LAS VEGAS — Environment Nevada has released a new report and fact sheet that looks at carbon dioxide emissions, dates of construction and pollution per unit of energy produced for all 13 of Nevada’s fossil fuel-fired power plants. The report, “America’s Biggest Polluters,” uses data from 2007, the most recent year for which final data is available. It also contains data for every power plant in every state in America, through which the report states that Reid Gardner — a coal fired giant northeast of Las Vegas built in 1965 — is among the dirtiest plants anywhere in the country. It emitted as much carbon dioxide in 2007 as 827,000 cars.

“It’s time for the oldest, dirtiest, and least efficient power plants to clean up their act,” said Pete Dronkers of Environment Nevada. “Fossil fuel-fired giants have dominated our electricity for decades and have been allowed to pollute without license. In order to stop global warming and reap all the benefits of clean energy, we must require dirty power plants to meet modern standards for global warming pollution.”

Power plants currently do not have to meet any global warming pollution standard, according to Environment Nevada, meaning that they are an unchecked contributor to global warming. In fact, power plants are the nation’s single largest source of global warming pollution.

The report shows great variations in emissions per unit of energy from plant to plant within Nevada.

“It’s yet another indication that standards for efficiency and pollution controls are necessary in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from Nevada’s plants,” Dronkers said.

For example, one natural gas plant built in 2001 pollutes about one-third more per megawatt-hour than a gas plant built in the early 1970s.

Nevada’s emissions have fallen by 12 percent from 2004 to 2007 because of the closure of the Mojave Generating Station near Laughlin — a 1500 Megawatt coal-fired plant that was decommissioned in 2005 (see www.environmentnevada.org/reports).

The U.S. Senate is slated to consider legislation in the next few months to establish the first-ever federal limits on global warming pollution and standards and incentives for clean energy. In addition, the EPA has proposed a rule to require power plants and other large smokestack industries to use available technology to cut their global warming pollution when new facilities are constructed or existing facilities are significantly modified.