Recently, I was asked to sign a petition by what I gathered was a member of the campus organization ActivUS to increase renewable power on campus. I also recall reading a letter a few weeks ago in the Daily: “Coal Presents Hazard to Humans, Environment” – Tyler Rygg). Upon reading the petition, I found that both of these documents stressed the environmental dangers of burning coal. While I agree with the general concept that coal-fired power plants are both unsustainable and harm the environment, I definitely think that ActivUS members need to research the issue more and provide better alternatives.

Another major problem I have with the group’s publications are the several factual errors or omissions that appear. The petition stated that 40 percent of carbon emissions come from coal. In fact, a recent lecture I attended detailing a study by professor Ross Morrow in the department of mechanical engineering estimated that slightly less than 35 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2008 came from all electric power generation. This makes the group’s claim of 40 percent misleading, and I would be curious to know the source of this.

Also, Rygg’s letter states that “the resulting toxic fly ash is dumped into an unlined quarry in Waterloo.” Again, this statement is very misleading. The fly ash from the Ames power plant is technically toxic and is placed in a special landfill; however, this is only because the Ames power plant co-fires with garbage — an environmental effort to eliminate trash in landfills and reduce emissions. The ISU power plant’s fly ash is used for several important purposes: making concrete, drying soil for construction and manufacturing compost. Again, I urge people to get their facts straight and understand the complex issues involved.

My biggest problem with ActivUS is that they provide no feasible alternatives. When I asked the lady with the petition what the university would use instead of coal power, she replied with “wind and corn and stuff.” Wind energy does offer a great source of power with negligible emissions, which is why the university is already requesting around five megawatts of energy from a proposed windfarm near Ames. However, there are several reasons, including an obvious one, why wind energy alone cannot support the campus.

The obvious reason is that the wind is inherently unpredictable; it is not always blowing and not always at the right times. Given that there are few currently feasible means of storing this energy, this makes wind energy unsuitable for a baseload energy source. When the petition-holder mentioned corn as energy, I assumed she meant a biomass-fueled power plant. While this sounds like a good idea, even adding small amounts of biomass to coal requires drastically different setups of the boiler, superheaters, turbines, and other power plant components. Essentially, it would require a whole new power plant. Even then, the plant would still produce power through combustion and thus would still produce carbon and other pollutants.

Another issue overlooked by ActivUS is the university power plant’s use of cogeneration, which means that the power plant produces steam and chilled water used to heat and cool the buildings on campus. This allows the power plant to run at around 55 percent maximum thermal efficiency, which is much higher than most coal plants because it utilizes the waste heat. ActivUS needs to research alternatives methods of heating and cooling university buildings if it wants to be taken seriously about eliminating coal from campus, and such alternatives do exist.

Given that reducing carbon emissions is definitely an important issue from both the ethical obligation standpoint that ActivUS takes and from the standpoint of a powerplant facing impending legal limits on emissions, ActivUS should focus on more attainable goals. For instance, reducing consumption on campus or increasing plant efficiency even fractions of a percent make a huge difference in amount of coal consumed — look up the statistics and do the math; it really is staggering.

ActivUS could learn about the proposed changes to the power plant — either pollution controls or new natural gas fired boilers — and voice their opinion on these. They could also analyze the various pollution control devices and discuss these with employees at the power plant. Finally, they could focus on reducing carbon emissions associated with the transportation sector as well — encourage CyRide, hybrids, electric vehicles, bicycling, car-pooling, etc. — as this sector produces just less than 30 percent of U.S. greenhouse gases. All of these approaches would see tangible effects almost immediately, especially decreasing consumption of power, which is a social issue that ActivUS probably has a better understanding of than the technical problems. These feasible approaches would also prove much more reasonable to university policymakers, and thus actually stand a chance of being effective as opposed to idealistic rhetoric.

My challenge to ActivUS is to simply do your homework. When someone asks you the alternatives to coal power, don’t answer with, “Um corn and, um, stuff” because it makes the entire green movement look bad. Do your research and don’t forget to include those of us with more technical backgrounds, as this is a complex social, economic and technical issue.

Dan Janvrin is a senior in mechanical engineering.