The Environmental Protection Agency is delaying finalization of rules for regulating emissions from new, existing and modified power plants until “mid-summer,” the agency announced Wednesday.
The rule for new power plants was slated for finalization Thursday, but EPA Air and Radiation Administrator Janet McCabe said that “overlap” with the proposal for existing power plant compelled the agency to finish them at the same time. The existing power plant rule was due in June, but now appears to be coming later.
“Given the issues that overlap we need to be thinking about them in the same timeframe,” she told reporters on a media call.
McCabe also announced Wednesday that the EPA had drafted a federal implementation plan to use if states don’t meet the targets the agency sets in the existing power plant rule. She said the Clean Air Act requires such a plan, and that it would be put to a formal rule-making process that includes a comment period.
Failing to comply with the federal rule — if it survives likely legal challenges — would allow the EPA to impose sanctions on those states, such as implementing an agency emissions reduction plan for the state, withdrawing highway funds or restricting permits for factories and other industrial polluters.
“We are very hopeful that every state … feels it’s in their best interest to develop their own plan, but we do have an obligation under the Clean Air Act to have a federal plan,” McCabe said.
Governors and lawmakers in red states have focused much of their attention on the EPA proposal to regulate emissions from existing power plants. Some are considering legislation that would make it more difficult for states to meet individual reduction goals as well as a nationwide target to slash electricity emissions 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.
As for new coal-fired power plants, the proposed rule requires those facilities to have carbon capture and storage technology. The technology traps carbon emissions and pumps them underground.
Industry groups, conservatives and coal-state lawmakers say the solution is unworkable because the electricity sector hasn’t used the technology on a commercial scale without subsidies. The EPA, however, maintains that carbon capture and storage has worked in other industries and would be ready by the time the rule goes into effect.
The rule has received less attention simply because few utilities are trying to build coal-fired power plants. That’s because natural gas prices are low in the United States as a result of a hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, boom that has unlocked abundant supplies and made the U.S. the world’s top natural gas producer.
