EPA chief tells Grist what coal will have to do to survive in a “carbon-constrained” future By Lisa Hymas and Chip Giller Gina McCarthyReuters/Jason RobertsEPA Administrator Gina McCarthy It’s been a long time coming, but, finally, the EPA is going to begin tackling carbon pollution from the world’s single greatest contributor to climate change — the U.S. power sector. Under draft rules being announced this morning, new coal power plants will have to be a whole lot cleaner than the ones we’ve got today. In fact, thanks also to market conditions, new coal plants might not get built at all. Perhaps most important, the draft rules lay the foundation for a bigger move to cut emissions from already-existing coal-fired power plants, a plan due to be unveiled in June 2014. In an interview with Grist, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said the proposed regulations for new plants are not intended to push coal out of the energy mix. Still, the standards are pretty strict. The EPA had released an earlier version of them in March of last year, then decided to rework them, but this new set of regs still takes a hard line with coal. The proposal calls for any coal power plants built in the future to emit under 1,100 pounds of CO2 per megawatt-hour — considerably less than coal plants emit today, which is about 1,800 pounds on average. The rules are more stringent than some had expected; observers had been saying that they might come in at 1,300 or 1,400 pounds per megawatt-hour. (The draft rules set a limit for natural-gas plants, too — 1,000 pounds for large facilities — but new gas plants already pollute less than that. Some advocates had hoped the EPA would push the gas standard down to 800 pounds per megawatt-hour.) There’s basically only one way a new coal plant would be able to meet the EPA’s proposed standard: by incorporating a carbon-capture-and-sequestration (CCS) system to keep some CO2 emissions from going into the atmosphere — a pricey and thus far little-used technology. One coal plant with CCS is now under construction in Mississippi and it’s already a billion dollars over budget. Many utilities aren’t bothering with new coal plants at all because natural gas is much cheaper and wind and solar are increasingly affordable as well. These new rules are the first big piece of the climate plan President Obama laid out in a speech in June, one of the steps the administration can take without cooperation from Congress. Utility and coal companies and their congressional allies are complaining about the rules for new plants, but what they’re really worried about is the future crackdown on old plants. House Republicans hammered McCarthy over power-plant regs and climate action in general at a hearing on Wednesday. Industry groups are sure to sue over the rules, both these new-plant ones and the existing-plant ones that will be released next year.
Posted on: Sat, 21 Sep 2013 16:48:04 +0000