WASHINGTON -- Leaders of Arkansas' electric cooperatives said Tuesday that talk of federal energy restrictions to address climate change has already increased how much Arkansans pay for electricity.
Arkansas Electric Cooperatives CEO Duane Highley and North Arkansas Electric Cooperative CEO Mel Coleman were lobbying on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. Shortly before, the White House released the third U.S. National Climate Assessment, which showed how climate changes have already led to higher temperatures, more severe droughts and increasingly intense hurricanes.
Highley said industry fears about new restrictions, such as rules on carbon emissions at coal plants that the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to release in June, are prompting companies to move to more expensive fuels.
"Regardless of how you feel about the science, the policy impacts are that it's going to raise costs dramatically for our members," Highley said.
Highley said President Barack Obama's plan to cut U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions by 17 percent by 2020 as compared with 2005 levels won't have the effect the president wants.
"The 17 percent reduction the administration says we have to make to save the planet is less than 1 percent on a global emissions basis," Highley said. "So we can do some things to radically raise rates and reduce reliability in Arkansas, close the White Bluff plant [a coal-fired plant near Pine Bluff] for example, and in doing that the planet won't even notice the difference, but rural Arkansas will notice the difference and that's why we are concerned."
As a part of his "year of action," the president is using the EPA and the Clean Air Act to enforce policies to advance that 17 percent goal over the objections of Republicans in Congress.
The new rules will require coal-plant owners to install expensive new technology to scrub the pollutants from their smokestack emissions.
Arkansas' coal-fired electric power plants supplied over half of the state's electricity in 2013, according to the U.S. Environmental Information Administration. Nearly all of the coal was delivered via rail-car from Wyoming.
Coleman said the proposed rules will have too large of an effect on Arkansas.
"We are just as concerned about the environment as anybody, we have children, we have grandchildren, we are concerned about the planet," Coleman said. "But electric bills have to be affordable, because that directly affects the quality of life for our members."
Sierra Club of Arkansas chapter Director Glen Hooks said coal is a cheaper form of energy, but has wider effects on health and the environment.
"The electric co-ops are heavily coal dependent in Arkansas," Hooks said in a telephone interview. "They have an interest in keeping coal as unregulated as possible, even if it means polluting Arkansas' environment and hurting Arkansans in terms of their health."
In the National Climate Assessment released Tuesday, the White House described how Arkansas and the rest of the South have already been affected by changes to the world's climate, including more high-temperature days that affect crop and livestock production.
It points to an increasing number of days above 95°F and nights above 75°F, and decreasing numbers of extremely cold days in the south since 1970. The report says the southeast is a major energy producer of coal, crude oil, and natural gas and is the highest energy user of any of the regions it tracks.
"Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present," its authors wrote.
The report, which was produced over four years with input from a range of experts, says "observations unequivocally show that climate is changing and that the warming of the past 50 years is primarily due to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases."
Hooks said the South has been particularly resistant to shifting from coal energy.
"It should be a wake up call for anybody who's not awake so far that climate disruption is real and that we have to take significant steps toward cleaning up our energy sources if we are going to reduce the effects," Hooks said. "It's interesting and sobering for sure."
Metro on 05/07/2014