The Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency yesterday (April 25) announced a comprehensive package of rules aimed squarely at coal-fired electric generating plants and secondarily at natural gas generation. The new rules will generate legal challenges from industry and several states in multiple federal jurisdictions. They are likely to end up in the U.S. Supreme Court.
The EPA regulatory suite focuses on four elements of fossil power plant operations and are particularly aimed at the nation’s decline fleet of coal plants.
- Carbon dioxide emissions. EPA describes the new rule as requiring “existing coal-fired and new natural gas-fired power plants that would ensure that all coal-fired plants that plan to run in the long-term and all new baseload gas-fired plants control 90 percent of their carbon pollution.” EPA said it will take a run at current gas-fired plants sometime in the future.
- Air toxics, aimed directly at coal plants, which would strengthen the “Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) for coal-fired power plants, tightening the emissions standard for toxic metals by 67 percent and finalizing a 70 percent reduction in the emissions standard for mercury from existing lignite-fired sources.”
- Coal plant wastewater discharges to reduce the effluents “by more than 660 million pounds per year, ensuring cleaner water for affected communities, including communities with environmental justice concerns that are disproportionately impacted.”
- Coal ash “that is placed in areas that were unregulated at the federal level until now, including at previously used disposal areas that may leak and contaminate groundwater.”
The new regulatory package has been in the works since March 2022, when EPA Administrator Michael Regan told the annual CERAWeek meeting in Houston that the administration is committed to, in EPA’s words, “provide regulatory certainty as the power sector makes long-term investments in the transition to a clean energy economy.”
Yesterday, Regan said, “Today, EPA is proud to make good on the Biden-Harris Administration’s vision to tackle climate change and to protect all communities from pollution in our air, water, and in our neighborhoods. By developing these standards in a clear, transparent, inclusive manner, EPA is cutting pollution while ensuring that power companies can make smart investments and continue to deliver reliable electricity for all Americans.”
Much of the EPA analysis behind the new, more stringent rules relies on carbon capture and storage to reduce CO2 emissions. EPA says, “The best system of emission reduction for the longest-running existing coal units and most heavily utilized new gas turbines is based on carbon capture and sequestration/storage (CCS) – an available and cost-reasonable emission control technology that can be applied directly to power plants and can reduce 90 percent of carbon dioxide emissions from the plants.” The administration’s Inflation Reduction Act provides CCS tax credits while the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law offers funding for technology development.
Under the EPA plan, coal plants retiring by 2032 would not be subject to the new rules. Plants shutting down by 2039 would not face the full force of the rules but would still have to capture some emissions. Coal plants planned to operate beyond 2039 would have to reduce emissions by 90% by 2032, an incentive to shut them earlier. At a White House briefing, Regan said, “We will see some coal retirements.”
Industry groups immediately began criticizing the new rules. Washington-based Edison Electric Institute, which represents the nation’s powerful investor-owned utilities, put out a statement from CEO Dan Brouillette focused on carbon capture. He said, “While we appreciate and support EPA’s work to develop a clear, continued path for the transition to cleaner resources, we are disappointed that the agency did not address the concerns we raised about carbon capture and storage (CCS). CCS is not yet ready for full-scale, economy-wide deployment, nor is there sufficient time to permit, finance, and build the CCS infrastructure needed for compliance by 2032.
“EPA’s record does not support a finding that CCS is demonstrated today.” EEI CEO Dan Brouillette
“Electric companies across the country are investing in carbon-free technologies to ensure they satisfy industry performance requirements and support reliability at costs that are affordable for customers. While CCS and other 24/7 clean energy technologies could be important tools for reducing emissions in the future, EPA’s record does not support a finding that CCS is demonstrated today.”
Michelle Bloodworth, CEO of America’s Power, commented that the new Biden regulatory initiative “is an extreme and unlawful overreach that endangers America’s supply of dependable and affordable electricity. The new Clean Power Plan is the same kind of overreach that caused the U.S. Supreme Court to reject EPA’s first Clean Power Plan in 2022,” a reference to the June 2022 landmark West Virginia v. EPA decision. America’s Power describes itself as “the only national trade organization whose sole mission is to advocate at the federal and state levels on behalf of the U.S. coal fleet and its supply chain.”
America’s Power is made up entirely of coal industry members, according to the energy industry watchdog Energy and Policy Institute, which reported in February 2023 that the organization has lost all of its members that are investor-owned utilities and railroads, and recently deleted the list of member companies from its website. In a sign of the declining political power of the once-broad coalition of coal-supporting interests, ‘America’s Power’ members now consist mostly of coal mining companies, along with a few smaller power companies that account for just 6.25% of US coal generation.”
In contrast, there was significant support for CCS. Jessie Stolak, executive director of the Carbon Capture Coalition, said, “While there is no silver bullet to address the impacts of our changing climate, carbon management technologies, which include carbon capture, removal, transport, reuse, and geologic storage, are an essential tool for decarbonizing our highest emitting sectors and helping the US achieve net zero emissions by mid-century.”
The coalition is a broad-based group with some 90 members, including the AFL-CIO, investor-owned utility DTE Energy, the Great River Energy cooperative, the National Wildlife Federation, and the Bipartisan Policy Center.
–Kennedy Maize