Coal is king in Wisconsin

From an article by Mike Ivey in The Capital Times:

You might not know from all the breathless stories about biomass, wind power or solar energy, but Wisconsin is burning coal like there is no tomorrow.

A new report from Clean Wisconsin notes that while coal use dropped 9.3 percent in the U.S. last year, it was rising in the land of Packer football and factory farming.

Wisconsin increased its consumption of coal for electric production by 1.1 percent between November 2008 and November 2009, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration's February 2010 "Electric Power Monthly."

The increase is directly attributable to Wisconsin's recent construction of three new coal plants which cost nearly $3 billion in construction costs alone, the group said.

"The $16 billion river of dirty fossil fuels flowing into our state is getting deeper," said Peter Taglia, staff scientist at Clean Wisconsin, the state's largest environmental advocacy organization. "Coal is the dirtiest source of power production, and, with no fossil fuel reserves of our own, we create significant environmental and economic harm to our state by relying on coal to meet our energy needs."

Taglia said the increase "highlights the need to maintain strong renewable energy standards and energy efficiency provisions in the Clean Energy Jobs Act."