The Washington Post reports the Environmental Protection Agency will release proposed regulations governing the emissions of greenhouse gas emissions from power plants this week, perhaps as early as today. As described by the Post, this New Source Performance Standard regulation could put a halt to the construction of new coal-fired power plants unless and until carbon sequestration or some other GHG-emission-reducing technology becomes economically viable.
The proposed rule — years in the making and approved by the White House after months of review — will require any new power plant to emit no more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt of electricity produced. The average U.S. natural gas plant, which emits 800 to 850 pounds of CO2 per megawatt, meets that standard; coal plants emit an average of 1,768 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt.
Industry officials and environmentalists said in interviews that the rule, which comes on the heels of tough new requirements that the Obama administration imposed on mercury emissions and cross-state pollution from utilities within the past year, dooms any proposal to build a coal-fired plant that does not have costly carbon controls.
“This standard effectively bans new coal plants,” said Joseph Stanko, who heads government relations at the law firm Hunton and Williams and represents several utility companies. “So I don’t see how that is an ‘all of the above’ energy policy.”
The rule provides an exception for coal plants that are already permitted and beginning construction within a year. There are about 20 coal plants now pursuing permits; two of them are federally subsidized and would meet the new standard with advanced pollution controls.
These new regulations are but one piece of the surge in GHG regulations the EPA is adopting under the Clean Air Act as a consequence of Massachusetts v. EPA.
UPDATE: Here is EPA’s release and website on the new standard