EPA to limit power-plant pollution

By DINA CAPPIELLO

Associated Press

Dec 22, 2011

WASHINGTON – Clean up or shut down.

That’s the decision facing hundreds of the nation’s oldest and dirtiest power plants under an Environmental

Protection Agency rule announced Wednesday that will force plants to control mercury and other toxic

pollutants for the first time.

The long overdue national standards rein in the largest remaining source of uncontrolled toxic

pollution in the U.S. – the emissions from the nation’s coal- and oil-fired power plants, which

have been allowed to run for decades without addressing their full environmental and public

health costs.

The impact of the ruling will be greatest in the Midwest and in the coal belt – Kentucky, West

Virginia and Virginia – where dozens of units likely will be mothballed, according to an

Associated Press survey. The majority of facilities will continue to run, and find ways to reduce

pollution.

About half of the 1,200 coal- and oil-fired units nationwide still lack modern pollution controls,

despite the EPA in 1990 getting the authority from Congress to control toxic air pollution from

power plant smokestacks. A decade later, in 2000, the agency concluded it was necessary to

clamp down on the emissions to protect public health.

At a news conference Wednesday at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, EPA

Administrator Lisa Jackson said the regulation was the Obama administration’s “biggest clean air action

yet,” trumping a landmark agreement to double fuel economy standards for vehicles and another rule that

will reduce emissions from power plants that foul the air in states downwind. 

The administration was under court order to issue a new rule, after a court threw out an attempt

by the Bush administration to exempt power plants from toxic air pollution controls.

“Before this rule, there were no national standards limiting the amount of mercury, arsenic,

chromium, nickel and acid gases that power plants across the country could release into the air

that we breathe,” said Jackson, listing the contaminants linked to cancer, IQ loss, heart disease

and lung disease that are covered by the rule and that also pollute lakes, streams and fish.

In a video released Wednesday afternoon, President Barack Obama said the decades of delays

caused by special interest groups that resulted in standards never being put into place for power

plants “was wrong.”

Today, my administration is saying, ‘Enough,’” he said.

When fully implemented in 2016, the standards will slash mercury pollution from burning coal by 90

percent, lung-damaging acid gases by 88 percent and soot-producing sulfur dioxide by 41

percent.

Power plant operators will have to choose between installing pollution control equipment,

switching to cleaner-burning natural gas, or shutting down the plant. None of those choices

come cheap – the EPA estimates the rule will cost $9.6 billion annually, making it one of the

most expensive the agency has ever issued.

Some power producers intensely lobbied the Obama administration to weaken the rule and to

delay it, and Republicans in Congress passed legislation to do so, saying it would threaten jobs

and the reliability of the power grid, and raise electricity prices.

To ease those concerns, the administration will encourage states to make “broadly available” an

additional fourth year to comply with the rule, as allowed by the law. Case-by-case extensions

could also be granted to address local reliability issues, according to a presidential

memorandum sent Wednesday to Jackson.

In the memorandum, Obama directs the EPA to ensure that implementation of the rule “proceed

in a cost-effective manner that ensures electric reliability.”

Environmentalists said Wednesday that the added flexibility did not jeopardize the public health

benefits of the regulation.

“After more than two decades of delay, dirty coal-fired power plants are going to be cleaned up

in short order,” said Frank O’Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, who said the EPA “bent over

backwards” to accommodate concerns about reliability.

For those in the industry, and some in Congress, the concessions didn’t go far enough.

Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, the top Republican on the Senate’s environment committee, said

he would file a joint resolution, a rarely used Congressional tactic, to get the rule overturned.

Some in the industry pushed for an automatic delay, or “safety valve,” to make sure that plants

that have to run to ensure reliability aren’t found in violation of the rule and too many plants don’t close

down at once. In addition to those that will retire, hundreds of units will need to be idled temporarily to

install pollution control equipment. Some of those units are at critical junctions on the grid and are essential

to restarting the electrical network in case of a blackout, or making sure voltage doesn’t drain completely

from electrical lines, like a hose that’s lost its water pressure.

The Edison Electric Institute, whose members were split on the toll of the rule, said in a

statement Wednesday that while the EPA “made useful technical changes”, it believes “the

administration is underestimating the complexity of implementing this rule in such a short period

of time.”

The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, which is an association of companies

producing electricity from coal, said the rule will destroy jobs, raise the cost of energy and make

electricity less reliable. A study by the group estimated that as much as 12 percent of coal-fired

generation would be forced to retire because of the regulation.

But an AP survey of 55 power plant producers found that estimate, and others, to be inflated.

The mercury rule, along with another to reduce power plant pollution that blows downwind, will

force portions of more than 32 mostly coal-fired power plants in a dozen states to retire, and put

another 36 power plants on the brink of retirement.

But not a single operator interviewed said the EPA was solely to blame for the decision. And coal is still

likely to be the country’s dominant electricity source until 2035, according to the Energy Information

Administration.

For the older, aging plants, many of which only ran when electricity demand peaked, the rules

were the final blow. Coal was already struggling to compete against low natural-gas prices,

demand from China and elsewhere driving up its price, and lower electricity demand.

The average age of the units retiring or at risk of shutting down was 51 years old, the AP found.

And while they produce enough power for more than 22 million households, experts say they

probably won’t cause the lights to go out, because in many cases the power is being replaced.