Coal plants dominate list of Chicago’s biggest polluters via Chicago Tribune

2 plants in Pilsen, Little Village constitute the largest source of local greenhouse gas emissions, U.S. says

By Michael Hawthorne, Chicago Tribune reporter

Fed by a steady stream of coal barges, the aging power plants that loom over Chicago’s Little Village and Pilsen neighborhoods are by far the city’s largest industrial sources of climate change pollution.

No other polluter comes close to the 4.2 million metric tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide churned into the atmosphere by the two coal plants in 2010, according to a new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency database that for the first time allows people to compare major industrial sources of greenhouse gases.

The city’s next biggest source, a heating plant at the University of Illinois at Chicago, trailed far behind. It emitted 132,000 metric tons.

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