For 9th Straight Year, AL Power Plant Claims Crown As America's Carbon Dioxide Champion - No Shutdown Plans In Sight

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A coal-fired power plant in Alabama is again the nation’s top greenhouse gas emitter, according to new data released Tuesday by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. For the ninth consecutive year, Alabama Power’s James H. Miller Jr. Electric Generating Plant was the country’s largest single producer of greenhouse gas pollution in 2023, according to the EPA’s annual Greenhouse Gas Reporting program.

Plant Miller, as it’s known locally, released almost 16.6 million tons of greenhouse gas in 2023, the most of any single power plant, factory, refinery or other industrial facility in the country. That’s about 1.2 million tons more than the second-place emitter, Missouri’s Labadie Power Plant outside St. Louis, which emitted about 15.4 million tons.

Power plants were the country’s largest source of planet-warming gasses, with 1,320 plants releasing about 1.5 billion tons of CO2 equivalent, the EPA said in a news release Tuesday. And while utilities have announced plans to retire many large coal plants, Alabama Power has announced no plans to retire any of the four units at Plant Miller or convert them to natural gas, as it has at other facilities in the state. "The four units at Miller are among the largest and most efficient in the country,” an Alabama Power spokesperson told Inside Climate News last year.

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Alabama Power is a subsidiary of Southern Company, based in Atlanta, which also operates Georgia Power and Mississippi Power. And while Southern Company has announced a target of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050, clean energy advocates say that goal is not reflected in the planning decisions made by the subsidiary companies. “Alabama Power has no plans to close Plant Miller, which demonstrates the utility is not serious about its parent company’s goals to reach net zero emissions,” Tait said. “Instead, Alabama Power is engaged in what amounts to modern day climate denial or at best climate delay.” Plant Miller’s 2023 emissions were higher than the entire country of Costa Rica, according to the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research.

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16102024/alabama-coal-plant-top-greenhouse-gas-polluter-ninth-consecutive-year/

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