The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday proposed weakening an Obama-era rule that would have required new coal plants to be built with expensive technology that captures carbon emissions from their smokestacks.
EPA acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler introduced a replacement rule regulating emissions from new coal plants that would not force them to be built with carbon capture and storage, also known as CCS.
The coal industry had argued that the Obama administration’s New Source Performance Review Standard would be a de facto ban on new coal plants because it effectively would have mandated carbon capture, which is technically feasible but cost-prohibitive in many cases.
“By replacing onerous regulations with high, yet achievable standards we can continue America’s historic energy production, keep energy prices affordable, and encourage new investments in cutting edge technology that can be exported around the world,” Wheeler said.
The Trump EPA’s version of the rule softens the standard, encouraging so-called higher efficiency critical or supercritical power plants that burn coal at higher temperatures than conventional technologies, requiring less energy.
Under the Trump administration’s rule, carbon dioxide emissions from new large coal plants would not be allowed to exceed 1,900 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour of electricity. The Obama rule limited emissions to 1,400 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour.
Wheeler made the announcement at EPA headquarters alongside Harry Alford, CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce; Michelle Bloodworth, president and CEO of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity; and Kirk Johnson, senior vice president of government relations, at the National Rural Electric Cooperative.
“If we are ever going to build new coal plants in the country again, we will need reasonable standards,” Bloodworth told the Washington Examiner in an interview.
Alford and Johnson, meanwhile, argued the Obama-era regulation would raise electricity prices and disproportionately hurt minority and rural communities.
The new proposal, which will take months to be finalized as it goes through public comment, is a companion of sorts to a Trump administration proposal early this year to replace the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan regulating carbon emissions from existing coal plants.
The Trump EPA’s Affordable Clean Energy or ACE rule proposal does not set a specific target to reduce carbon emissions or force a shift in the electricity sector away from coal plants to natural gas and zero-carbon renewable energy, as the Clean Power Plan did.
Instead, it gives states the authority to write rules regulating their power plants, and encourages utilities to invest in efficiency upgrades.
But utilities are expressing little interest in the Trump administration’s bid to help keep their coal plants alive, or build new ones, remaining committed to providing energy from cleaner and cheaper sources such as natural gas, wind, and solar.
“Utilities weren’t building new coal-fired power plants when Obama put the CCS rule in place, and I don’t see that changing if the Trump administration lifts the CCS requirement,” Brian Potts, a lawyer who represents utilities at Perkins Coie, told the Washington Examiner. “As long as natural gas prices stay low and the federal renewable tax credits stay in place, utilities won’t have much of an appetite to build new coal-fired power plants.”
The EPA, in its own analysis supporting the rule change, predicts little demand for new coal plants.
EPA projects “at most, few new, reconstructed, or modified” coal plants. That logic also explains why Wheeler said he does not expect the new relaxed rule to “significantly” increase carbon emissions.
Trump administration allies suggested the move to encourage new coal plants is meant to be symbolic to show support for a fledgling industry that the president leans on for political support.
“It’s partly to correct the record,” Jeff Holmstead, a former deputy administrator of the EPA in the George W. Bush administration who now represents energy clients at the Bracewell law firm, told the Washington Examiner. “It’s also party symbolic. The administration wants to show they are supportive of new coal fired power plants. This is one of things they can do to make that point.”
Critics, however, worry the Trump administration’s move sends the wrong signal about building CCS, which experts say is a key lever to combat climate change.
Recent reports by the United Nations and U.S. federal government say implementing carbon capture is necessary for keeping the world under 1.5 degrees Celsius to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.
CCS technology removes carbon dioxide from a power plant’s exhaust, so as to not release it into the atmosphere. The carbon can be cooled and injected as a liquid underground. Some technologies can use the captured carbon for other energy uses.
For example, the Petra Nova plant outside Houston, America’s only successfully running carbon capture facility, sends the carbon dioxide via pipeline to nearby oil fields, where it is used to assist in the extraction of crude oil. The sale of carbon dioxide as a commodity helps to offset the added cost of the CCS technology.
Joseph Goffman, an environmental law professor at Harvard University and former EPA attorney in the Obama administration, said CCS has proven to work, even if not yet on a large scale, and is the best method to reduce carbon emissions from coal plants.
He also pointed to the Boundary Dam power station in Canada, a coal power plant that in 2014 became the first in the world to successfully retrofit CCS, which is more expensive than starting from scratch with a new facility.
“CCS is not a hypothetical option,” Goffman told the Washington Examiner. “It is in operation. The Obama rule looked at the question of what works to reduce C02 emissions and found a square on answer which was CCS.”
Both parties in Congress also support more development of CCS, approving a bill signed by Trump last year that extended and expanded an existing tax credit to help fund those technologies.
Next year, Congress is expected to consider a bill passed by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that would build on the tax credit by requiring the government to research carbon capture and utilization technologies that would trap carbon from industrial facilities and reuse it for commercial products.
Wheeler, and allies of the EPA, say they support the development of the CCS.
“We are encouraging people to continue to deploy CCS,” Wheeler told reporters Thursday. “We want to see continued investment of that technology.”
But government regulation should not require it, he and his supporters say.
“It’s important we figure how out to use coal without contributing to climate change,” Holmstead told the Washington Examiner. “CCS seems to be the only answer. It’s really important from a global perspective to look for opportunities to lower the cost of CCS. But this kind of regulatory mandate does not really help.”
