New coal-burning plants will be required to limit the carbon dioxide they release under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s first regulations aimed at curbing climate change by power generators.
The EPA issued the draft rules Friday, meeting a deadline President Barack Obama set in an address on climate change in June. The rules effectively require coal-fired plants to capture and store a portion of the carbon dioxide they produce, something industry officials have said is so costly it would preclude the construction of plants.
“These carbon-pollution standards are flexible and achievable,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said in remarks at the National Press Club in Washington. “They pave a path forward for the next generation of power plants.”
The EPA’s move sets the stage for the more far-reaching set of final rules governing emissions from existing power plants, due by June 2014. Although restrictions on emissions of sulfur dioxide and other pollutants have been in place for years, these will be the first for gases most blamed for global warming.
“The most important thing about the new plant rule is that it’s crossing the Rubicon to say that we are going to put limits on carbon pollution,” David Goldston, government affairs director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a New York-based environmental group, said before the rule was released. “It’s important as a precursor” for existing plant rules, he said.
The administration agreed in June to revise last year’s draft rules on greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants after legal experts questioned its methodology in setting one standard for coal and another for natural-gas plants. Coal emits about twice the carbon dioxide as natural gas when burned to make power.
Limits for new coal-fired plants would be 1,100 pounds of carbon dioxide for each megawatt hour of power they produce, a standard that can’t be met without carbon-capture technology, McCarthy said. Most gas plants would need to meet a 1,000-pound standard, which won’t require such technology.
McCarthy said the law gives the agency a year to finalize the rule, and she vowed to consider all the comments the agency will receive on the proposal.
On Capitol Hill, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, RMich., said his panel will hold a hearing soon to examine a proposal that he said will devastate manufacturing.
“The consequences will be more job losses and a weaker economy,” Upton said in an email. “These stringent standards will actually discourage investment and the development of innovative new technologies.”
Lawmakers from coal-producing states also denounced the new proposal.
“Never before has the federal government forced an industry to do something that is technologically impossible,” said Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W. Va. “Forcing coal to meet the same emissions standards as gas when experts know that the required technology is not operational on a commercial scale makes absolutely no sense and will have devastating impacts to the coal industry and our economy.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in an email: “The president is leading a war on coal and what that really means for Kentucky families is a war on jobs.”
Jay Timmons, chief executive officer of the National Association of Manufacturers, said the group will call on Congress to restrict the EPA’s ability to proceed on this and other efforts to limit greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.
“In this latest overreach, the EPA is regulating greenhouse gases under a statute never designed for this purpose,” Timmons said in a statement.
Business, Pages 32 on 09/21/2013