The recent disclosure that two coal-fired power plants in Massachusetts are responsible for an estimated 43,000 asthma attacks and 159 premature deaths per year points up the need for new, improved electricity generation technologies like wind power, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) said today.

        "Air pollution kills more Americans every year than auto accidents," said Randall Swisher, AWEA executive director.  "Wind energy can't put a stop to this all by itself, but as a clean energy source that emits no pollutants into the air, it is certainly part of the solution.

        "Air pollution preys quietly and invisibly on two of the weakest segments of our society--children and senior citizens with respiratory ailments—and electric power plants are a major contributor to the problem.  We need to act now to begin replacing coal-fired electricity with wind energy wherever possible."

        The Massachusetts study was released May 4 by the Harvard School of Public Health.  It looked at emissions from the Brayton Point power plant in Somerset, Mass., and another plant in Salem, Mass.  The study found that as many as 32 million people in New England, New York, and New Jersey could be affected by the plants' emissions.  Less than a week later, the operators of the plants and four other coal-fired power plants in Massachusetts announced an agreement with the state under which their emissions will be reduced by 50% by 2003.

        The two power plants are older ones that were built before 1970.  The federal Clean Air Act has a "grandfathering" loophole that allows such facilities to operate without meeting the emissions standards that newer plants are required to meet.  Environmental groups have complained for years that the loophole makes it cheaper for utilities to operate older, dirtier plants than to replace them with new ones.

        "The Harvard study puts the choice in stark terms," Swisher said.  "We can continue to save a dollar or two per month on our utility bills, or we can start cleaning up the electric generation system and save peoples' lives. If you add in the savings in health costs that would result, we'd probably wind up saving money too."

        Massachusetts, he noted, has the potential to generate as much as 25 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year--an amount equal to approximately half its total electricity use--from wind energy, according to a 1991 federal wind resource study.  "Although that amount will be reduced substantially by siting and transmission constraints, it is clear that wind can be a significant new clean source of electric power for the state."

        Coal-fired power plants, many of them aging, generate more than half of America's electricity, Swisher said.  Based on the average U.S. utility fuel mix, a single wind turbine generating enough electricity to serve 175 average homes displaces the emission of 12 tons of noxious air pollutants each year.

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