Kentucky's Top Polluters

James Bruggers at the Courier:

Power plants top Kentucky's biggest sources of climate pollution, according to just-released data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

There's no surprise there.

But a prominent chemical plant in Louisville's Rubbertown area -- Dupont Louisville Works -- is among the top ten biggest climate polluters in Kentucky for its emissions of hydrofluorocarbons, which the EPA say are actually more potent than carbon dioxide when it comes to heating up the atmosphere.

The EPA released its fourth year of Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program data, detailing greenhouse gas pollution trends and emissions broken down by industrial sector, geographic region and individual facilities. In 2013, reported emissions from large industrial facilities nationwide were 20 million metric tons higher than the prior year, or 0.6 percent, driven largely by an increase in coal use for power generation, the agency said.

That figure intrigued me because conventional wisdom is that we've been burning more natural gas (which has less impact on the climate) and less coal.