All sources of information for this fact sheet can be found online here.  This information originally posted at the Environmental Research Federation’s site

Background

In March 2009, a small Massachusetts company announced plans to build
a large, experimental coal power plant in Linden, N.J. (Union County),
called PurGen One. The experimental 750-megaWatt plant will capture
and bury a trillion pounds (500 million tons) of carbon dioxide (CO2)
beneath the Atlantic ocean. No one has ever done anything like this
before.
In concentrated form, carbon dioxide is an odorless, tasteless
and invisible gas, heavier than air. In concentrated form, it can kill
everything in its path by asphyxiation — plants, animals, and humans.

The company has hired Bradley Campbell, former commissioner of the
N.J. Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), to secure the
necessary permits and Mr. Campbell has been holding private meetings
with his former high-level staff at DEP. The company now says its
experiment has the support of the DEP at the highest levels.

The coal plant will use modern IGCC (integrated gasification combined
cycle) technology to turn coal into a gas, then burn the gas to make
electricity. Each year the plant will process 1.3 million tons of
bituminous coal mined in southwestern Pennsylvania.

Making Bad Air Pollution Worse

Unfortunately, air pollution is already serious in Union County, N.J.
and surrounding counties, and in Staten Island, N.Y. The region
currently violates federal and state health standards for air
pollution. New Jersey state government estimates that soot in the air
is presently killing 1900 people each year in New Jersey. Furthermore,
soot is just one among dozens of air contaminants that exceed safe
levels in Union County and its neighboring counties.

The federal government recently calculated that the cancer risk from
187 toxic chemicals in the air of Union County is 41% above the
national average. Union, Middlesex, Hudson and Essex counties all rank
among the worst 100 counties in the U.S. for cancer risk from air
toxics.

Based on a similar modern IGCC coal plant being built in Indiana, we
can estimate that Purgen One will add 7.5 million pounds (3,775 tons)
of air pollution to Union County each year, including 69.5 tons of
volatile organic compounds (VOCs), 1,918 tons of nitrogen oxides, 44.5
tons of sulfuric acid mist and 354.5 tons of soot (fine and ultrafine
particles).

Environmental Justice

Union County, N.J. is 22.7 percent Black (56% higher than the
statewide average of 14.5%) and 25.1% Hispanic (which is 57% higher
than the statewide average of 15.9%).

So a population that is disproportionately people of color, living in
an area that already fails to meet state and federal health standards
for air pollution, will be subjected to an additional 7.5 million
pounds of dangerous air pollution each year.

New Jersey State government in 2004 officially designated Linden as an
“environmental justice” community because of pollution. Now PurGen One
wants to pile on new injustices.

This is an blatant case of environmental injustice.

An Experiment to Bury Carbon Dioxide Beneath the Atlantic Ocean

In the U.S., coal produces 12% of the nation’s energy, but 20% of the
nation’s carbon dioxide (CO2), the main global warming gas. To reduce
its “carbon footprint,” the Purgen One plant will capture its own CO2
(plus CO2 from other nearby emitters), compress it into a liquid, pipe
it 70 miles offshore, and pump it a mile or so below the bottom of the
Atlantic ocean, hoping it will stay there forever. This is a giant
experiment. It has never been done before on anything like this scale.

The coal industry is getting desperate. Coal plants are being canceled
left and right because of coal’s outsized contribution to global
warming, so the coal industry’s answer is “clean coal,” which means
burying CO2 in the deep earth, hoping it will stay there forever.

Burying Carbon is a Fateful and Irreversible Decision

CO2 buried beneath the ocean will not be retrievable even if something
goes wrong. Once it’s down there, it’s beyond human control.
Scientists employed by the coal industry tell us they are certain that
buried CO2 will never leak back out. But what if we learn in 50 years
that they were mistaken? Are these scientists infallible?

Carbon Burial Just Passes Our Problem on to Our Grandchildren

We have a carbon dioxide problem. The obvious solution is money-saving
conservation and energy efficiency, plus weaning ourselves from fossil
fuels by moving rapidly to renewable sources of energy.

The plan to bury carbon dioxide beneath the ocean just passes our
problem on to our children, and to their children, to monitor and
worry about and pay for. This is unjust and immoral.

In Concentrated Form, CO2 is a Deadly Gas

CO2 is the fizzy in soft drinks and beer, so we don’t think of it as
dangerous. But in concentrated form, CO2 is a deadly gas. CO2 is
colorless, odorless, tasteless and heavier than air. If it escapes, it
can create a silent puddle of gas that spreads, excluding oxygen and
killing everything in its path, including plants, animals, and people.
In one incident, 1746 people were suffocated in their sleep when
carbon dioxide bubbled up from the bottom of a lake. CO2 is a well-
known killer in coal mines and even workers at McDonald’s restaurants
have been killed by concentrated CO2.

