Environmental Issues > Energy Main Page > All Energy Documents

Waste Projections by State

Back to the main overview »

Around the country, 70 new conventional coal-fired power plants have been proposed. If built, these plants would produce more than 15 million tons of coal waste per year, contaminated by over 15 thousand tons of toxic metals. Waste projections for new and proposed plants only include fly and bottom ash.

Some new and proposed plants convert coal into a gas before combustion, a process called gasification, which results in a significantly different solid waste than that from conventional coal plants, with a much lower environmental risk. Those plants are not included in the summaries that appear on this page.

We call the states that would see the most contaminated coal waste from new plants the "Terrible Twenty Five."

For a listing of projections by plant, click here. To download more data in Excel, including detailed plant-level information for both existing and proposed plants, click here.

Sources: Permit applications and news reports for new plants; Energy Information Administration data; NRDC estimates. The most recent data available from the EIA is from 2005 and it is possible that operational changes at particular plants will have changed the yearly waste volumes and disposal methods. Click here for detailed glossary of terms and our methodology.

last revised 3/12/2009