EPA TO MOVE NEXT YEAR ON GHG LIMITS FOR EXISTING PLANTS

Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
4/12/13

The Environmental Protection Agency is looking to begin work in Fiscal Year 2014 on promulgating greenhouse gas emissions performance standards for existing power plants, acting Administrator Bob Perciasepe said this week. During an April 10 conference call with reporters to discuss EPA’s Fiscal Year 2014 budget request, Perciasepe confirmed, after years of speculation, that the EPA will soon begin looking at regulating the nation’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions—existing power plants. “We are looking forward to … working with states on the existing sources, but we’re not quite there yet,” Perciasepe said. “But that’s certainly something that will be on the table during this next fiscal year.”

EPA has for years been vague about its plans to regulate emissions from existing sources under the authority of the Clean Air Act, despite the fact that it agreed to do so under a settlement agreement with a handful of states and environmental groups. Senior officials continued to stay mum on the issue even as EPA moved forward on developing performance standards for future power plants last year. When announcing those New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) to reporters in March 2012, then-Administrator Lisa Jackson said the EPA had “no plans” to issue the regulations. The EPA’s silence continued even as some lawmakers and environmental groups stepped up efforts to push the Obama Administration to act on the issue in recent months.

EPA Moving Forward on NSPS

During the press call, Perciasepe said the EPA is continuing to move forward on finalizing the NSPS rule and is currently reviewing the “huge number” of public comments it received on the proposal—the Agency got some 2.7 million comments on the rule—but did not provide a timeline for when the standards would be finalized. The current proposal for new source standards would require all future fossil units above 25 MW to cap CO2 emissions below 1,000 pounds per megawatt-hour, roughly on par with the emissions rate of an unmitigated natural gas combined cycle unit. In order to comply, project operators must either install CCS technology or switch to natural gas or other low-carbon sources of electricity.

Under federal rules, the agency is required to finalize a regulation no later than a year after it is proposed. According to that statute, the deadline for NSPS’ finalization is April 13. Recent reports, though, have indicated that EPA is behind in its promulgation and that it might be significantly retooling the rule in order to have stronger legal footing if challenged in court. Perciasepe acknowledged on the call that the rule is running behind but did not address the latter claim.