SOUTHERN STATES COMPACT URGES EPA CAUTION IN CO2 REGS

Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
10/18/13

An interstate compact representing governors and lawmakers from more than a dozen southern states passed a pair of resolutions at its annual meeting this week urging caution from the Environmental Protection Agency as it formulates carbon standards for new and existing power plants. One of the resolutions passed by members of the Southern States Energy Board (SSEB) calls on the EPA to provide a detailed, state-by-state synopsis of the greenhouse gas emissions reductions that will be required under the agency’s upcoming carbon performance standards for existing power plants. Under President Barack Obama’s climate action plan introduced earlier this summer, the EPA is required to propose those standards in June 2014. But in its resolution passed this week, the SSEB said EPA should release many of the details by the end of the year. “SSEB requests that the EPA provide a transparent and detailed accounting, state-by-state, of the expected reductions of GHG emissions resulting from their proposed standards to reduce them,” the compact said in the resolution.

The other resolution approved by the SSEB calls on EPA to set separate emissions standards for future coal and gas plants—which the agency suggested it would do under its recently-proposed new source standards. The SSEB commended joint-government and industry efforts to develop carbon capture and storage technologies, but said EPA needs to set emissions standards that can be “achieved with commercially-demonstrated technologies” that would “permit the economic utilization of all types of domestic coals.” The SSEB manages one of DOE’s regional carbon sequestration partnerships, the Southeast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership, and helps oversee large-scale CO2 sequestration work in Mississippi and Alabama. In the weeks since EPA released its draft standards for new power plants, which essentially requires new coal units to incorporate CCS technology, some coal boosters have said the standards are unachievable and would drive power producers to cheap natural gas.

During a speech at this week’s meeting, the SSEB’s chair-elect, Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley (R), said EPA needs to do more to consider the “economic impacts of regulations that would hurt our coal facilities.” “The EPA must also consider the impacts on the reliability and affordability of energy … and the role of states and the crucial impact that we must have in this regulations,” he said in remarks Oct. 14. “The EPA should not overreach, and I believe the EPA should listen to the listen to the experience and the expertise that we have here in the states. We understand the importance of energy in our communities and the jobs that are at stake, the livelihoods of our residents and the future of our industries.”