Protests Over Dynegy Coal Power Plans

Wedenesday, May 14, 2008

Unhappy about the company's plan to build six new coal-fired power plants, protesters demonstrated outside Dynegy's annual shareholder meeting here in Houston yesterday. As Jack Williams reports, a coalition of environmental groups wants the company to reconsider coal.

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Protesters paced the sidewalk in front of the Westin Galleria. They held signs denouncing Dynegy's plans to move ahead with coal-fired power plants in four states, including Texas. Alfred Molison took his lunch break to join the protest.

"This coal is extremely dirty. It's dangerous. It's going to spread a whole bunch of pollutants like mercury into our water system, into our food system and it's just bad for all of us. We can get the energy that we need through conservation and solar and wind."

Dynegy shareholder Robert Grush from Oregon agrees with the right to protest, but disagrees with the argument that coal-fired power plants should be built only as a last resort.

"They want to bring up efficiency, but they don't understand there's a difference between peaking power, intermediate power and base power. If you want to replace coal and nuclear, you need to come up with a solution for base power. That's what you use here during the day. If you can't come up with a replacement for that using solar, wind or any other alternative, then you have to have to have coal and nuclear and natural gas."

Dynegy is hoping to build coal-fired plants in Georgia, Arkansas, Illinois and Texas.

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