Crew blows up oil-fired power plant in Florida

This morning in Fort Lauderdale, the theme was goodbye smokestacks and hello cleaner air as crews demolished, in spectacular manner, an oil-fired power plant built in the 1960s.

The facility set to replace the massive smokestacks of the Port Everglades power plant will run on natural gas, which burns off much cleaner than oil or coal but isn't without its detractors, and is particularly marred by a highly controversial and dirty extraction process known as fracking.

The demolition is helpful because Florida Power & Light would rather avoid the costly retrofitting requirements coming down from the Obama administration, aimed at regulating old, pollution-generating energy technology out of relevance. The administration's recently-announced climate strategy will place the Environmental Protection Agency at the forefront of regulating pollution from existing power plants.

A spokesperson for Florida Power & Light told National Geographic that the demolition will save the utility and its customers about $400 million over the next three decades as they progress to using cheaper, more sustainable fuels.

This video is from AFP, published July 16, 2013.