Georgia cities green with envy as Piedmont Green Power and Greenco ...

Walter,

Shame on you!!!!

The statement the power plant "will create clean, sustainable energy without carbon dioxide emissions, a greenhouse gas, believed to contribute to climate change." is an outright lie. It is totally false, and any research at all would show it to be false.

Wood has carbon. It is a carbon fuel in the sense that the heat produced all comes from combining carbon with oxygen. The carbond dioxide produced by that plant will be identical to the carbon dioxide produced if it burned coal, oil, or any other cabon fuel.

As a matter of fact because our government wants to encourage such plants to reduce use of other fuels, they relax the emissions restrictions on such plants. This plant will be allowed to emit anything under 250 tons of carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxygen compounds a year along with all the cabon dioxide.

If it was a coal or oil plant, they would be restricted to under 100 tons for the same license class.

I know you are (or were) on the IDA Walter, but shame on you for misleading the people in Lamar county. The statement in the article that the proposed plant will not emit carbon dioxide as part of the process is a bald-faced lie. It will emit, within a very small percentage, as much carbon dioxide as a coal plant producing the same energy output would. It will emit MORE toxic carbon monoxide and more harmful nitrogen-oxygen compounds than a coal palnt would for the same minor license class.

That is an undisputable fact. The statement " It will create clean, sustainable energy without carbon dioxide emissions, a greenhouse gas, believed to contribute to climate change" is a lie.

Shame on you, Kenny Roberts, the Mayor, Gene Hardwick, Missy and her $100K paycheck, and all the other IDA members for bringing something like this into Lamar county!

Tom Rauch

Andrew,

You might be the best-intentioned "greenie" in the whole world, but intent alone does not make up for a total lack of research into facts. Getting caught up in the green-hysteria is pretty easy; we all want a better world. We have to be careful however to not repeat “green lies” that are told to sell certain agendas.

The supposition of the government and those using government funds is that all that wood laying around rotting would produce the same net weight of carbon dioxide as it would release if burned for fuel. That actually is correct, except the high temperatures of combustion form nitrogen-oxygen compounds and carbon-oxygen compounds in quantities not produced by slow natural decay over years.

It is an irrefutable fact that the net tons of carbon dioxide produced by any fossil fuel plant is the same as that produced by wood because they all combine carbon and oxygen to produce heat. The chemical reaction is identical.

What has misled you (and others) is the fact that to the world releasing the CO2 from wood would be no worse than letting it rot, toxic and health hazards like CO and N-Ox compounds excluded if we look at it over many years. This is because the wood, as it grows, uses CO and breaks it down into carbon and oxygen. So if we grow enough new wood to replace the wood we burned it will, through photosynthesis, capture energy from the sun and lock it in the plant as carbon while releasing oxygen.

To the perspective of Lamar County, it is entirely different. What we have done with this power plant is brought all those miles and miles of space and years and years of time to one concentrated place in space and time. We have created a point source of local pollution where the decay that normally would have taken place of many years and many hundreds of square miles will be concentrated. The sad fact is the CO2 output of that plant, as well as the noxious N-Ox and deadly CO output of that plant is the same as thousands of motor vehicles all running at one location would produce.

My facts are indeed accurate undeniable truths. It is simple basic Physics, not something we can change. The rules are also documented rules. In order to encourage plants like this the Government has relaxed the restriction on CO, and on N-Ox compounds. If you take the time to call the proper people in the EPD, you will learn what I say is exactly true and factual. For a minor pollution license, the wood plant is allowed to release up to 250 tons of poisonous carbon dioxide and 250 tons of harmful nitrogen-oxygen compounds per year.

If the same plant burned coal or oil, and if it had the same power output and same minor pollution license, it would only be allowed 100 tons of carbon monoxide and 100 tons of nitrogen-oxygen compounds per year.

If you took the time to look up operating statistics on plants like this, instead of getting sucked deep into the green hyperbole, you would have found that indeed plants like this run close to the emissions limits, and that those limits are actually relaxed from the limits that would be set from fossil fuel plants.

Your statement that there are “no carbon diode emissions” is an outright lie. If you read this link

http://www.barnesvillega.net/price_of_jobs.htm

you will see what communities actually pay for plants like this. It is shameful that the people we depend on for facts and truth and good decisions did something like this to our community.

Tom Rauch

Andrew,

I prefer facts and science and truth over any type of oblivion, be it green for the color of money or green for the color of plants.

Let's do all we can to bring good industry that creates jobs and pays taxes into our community, not things that in only a handful of jobs along with the pollution of 17,290 cars driving 9 miles round trip per day....seven days a week.

If the IDA won't take the time to research what they bring us, at least we can work together to keep them on course and not buy into the big tall tales they spin.

Tom Rauch

Thanks Andrew.

I don't begrudge anyone for making money or gaining fame so long as the taxpayers are not getting stiffed in the process.

The primary goal of a politician or political appointee is to stay in office. That runs contrary to telling the whole story.

Tom