Baseload power must include risks to health

‘Rightly valuing’

Forrest J. Remick authored a recent commentary that emphasized the importance of coal and nuclearpowered electricity generation facilities to the reliability of the U.S. power supply and to the economy in general (July 6 Perspectives, “Keep Coal and Nuclear Power Online”). Few could argue with the need for reliable electricity.

Mr. Remick then questions the constancy of electricity powered by natural gas and renewables. This is a valid concern for wind and solar, much less so for natural gas. He also states that the Secretary of Energy Rick Perry is attempting to save financially imperiled coal and nuclear plants. Mr. Remick concludes that the Trump administration is correct to “ensure that our most important baseload sources of electricity are rightly valued.”

“Rightly valuing” coal and nuclear power generation, and for that matter natural gas and renewables, must not only include the benefit to consumers of electricity. Neither should it just include a premium for reliability. To “rightly value” electric power production must also encompass the social costs that such facilities impose on society.

Researchers in epidemiology, environmental engineering and economics have demonstrated that coal-fired facilities pose a threat to human health through emissions of soot, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and carbon dioxide. Using the approach the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency employs to evaluate the Clean Air Act and other air pollution rules suggests that coal-fired power plants in Pennsylvania and Ohio produced social costs of over 10 cents/kilowatt hour in 2016. In 2015, this figure was over 15 cents. Consider that in 2016, residential consumers paid an average of just under 14 cents per kwh.

Does Mr. Remick really want coal-fired baseload power to be “rightly valued”? NICHOLAS Z. MULLER Tepper School of Business Department of Engineering

and Public Policy Carnegie Mellon University

Oakland