EPA'S PROPOSED REGULATION WILL CUT CARBON EMISSIONS BY 30%

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By Jaden Jimenez

 

June 5, 2014 - The Environmental Protection Agency proposed a regulation Monday that would cut carbon dioxide emissions from existing coal plants by up to to 30 percent by 2030 compared with 2005 levels, the Washington Post reports.

Under the rule the EPA would let states and utilities meet the new standard with different approaches mixing four options including energy efficiency, shifting from coal to natural gas, investing in renewable energy and making power plant upgrades.

The proposal, which would cut 500 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually by 2030, ranks as one of Obama’s most far-reaching climate policies. His previous measures to limit carbon emissions in cars and light trucks produced between fleet years 2012 and 2025 will cut 6 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions over the lifetime of those vehicles.

Ever since a climate bill stalled in the Senate four years ago, environmental and public health activists have been pressing Obama to use his executive authority to impose carbon limits on the power sector, which accounts for 38 percent of the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions.

Much of the electricity sector’s carbon pollution comes from aging, coal-fired plants. The average U.S. coal plant is 42 years old, according to the EPA, meaning that most of them aren’t nearly as efficient as new ones, although many have been updated.

The regulation could also affect natural-gas-fired power plants, which emit about half as many greenhouse gases as coal plants. The EPA said that U.S. natural-gas-fired combined cycle plants are 14 years old on average.

Sen. Edward J. Markey , one of the lawmakers who spoke with Obama Sunday, said in an interview the rule will make it easier for politicians to make even deeper carbon cuts a few years from now.

The EPA plan resembles proposals made by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which would allow states and companies to employ a variety of ­measures — including new ­renewable-energy and energy-efficiency projects “outside the fence,” or away from the power plant site — to meet the target for carbon reduction. This approach aims to keep consumer electricity prices from rising too sharply.

The Proposal would follow a “mass-based system,” states would have to meet an overall target for greenhouse-gas emissions and ensure that power plants either make those reductions at their facilities or finance efforts to achieve them in other ways, such as by reducing consumer demand or investing in carbon-free electricity generation.

EPA states that most of the carbon reductions stemming from the rule would be made in the first decade, reaching 26 percent by 2020, and states will have the ability to craft multi-state plans in order to comply.

Nicholas Akins, chief executive of AEP, one of the nation’s largest carbon dioxide emitters, said that his company is already producing 21 percent less CO2 than it did in 2005 and that it plans to retire another 6,600 megawatts of coal plants by late 2015 that will bring it to a level 25 percent below 2005.

Akins said he was “still digesting” the proposals, but that he was “encouraged” that EPA used 2005 as a baseline and that AEP and states wouldn’t lose credit for measures taken.

Daniel J. Fiorino, who directs American University’s Center for Environmental Policy, said in an interview that using this approach is “a really nice example of smarter regulation,” because it gives firms and state regulators greater leeway in how they would meet a federal standard.

But the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, a nationwide group of state air pollution control agencies, while supporting the proposed regulations, warned that “the regulatory and resource challenges that lie ahead are daunting.”

Several coal industry and business officials have questioned the administration’s approach, saying it will cost coal miners their jobs and could lead to electricity shortages. The Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, a lobbying group that represents energy companies with major investments in coal-fired power plants, has prepared an analysis that cites a study estimating that a phase-out of coal plants could cost consumers $13 billion to $17 billion a year between 2018 and 2033.

“There are no off-the-shelf technologies to address carbon, only fuel-switching regardless of expense or energy rationing,” the group writes.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has commissioned a separate study,projecting that the proposed rule could cost the U.S. economy an average of $50 billion a year during the next 16 years.

“There are still special interest skeptics who cry the sky is falling,” the EPA’s McCarthy said. “They deliberately ignore the risks, overestimate the costs, and undervalue the benefits.”

The EPA estimates that the new rule would cut traditional air pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and soot by 25 percent, according to those who have been briefed, yielding a public health benefit of between $55 billion to $93 billion when it is fully implemented with 2,700 to 6600 premature deaths avoided and 140,000 to 150,000 asthma attacks a year avoided. The cost, by contrast, would be $7.3 billion to $8.8 billion.

EPA said that for every $1 invested, Americans would reap $7 in health benefits.

The EPA also said that even without counting health benefits, the climate benefits would make the proposed regulations worthwhile, saving about $30 billion in 2030. “Climate inaction is costing us more money, in more places, more often,” McCarthy said. “As our seas rise, so do insurance premiums, property taxes, and food prices.”

Recent improvements in energy efficiency will accelerate the rule’s implementation, the agency projects, with a roughly 8 percent cut in the national average cost of electricity bills by 2030.

Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, noted in an interview that a spokesman for the Colorado-based utility Xcel Energy explained that his company was expanding its investments in solar and wind power because they are the most cost-effective and most reliable.”

If you would like more information on the proposed plan visit the Envorinment Protection Agency’s site at www.epa.gov . Also if you’d llike to see the full story reported by the washington post visit: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/epa-to-propose-cutting-carbon-dioxide-emissions-from-coal-plants-30percent-by-2030/2014/06/01/f5055d94-e9a8-11e3-9f5c-9075d5508f0a_story.html

http://templatelab.com/clean-power-plan-proposed-rule/


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