EVEN THOUGH COAL-FIRED POWER PLANTS are already the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions in the Midwest, the region has become the center of the Bush administration's coal rush: Forty-nine new plants have been proposed. Since 2003, the Sierra Club's Midwest Clean Energy Campaign has advocated less-polluting renewable-energy alternatives and has legally challenged permit applications for each new plant, blocking projects in Illinois, Kentucky, and Michigan. In Kentucky and Illinois, several power-plant developers have elected to switch from dirty coal to the cleaner, gasified kind to minimize the Club's opposition to their proposed facilities. In Minnesota, the Club and its allies went up against energy giant Xcel and won the firm's commitment to retool two of its coal-fired plants to use natural gas and install pollution controls on a third.
