LAWMAKERS PROPOSE TO LINK EPA CARBON STANDARDS, CCS FEASIBILITY

Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
5/31/13

A group of House lawmakers reintroduced legislation late last week that would prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from finalizing carbon standards for new or existing power plants until carbon capture and storage is deemed economically and technologically feasible by at least three government agencies. The bill has half a dozen co-sponsors, mainly from coal-reliant states like Virginia and Ohio, and would bar EPA from promulgating the standards “unless and until” three of four specified government agencies—the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, the Energy Information Administration, the Government Accountability Office or the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology—conclude that carbon capture has become “technologically and economically feasible.” The measure also stipulates that the EPA Administrator separately determine that CCS is the “best” system of emissions reductions mandated in a ruling, taking into account cost, energy requirements and health and environmental impacts.

Rep. David McKinley (R-W.Va.) introduced essentially the same bill last Congress, but the measure never made it out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, despite what appeared to be support from the Committee’s Republican leaders. McKinley brought forward the legislation last July to fight what he said was the “unreasonable” greenhouse gas emissions performance standard for new fossil plants proposed by the EPA earlier that spring. The Agency’s March 2012 draft rule sets a performance standard of 1,000 lbs of CO2 per MWh for all future fossil units above 25 MW, a level roughly on par with an unmitigated natural gas combined cycle unit. The draft rule allows generators to meet the standard by either switching to a cleaner fuel or installing CCS technology.

But McKinley, as well as other opponents on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said the rule would be a death wish to coal and a handout to the natural gas industry since CCS is not yet economically competitive with gas. “This preliminary EPA rule could literally cripple the future of coal because the implementation of carbon capture is not yet technologically or economically feasible,” McKinley said at the time. “Utilities will simply stop building coal fired power plants and switch to gas fired units.” Supporters, meanwhile, countered that the rule could incentivize a CCS industry given a 30-year averaging provision written into the draft standard.

Rule Has Yet to Be Finalized

Now, nearly a year later, little has advanced in terms of the rule’s promulgation. EPA missed the April 13 deadline to finalize the standard, as rumors circulated that the Agency was overhauling portions of the proposal in order to bolster its argument in court if sued by opponents as expected. As a result, a handful of states and environmental groups threatened to sue EPA if it did not soon finalize the standards. “EPA’s inaction with respect to the proposed NSPS violates [a section of the Clean Air Act], which unambiguously directs EPA to issue final rules within one year of publication of a proposed” performance standard, a trio of environmental groups said in an April 15 letter to acting EPA Administrator Bob Perciasepe. “EPA’s failure to promptly propose and finalize emission guidelines for carbon pollution from existing power plants violates [another section] of the Act and EPA’s regulations implementing that section.”