The Sierra Club announced last week that two power plants in Chicago will no longer use coal as their energy source. The Fisk and Crawford facilities in Chicago are joined also by seven factories in Pennsylvania and Ohio that have recently announced they were retiring coal, bringing the number of coal power plant shutdowns since 2010 to 100. The scaling down of coal use, spearheaded in part by the Beyond Coal campaign, which the Sierra Club started in 2002, aims to change the way America produces energy, according to a Sierra Club press release.

Sierra Club spokesman Nick Sifuentes said the usage of coal has been decreasing for a reason.

“Purely for economic decisions; the cost of coal is increasing because there is less and less coal readily available nowadays,” Sifuentes said. “More and more, we are seeing people that are from grassroots, local communities and all the way up to the Obama administration (Environmental Protection Agency) finally saying that we have enough of the health impacts from coal pollution and we are going to do something about it.”

Sifuentes added that owners of the companies using coal are beginning to realize the impact of coal.

“Owners and operators take a look and say this isn’t economical anymore. And you know what is? Investing in wind and solar … which produces clean energy.”

Data from the Clean Air Task Force estimated that the retirement of 100 coal plants will prevent 2,042 premature deaths, 3,299 heart attacks and 33,053 asthma attacks.

Brian Urbaszewski, director of environmental health programs at the Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago, said the impact from coal can be hazardous to the community surrounding the factory.

“Difficulty in breathing can increase the numbers of respiratory hospitalizations and emergency room visits,” Urbaszewski said. “The fine particles are connected to premature deaths and heart attacks, so (there are) very scary outcomes from simply breathing the air downwind from a coal plant.”

At the University, the Students for Environmental Concerns’ Beyond Coal campaign is working to end the use of coal at the Abbott Power Plant, which helps power the campus, and making sure the University is encouraging the usage of alternative energy.

Katrina Underwood, the leader of the campaign and junior in LAS, said this is exciting news for the group that shows the campaign can influence the community to use alternative energy.

“We are working very much on campus to keep the University reminded of that commitment to stop burning coal at the power plant campus by 2017,” Underwood said. “Looking at Chicago and seeing how they are shutting down so many coal plants, I believe locally they are going to start seeing that clean energy is what’s going to happen at the end.”