coal and oil burning totaled about $120 billion in the United States, with half of that coming from coal.

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