"Oil plant demolition in Port Everglades part of a nationwide trend to decommission inefficient, costly, and polluting facilities."
"Anyone who happened to be scanning the skyline in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, at 6:45 a.m. Tuesday witnessed a startling transformation. In the space of a minute, the four towering 350-foot-high, candy cane-striped smokestacks at Florida Power & Light's Port Everglades oil-burning power plant—a local landmark for the past half-century—abruptly imploded and crumbled into rubble.
The spectacular demolition, which was shown on live streaming video on the utility company's website, is the latest step in a $1.2 billion plan to replace the aging facility by 2016 with a new, state-of-the-art plant at the same site that will run on natural gas.
That transition, according to FPL spokesman Greg Brostowicz, will save the utility and its customers an estimated $400 million over the next 30 years. In part, the savings come from using a cheaper fuel, but the utility will also avoid the expense of upgrading obsolescent, inefficient old equipment and installing costly controls to meet what it expects will be increasingly stringent federal pollution standards. ... FPL says the new plant will cut both carbon dioxide and total emissions by 90 percent compared to the old plant, which has been criticized for years as a major pollution source."
Patrick J. Kiger reports for National Geographic July 16, 2013.
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