Karen Frantz
GHG Monitor
1/31/2014
Murray Energy Corporation is planning to sue the Environmental Protection Agency over its draft rule limiting greenhouse gas emissions from new coal-fired power plants, arguing that the EPA did not adequately consider how the rule might affect jobs as required by the Clean Air Act. In a notice of intent to take civil action that was sent to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy last week, Murray said, “Over the past five years, EPA has waged what can fairly be described as a war on coal, repeatedly and consistently encouraging sources to switch from coal to other fuels, to shut down coal-fired sources, and to avoid constructing new coal-fired sources, all through EPA’s administration and enforcement of the Clean Air Act. You have a nondiscretionary duty under [Section 321(a) of the Clean Air Act] to continuously evaluate the employment effects of these actions but have failed to do so. Your failure to fulfill this duty prevents Murray Energy from obtaining and using EPA’s continuous evaluations of employment effects to address and ameliorate the devastating economic consequences of EPA’s actions on the coal industry.” The EPA did not respond to a request for comment.
Section 321(a) of the Clean Air Act stipulates that “The Administrator shall conduct continuing evaluations of potential loss or shifts of employment which may result from the administration or enforcement of the provision of this chapter and applicable implementation plans, including where appropriate, investigating threatened plant closures or reductions in employment allegedly resulting from such administration or enforcement.” But Murray said in the letter that it has not found any indication that EPA has conducted such an evaluation, pointing to several instances in which McCarthy told Congress that the Agency did not interpret the Clean Air Act as requiring it to conduct the evaluations. The letter also contended that McCarthy’s answers about EPA’s compliance at a recent Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing were “dilatory and nonspecific.” At that hearing, McCarthy said that the EPA is working as best it can “to do a complete economic analysis,” saying it was “pulling together an expert panel under our Science Advisory Board to continue to look at these issues and to mature that science as best we can.”
Company Raises ‘War on Coal’ Charge
The EPA’s New Source Performance Standards rule limiting carbon dioxide emissions from new fossil fuel-fired electric utility generating units sets separate CO2 emissions standards for coal and gas units. Depending on whether plant operators decide to measure CO2 emissions over a 12- or 84-month operating period, individual coal units would have to cap emissions at between 1,000 and 1,100 lbs CO2/MWh (compared to the average uncontrolled coal unit, which emits upwards of 1,800 lbs CO2/MWh), a bar that detractors have said is far too high to be feasibly met. Opponents have also decried a provision of the rule—which identifies the “partial” capture and storage of roughly 30 to 50 percent of a plant’s emissions as the best system of emission reduction technology for coal plants—because they argue that CCS is not yet viable on a commercial scale.
Murray’s notice pointed to the rule, as well as other actions the Administration has undertaken, as evidence that Obama has targeted coal. “In the past five years, EPA has administered and enforced the Clean Air Act in a manner that places immense pressure on the electric generating sector—and other industries that traditionally burn coal—to reduce their consumption of coal by: (1) encouraging facilities to switch from coal to other fuels; (2) imposing costly regulations that have compelled or incentivized existing coal-burning facilities to shut down; (3) engaging in enforcement activities that discourage the repair and continued operation of existing coal-burning facilities; and (4) developing regulations and guidance that will make it more costly—and in many cases impractical—for new coal-burning facilities to be constructed,” the letter said.
Murray also said additional rules the Administration has promulgated are more “onerous” for coal-burning facilities than facilities that burn other sources of fuel. “These actions have threatened and impeded our nation’s economy and the economic well-being of its citizens, both of which are heavily dependent upon the availability of lower-cost electricity fueled by our country’s coal industry,” the notice said. “EPA has taken these actions to discourage the use and production of coal without adequate evaluation and consideration of their implications for the jobs of many thousands of employees in the coal sector and many other dependent industries.”
