I attended a conference Saturday December 4th in Annapolis about the potential of offshore wind power in Maryland. Chesapeake Climate Action Network put it together to show the huge benefits that it could have for this state.
Compared to wind energy, coal costs more per equal amounts of investment in power capacity. Constellation Energy says that it has invested $875 million to upgrade its Brandon Shores coal-fired power plant in northeast Anne Arundel County to meet Maryland's tough clean air laws by using new scrubbers. Constellation also said that this investment created 2,000 union jobs for three years. That works out to an average of $437,500 per job, or $145,833 per job per year. That seems very expensive compared to wind energy. By comparison, Constellation also has a $125 million investment to build a 28-turbine wind farm in Western Maryland to provide 70 Megawatts (MW) of power. This investment will create 110-120 jobs, with 4-6 annual operating and maintenance jobs upon completion. The Brandon Shores plant has a capacity of about 1,300 MW. To get about 1,300 MW of power from wind energy using this project as an example would require an investment of about $2.32 billion and create well over 2,200 jobs.
Would a coal plant would cost more than this? According to Synapse Energy, for one Ohio utility, the construction costs of a 960 MW coal-fired power plant in Ohio more than doubled from about $1.25 billion in October 2005 to almost $3 billion in January 2008. This was due to worldwide competition for raw materials and plant design construction, especially from China and India. (1)
Construction costs aside, one cannot forget the enormous environmental and health costs that coal wrecks on human beings. It pollutes both the water, requiring governments to spend tax dollars to clean it, and the air, driving up healthcare costs by causing asthma and many other ailments such as cancer. Local governments, especially at the state level, can and do pass laws requiring utilities to upgrade their equipment to protect the environment. They do so to make sure the corporate utility's power plants, especially coal-fired ones, comply with environmental goals desired by their commmunities.
Maryland has a choice: do we continue to destroy Appalachian Mountains to meet our energy needs or do we build offshore wind farms to power our lives? We should choose the latter because it will provide environmental benefits, improve the health of Marylanders, and create more good jobs, making it a win-win.
1. http://www.synapse-energy.com/Downloads/SynapsePaper.2008-07.0.Coal-Plant-Construction-Costs.A0021.pdf
2. http://www.buildingindianablog.com/2010/12/17/coal-gasification-project-to-generate-1000-construction-jobs/
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