Can 500 million tons of CO2 be handled without incident in a densely
populated location like Union County, so close to Elizabeth City,
Middlesex, Hudson, and Essex counties and Staten Island? And how will
this enormous CO2-processing operation affect property values within a
10-mile radius?

The Plant Will Be Highly Automated, Creating Few Jobs

The Purgen One plant will employ 50 workers, 3 shifts per day, for a
total of 150 jobs.

Handling CO2 Can Be Extremely Noisy

According to the federal government, when CO2 is compressed into a
liquid, it must be stored at 70 degrees below zero. When it is
transferred from storage into the pumps that will transport it to the
burial site, it creates a noise described as “a roar.” Workers at such
sites have to wear hearing protection. Can this huge CO2-processing
facility really be a good neighbor?

A Wildlife Refuge Lies Just Downwind from the Coal Plant

Just yards from the coal plant, in the middle of the Arthur Kill
waterway, lies an uninhabited 74-acre island, Pralls island, which is
an officially-designated wildlife refuge, part of the Harbor Herons
Preserve. A 1995 survey showed that the Harbor Herons area supported
57% of the New York state’s cattle egrets (Bubulcus ibis), 21% of the
state’s great egrets (Ardea albus), 28% of the state’s snowy egrets
(Egretta thula), 57% of the state’s black-crowned night herons, and
35% of the state’s glossy Ibis (Plegadis falcinellus).

PurGen One’s Flare

PurGen One will turn coal into “Syngas,” which will be burned inside a
chamber. However, when something goes wrong and the gas doesn’t meet
specifications, it will be “flared” — meaning burned in the open air
– creating a gigantic flame. Duke Energy has described flaring at its
IGCC plant being built now in Indiana:

“The flare is a way of burning off the gas produced by the coal
gasification process when the operation of the generating equipment is
interrupted or if the gas is out of specification. The size and scale
of this flare is very large. At times, when it is necessary to burn
the flare, large quantities of light and heat will be created.
Although the light may be very bright, especially at night, facility
managers will do everything they can to prepare the community for
these occasional events.”

If We Spend Our Money On Coal, We Can’t Have Renewable Energy

A coal plant with CO2 capture and burial will be very expensive, and
every dollar spent burying CO2 in the deep earth is a dollar that
cannot be spent developing renewable sources of energy (geothermal
power, solar panels, and wind turbines).

Its owners say Purgen One will cost as much as $5 billion to build. As
we’ve seen, the plant will bury 500 million tons of CO2. One of PurGen
One’s paid consultants (Harvard professor Daniel Schrag) says we may
need to bury 2 trillion tons of CO2 this century. That would require
4000 projects the size of PurGen One, at a cost of $20 trillion.
That’s a lot of money — half again as large as U.S. gross domestic
product (GDP) for a year. To get $20 trillion into perspective: the
entire Wall Street bailout has, so far, amounted to about $2 trillion.

Even if we spend the $20 trillion, sooner or later the price of coal
will rise beyond reach. At that point, we’ll have no choice but to
develop renewable sources of energy. So let’s use the $20 trillion to
buy some real innovation NOW, to create thousands of good jobs and
build a modern energy infrastructure for our children. Let’s skip the
expensive. experimental carbon-burial phase, go straight for renewable
energy now, and rebuild America as an industrial leader.

Renewable Energy is Real and Available Today

Renewable sources of energy now produce more than 11% of all U.S.
electricity. (Coal produces 50%.) In N.J., PSE&G is building a 350
megaWatt wind power plant 17 miles off the Jersey coast; and PSE&G has
an aggressive program to help people cover their roofs with solar
panels, to save money and prevent further global warming. Lastly, N.J.
state government has a major program to help people insulate their
homes and find other ways to conserve energy and save money.
Conservation and renewables are growing rapidly — creating jobs –
while coal is dying.

Coal is a Dirty, Toxic Industry

Over its 50-year lifetime, the PurGen One plant will process 65
million tons of coal. Toxic chemicals in the coal will be released
into the environment as solid wastes. These will include 544 tons of
arsenic, 10 tons of cadmium, 7.6 tons of mercury, 1,135 tons of
nickel, 263 tons of radioactive thorium, 2,012 tons of chromium, and
725 tons of toxic lead. Because of PurGen One, these toxicants will be
mined from the deep earth and eventually distributed into the
environment that we (and other creatures) inhabit. Maybe 100 years ago
no one would have given this a second thought — but today we know
better. Toxics chemicals released into the environment will eventually
get into the food chain.

The answer to global warming starts with “No more new coal plants.”

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This fact sheet is available online at http://tinyurl.com/mac485. All
sources of information for this fact sheet can be found online at

http://tinyurl.com/lmgqfv.