After the bad news about the Wise County Virginia plant being granted it’s permits and beginning construction that very same day - it sure was good to hear that not everyone has drunk the coal kool-aid. Yesterday Fulton County Judge Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore overturned a ruling that allowed the construction of the $2 billion Longleaf Energy Plant, which would become Georgia’s first new coal-fired plant in more than two decades.

The decision marks the first time that a judge has applied a U.S. Supreme Court finding that carbon dioxide is a pollutant to emissions from an industrial source.

I’m guessing that Dynegy’s bankers (Citi and Bank of America to name just two) aren’t feeling particularly proud of their investment decisions today. How many coal plants need to be canceled or stalled before the financial sector wakes up to the fact that investing in coal power is not bad for the climate, but bad for their pocketbooks too?

More from today’s Dynegy shareholder’s meeting in Houston today. CEO Bruce Williamson, a finalist for Fossil Fool of the Year, told his company’s shareholders “that only a few of the proposed coal-fired power plants in the United States will be built due to soaring costs and financing hurdles.”

He said that only plants that have “already started construction, have an EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) contract or equipment committed to them,”"

Pretty big news. That sounds like we’re winning. Does mean that King Coal is going to pack up and call it a day?

Not bloody likely. Sooner or later they will initiate the backlash.

Keep up the pressure.

Environmental activists from six states -Michigan, Nevada, Georgia, Texas, Iowa, and Illinois - converged today to urge the Houston-based Dynegy corporation to halt construction on its six proposed coal plants.

Outside the meeting 100 activists rallied to speak truth to Dynegy’s power.

40 activists from Georgia, Texas and Alabama staged a “die-in” inside the Westin where the meeting was being held. They held space until police and security got them out of the building.

Video here
More pix here

From their press release:

“Coal is a ticking time bomb for investors and the climate. From the destruction of Appalachian mountaintops to the millions of tons of carbon dioxide, mercury and other toxic pollutants emitted from power plants, coal plants are the country’s top source of global warming and mercury pollution. Yet Houston-based Dynegy plans to build six new coal-fired plants—more than any other company in the country.”