Three thousand miles away, Californians can look with pity at the recent tragedy at Massey Energy Co.'s Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia. The disaster there stands as the most recent reminder of the risks associated with harvesting the country's abundant coal deposits.
Flickr photo by DSearlsIntermountain Power, Utah, where Los Angeles gets its coal-fired electricity.
But California is not a mere bystander when it comes to consuming coal from the dangerous mines in West Virginia and elsewhere.
The California Energy Commission's Database of California Power Plants lists 13 facilities in the state that use coal for fuel. The biggest is the Argus Cogeneration coal-fired power plant in San Bernadino County, which can generate 180 megawatts of electricity according to the state data. Compared to the Four Corners Power Plant in New Mexico, which generates 2,040 megawatts, that's not very big.
However, California has ties to massive coal-fired plants located near the large coal deposits of the mountain states. Southern California Edison owns a stake in the Four Corners Power Plant, and "the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) operates the coal-fired Intermountain power plant in Utah, which delivers almost all of its output to LADWP and other California municipal utilities," according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
"Due to high electricity demand, California imports more electricity than any other State," says the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The coal-fired plants of the American Southwest and hydroelectric plants of the Pacific Northwest are what's primarily available for import.
Efforts are underway to design cleaner coal power plants and one is currently being developed in Kern county.
California also has strict emissions laws that have created an environment where "only a few small coal-fired power plants operate" inside the state, says the Energy Information Administration.
Known as the "Schwarzenegger clause," the strict emissions standards were "enacted in 2006 and rightly hailed at that time as a huge step forward," but ultimately failed to limit greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently for the long term according to an article on the environmental news and commentary site Grist.org.
Due to its relatively low cost and abundance, coal is used to generate about half of the electricity consumed in the United States. Coal is the largest domestically-produced source of energy. Coal use, however, results in higher amounts of carbon dioxide per unit of energy than the use of oil or natural gas.
But coal isn't abundant inside California's borders.
"While there are small, scattered deposits in 43 counties, only 12 counties have had mining," said a report by the California Department of Conservation. "Only five areas saw any extended mining: Alberhill in Riverside County, Ione in Amador, Stone Canyon in Monterey, Corral Hollow in Alameda, and the Mount Diablo District in Contra Costa."
Most of the coal extracted from California lands came out of mines in Contra Costa county, and "the coal mining period really only lasted a little more than two decades on a large scale, largely between 1887 and 1907," according to the report.
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