The Biden administration’s plan to make big cuts in powerplant CO2 emissions faces tough technical, legal, and political challenges. These are likely to interact, occur simultaneously, and maybe soon.
Here’s what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing as the path to dramatically reduced CO2 emissions from the nation’s electric power plants in the next 20 years. The plan, says the EPA, is based on the authorities in the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, with the requirements starting in 2030 and 2032. EPA specifically cites Section 111 of the air act as its authority.
- For new power plants – primarily gas-fired combined cycle units – “strengthened” New Source Performance Standards to reduce CO2 emissions.
- For existing gas and coal-fired steam-electric plants, amending state implementation plans to reduce carbon emissions.
- New emissions requirements for simple-cycle gas-fired base-load combustion turbines.
- Gas peaking units are exempt.
The EPA proposal is aimed at reducing CO2 power plant emissions by some 600 million tonnes through 2042. EPA does not mandate reduction technologies, but sets limits stiff enough that the agency, and most observers, say they are only way to meet the new reductions.
Technology. EPA administrator Michael Regan said, “EPA’s proposal relies on proven, readily available technologies to limit carbon pollution and seizes the momentum already underway in the power sector to move toward a cleaner future.” An EPA fact sheet says “the proposed standards are based on technologies such as carbon capture and sequestration/storage (CCS), low-GHG hydrogen co-firing, and natural gas co-firing, which can be applied directly to power plants that use fossil fuels to generate electricity.”
As several interested and disinterested observers have noted, those “proven, readily available technologies” are not necessarily proven or readily available. The Associated Press reported, “Groups on both ends of the political spectrum questioned whether carbon capture and storage is a realistic solution.”
Green-oriented Grist commented, “Although the EPA says CCS technology is ‘adequately demonstrated’ and ‘highly cost effective,’ experts are deeply skeptical that it can deliver on its promised emissions reductions.” The only CCS project in the U.S., the Petra Nova experiment in Texas, was a failure. Bruce Robertson of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, told Chemistry World last year, “Many international bodies and national governments are relying on carbon capture in the fossil fuel sector to get to net zero, and it simply won’t work.”
Nor does hydrogen co-firing with natural gas look like a particularly promising technology, although the Biden administration Department of Energy is enthusiastic about it. Producing hydrogen economically requires natural gas as the feed stock, which appears to defeat the purpose of using it to supplant gas in power plants. Additionally, burning hydrogen increases emissions of oxides of nitrogen, already a target of EPA air pollution rules.
EPA appears to be betting that the technologies they support will be ready by the time the new rules kick in.
Legal. No major air pollution rule from the EPA going back some 50 years has avoided litigation, often protracted. The list includes last year’s West Virginia v. EPA, where the Supreme Court by a 6-3 ruling severely limited EPA’s authority to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal plants. Will this latest major EPA foray into the Clean Air Act legal labyrinth be different?
The Reed Smith law firm commented, “Once finalized, the rule will face inevitable legal challenge. EPA has a poor track record when it comes to legal challenges under” the Clean Air Act Section 111. The analysis noted, “The proposal will face scrutiny regarding, among other things, whether the EPA exceeded its statutory aucthority and Supreme Court restrictions on the agency’s powers. It has already received immediate criticism from lawmakers and officials in coal-heavy West Virginia.”
In West Virginia, the court focused on EPA’s aim of “generation shifting,” intentionally aimed at forcing states away from coal as a power plant fuel. The court wrote, “Congress did not grant EPA in Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act the authority to devise emissions caps based on the generation shifting approach the Agency took in the Clean Power Plan.”
EPA argues that its new approach is not aimed at generation shifting, but that is getting skeptical scrutiny. Jim Matheson, head of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, the Washington lobbying group for 900 rural electric public power systems, told the AP that the rules “undermine decades of work to reliably keep the lights on across the nation” and would “force critical, always-available power plants into early retirement, and make new natural gas plants exceedingly difficult to permit, site and build.″
Grist suggests that EPA is using carbon capture as “a ‘cudgel’ against power plant operators – potentially a backdoor approach to encourage a switch to renewable energy without technically mandating it….”
Politics. Does West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin want to remain in the Senate after 2024? He has not announced his 2024 intentions.
Joe Biden wants Manchin to remain in the Senate after 2024, as Manchin is the only Democrat who can win a statewide contest in a blood-red state, where Trump won in 2020 with over 68% of the vote. Manchin’s seat is up in 2024, with the Democrats holding a tenuous one-seat Senate majority.
Facing billionaire Gov. Jim Justice (who ran in 2015 as a Democrat and switch to a Republican as governor) Manchin cannot win reelection unless he steadfastly opposes Biden on fossil fuel issues in the state heavily tied to coal and natural gas production. He has vowed to block any future EPA nominations over the proposed rule.
Manchin is also flirting with a third-party run for the White House, according to the Washington Post. The Post reported, “He indicated last month that this was on the table, that he would announce his presidential plans shortly after the New Year and adding, ‘Can’t I be a moderate centrist, with whatever identification, or no identification?’” He has ties to the No Labels faction.
The Boston Globe suggested that Manchin might run in the New Hampshire Democratic primary. Because the party has deprived the Granite State of its traditional role as the first presidential primary in favor of South Carolina, Biden likely will not be on the ballot. Nor will the winner of the Democratic primary get votes at the Democratic convention. The Globe commented, “Add it all up, and a potential play for Manchin is to run as a Democrat in the New Hampshire presidential primary. If he were to win there, he could try to persuade donors he should launch a national campaign…. Could he become president this way? Probably not. But it’s a lot more interesting than losing reelection.”
–Kennedy Maize
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