This new facility, however, would burn natural gas.
The Long View on Coal Energy Secretary Perry recently toured North America’s youngest, most efficient coal-fired electricity plant, Longview Power near Fort Martin, West Virginia.
Longview officials say the plant produces 90 percent less particulate pollution than other coal plants.
It also produces less carbon dioxide compared to other coal plants, because of its high efficiency and partial use of natural gas as a complementary fuel.
“So now the natural efficiency of generating electricity with gas for the same amount of gas energy as coal energy is about half of the costs, basically,” he said.
“Directly behind me is the new Paradise combined-cycle facility,” he said.
Jones started at the Paradise coal facility a decade ago and worked his way from conveyer operator to unit operator and now a job at the new gas facility.
But what Prine couldn’t see then were some of the profound public health effects of burning coal, effects that would take years to measure.
The TVA has been burning coal in Paradise for fifty years.
“There are cleaner forms of coal, but none of them are as clean as, say, natural gas.” Goldstein said despite a lack of data to understand the full health effects of the natural gas industry, it is a significantly cleaner fossil fuel to burn.