By using the best available technology, power plants can reduce the harmful impact of its emissions by over 90% and keep the lights on. Examples of best available technology include:

Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC): IGCC produces far less waste sludge and ash than traditional pulverized coal, and small percentages of the nitrogen oxide emissions and sulfur dioxide emissions (NOx and SOx) that pulverized coal plants emits. Without carbon capture technology, IGCC provides a modest carbon reduction, with it the reduction is close to 80% over traditional pulverized coal plants. Mercury emission is dramatically lower in IGCC production, and water quality will improve as a result of its adoption.

IGCC is the best available control technology for the burning of coal to produce energy, and the Ohio EPA and the Federal EPA should recognize this glaring fact, and demand that all new coal burning power plants employ IGCC technology.

Fabric Filters (bag houses): Dry particulates are trapped on filters made of cloth, paper or similar materials. Particles are shaken or blown from the filters down into a collection hopper. Baghouses are used to control air pollutants from steel mills, foundries, and other industrial furnaces and can collect more than 98 percent of the particulates.

Electrostatic Precipitators: By use of static electricity, they attract particles in much the same way that static electricity in clothing picks up small bits of dust and lint. Electrostatic precipitators, 98 to 99 percent effective, are used instead of baghouses when the particles are suspended in very hot gases, such as in emissions from power plants, steel and paper mills, smelters, and cement plants.

Sulfur Dioxide Scrubbers: Lime is injected into the flu gas flow (smoke from the burned coal). The sulfur is attracted to the lime and sticks to the lime. The lime is then removed by an electrical charge.

• Ohio ranks #1 for soot- and acid rain-causing sulfur dioxide*
• Ohio ranks #2 for the global warming gas carbon dioxide*
• Ohio ranks #1 for smog-causing nitrogen oxide*
• Ohio ranks #2 for power plant emissions of toxic mercury**
  
  *source: Pollution on the Rise (PDF)
  **source: Reel Danger (External Link)

In Ohio, the health effects of power plant pollution are a serious problem:

• 1,743 preventable deaths***
• 1,638 hospital admissions***
• 2,873 heart attacks***
  ***source: Dirty Air, Dirty Power (PDF)

However, there are technologies that can limit the amount of pollution coming from the stack. Currently there are several lawsuits against power plant companies to clean up their stacks and use best available technology.

The OEC, working to prepare recommendations to the Advanced Energy Standard Collaborative Group, has fully endorsed an Alternative Energy Standard for Ohio. alternative energy standards (AES) are legally binding statewide mandates for electric utilities, requiring them to produce or purchase a certain percentage of the power they sell in a state from clean renewable or alternative sources. These standards are powerful tools; they spurn technological development, green power business, competition among utilities and improvement in environmental conditions. Real progress, in the air, on the land, and in the water is the result of a well thought out and implemented RPS or AES system.

A good Ohio AES will promote job growth, help clean our air and water, and make Ohio a renewable production and technology leader.

American Electric Power has filed documents with the OEPA for the construction of a new 600MW IGCC coal plant in Meigs County, Ohio. The OEC commends AEP for embracing IGCC technology, which has great carbon capture potential and dramatically lessens mercury and sulfur emissions, and produces much less harmful waste products.

The future of coal energy production belongs to IGCC, and the OEC is squarely behind the technology because of the environmental benefits it can offer over traditional pulverized coal energy production.

Several studies have been made on the effects of power plant pollution on human health. For example, the OEC's Ohio Valley-Ozone Alley study examined the notion that these rural communities were unaffected by ozone pollution. the Ohio Valley’s air is clean of ozone-smog. Ohio Valley-Ozone Alley. (PDF)

The Death, Disease and Dirty Power (PDF) report by the Clean Air Task Force examines the effect of fine particulate matter from power plants on the respiratory system.

A study by the Hubbard Brook Research Foundation (PDF) disproves the myth that acid rain is no longer a problem any more with the passage of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. The Hubbard Brook Research Foundation explores this issue.

Out of Sight: Haze in our National Parks (PDF) depicts that throughout our national parks are places to be treasured and enjoyed, even these remote places are nor free from pollution.

Ohio’s power plants contribute to numerous illness and pollution. Read an overview of Ohio’s power plants in OEC’s report: Power Plant Pollution: Ohio’s Dirty Secret. (PDF)

Promoting Integrated Gasification and Combined Cycle power generation and Carbon Capture and Storage (PDF) is a report from the Clean Air Task Force and the OEC that outlines the advantages of IGCC energy production and the best steps in pursuit of its adoption.

The Wisconsin IGCC Report focuses on the strengths, weakness, and barriers to IGCC in the marketplace.