Oceanic carbon interment plan draws local objections

October 24 has been announced by the climate change web site 350.com as a “climate action day,” encouraging people to act locally to stop global warming. Some local environmental activists have already begun their climate action with a canvassing campaign in nearby Linden, where opposition is growing to a planned 750-megawatt power plant.

The facility, known as “PurGen One,” would use two techniques of so-called “clean coal” power generation. It is intended to be the world’s largest, and first combination, plant using integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) and carbon capture & sequestration (CCS). Massachusetts-based energy company SCS plans for PurGen One to capture and compress a trillion pounds a year of waste carbon dioxide gas (CO2) generated by its coal-fired plant and others in the region. The waste will be sent via a 100-mile pipeline below the Arthur Kill, 70 miles out into the ocean, and 1-1/2 miles beneath the seabed.

The newly formed COALition to Stop PurGen counters that clean coal is an oxymoron. Not only is the process of coal mining, especially mountaintop removal mining, dirty and dangerous. But this plant’s operations will also add 11.3 million pounds of air pollution to New Jersey annually, contributing to high asthma rates in Linden and high cancer rates in the area.

Speaking for SCS at a recent Linden City Council meeting, Brad Campbell stated that the plant would be providing “clean energy and green jobs… but not additional traffic,” which is a concern in a town with high asthma rates.

Michael Puzio, a life-long resident of Linden’s Trembly Point section and founder of the Linden Society for Sustainable Development, calls the plant “risky business.” Since the state has already identified Linden is an “environmental justice community” because of high rates of asthma – an area in need of environmental remediation -- Puzio asks, “How will adding such a risky venture alleviate those things that have harmed us in the past and still put us in harm’s way?”

According to Environment NJ, pollutants from the plant include volatile organic compounds, nitrogen oxides (smog/ozone), sulfuric acid mist, and soot. The air in Middlesex County, along with Union, Hudson, and Essex counties, already fails to meet minimum federal health standards.

The COALition questions the safety of the plant itself, citing its experimental nature. The only other CCS project in the world, the Sleipner plant in Norway, is one-fifth the size of the planned PurGen One, and is reportedly experiencing CO2 waste leakage from its seabed storage at 25 times the rate that was predicted. The Sleipner plant was built in 1996 and stores waste in a geologic layer beneath the North Sea.

Other questions focus on the expense of the plant, which will reportedly cost $5 billion, with $200 million a year coming from taxpayers. Activists point to a 2004 study by Rutgers’ Center for Energy, Economic and Environmental Policy, which found that efficiency alone could eliminate the need for almost 4200 megawatts of new power plants by 2020, rendering PurGen One’s 750 megawatts unnecessary.

Opposition to the plant is based in the community that sits in the crosshairs of the project, but includes people from throughout New Jersey and encompasses just about every environmental group in the state, as well as groups like People’s Organization for Progress, Central Jersey. Gubernatorial candidates Republican Chris Christie, Socialist Greg Pason, and Independent Chris Daggett all oppose PurGen One.