EPA proposes initial limits on climate pollution from existing power plants

The Biden administration on Thursday announced the first regulations to limit greenhouse gas pollution from existing power plants, capping an unparalleled set of climate policies that, taken together, could significantly reduce the country’s contribution to global warming.

The proposals aim to effectively eliminate carbon dioxide emissions from the country’s electricity sector by 2040.

The power plant regulations come on the heels of other plans from the Biden administration reduce tailpipe emissions by accelerating the country’s transition to electric vehiclesUnpleasant prevent methane leaks from oil and gas wells and to phase out the use of a planet-warming chemical in refrigerants. Together with the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which puts more than $370 billion into clean energy programs, the actions would catapult the United States to the forefront of the fight to limit global warming.

“We are in the defining decade for climate action, and the president has been clear about his goals in this area, and we will meet them,” Bidens senior climate adviser, Ali Zaidi, said in a phone call with reporters on Wednesday.

The government does not mandate the use of equipment to capture carbon emissions before they leave the chimney, a nascent and expensive technology. Rather, it sets limits on pollution rates, which power plant operators would have to meet. They could do this by using a different technology or, in the case of gas-fired power stations, by switching to a fuel source such as green hydrogen, which does not emit any CO2.

The country’s 3,400 coal and gas-fired power plants currently generate about 25 percent of the greenhouse gases produced by the United States, pollution that is dangerously warming the planet.

The plan is sure to meet opposition from the fossil fuel industry, power plant operators and their allies in Congress. It will likely bring an immediate legal challenge from a group of Republican attorneys general who have already sued the Biden administration to stop other climate policies. A future government could also weaken the regulation.

“This proposal will put even more strain on the U.S. power grid and undermine decades of work to reliably turn on lights across the country,” said Jim Matheson, president of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, which operates power plants that serving the country’s least developed communities.

Patrick Morrisey, West Virginia’s Republican attorney general, who has led a multi-state legal battle over the past decade to curtail the EPA’s authority, predicted that the latest proposals would not survive court battles. “It will not be enforced, and it seems only intended to scare more coal plants into retirement — the goal of the Biden administration,” he said.

Senator Joe Manchin III, the West Virginia Democrat who has opposed many of his party’s climate policies, said Wednesday he would oppose all of Mr Biden’s nominees for the EPA unless the administration dropped the ordinance — a threat that teeth into the closely divided Senate.

“This government is determined to advance its radical climate agenda and has made it clear that they are making every effort to decommission coal and gas-fired power plants, regardless of the cost to energy security and reliability.” said Mr. Manchin, who made millions from his family’s coal business. Mr. Manchin faces a potentially tough re-election campaign next year that could see him face off against Governor Jim Justice, a Republican who has announced he will run for the Senate in 2024. West Virginia has moved increasingly to the right; voters there supported Donald J. Trump over Mr. Biden by 39 points in 2020.

Michael S. Regan, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, announced the proposed regulations in a speech delivered on the campus of the University of Maryland on Thursday. EPA officials chose the university setting to appeal to young climate activists they hope will help vote for Biden’s 2024 reelection campaign.

“Each generation has its own defining challenge, one that will shape countless lives and impact the future for decades to come, and climate change is that challenge for you,” Mr. Regan told the students. “We see you, we hear you, and I’m sure President Biden does too. That is why, upon taking office, President Biden launched the most ambitious climate agenda in United States history.”

Many youthful climate activists were furious with Mr Biden after he approved a massive oil drilling project on pristine federal land in Alaska, known as Willow. They view the president’s actions as a betrayal of his 2020 campaign pledge to halt new oil and gas drilling on public land.

The White House argues that the collective impact of Mr Biden’s climate regulations and legislation, in terms of reduced emissions, outweighs any environmental damage the Willow project would cause.

Burning oil drilled at the Willow site would release an estimated 280 million tons of carbon dioxide that warms the planet, according to the White House. The new power plant rules would reduce emissions by 617 million tons between 2028 and 2042, according to the EPA. Adding the other proposed EPA regulations would bring the total amount of emissions eliminated to 15 billion tons by 2055 — roughly the amount of pollution caused by the entire U.S. economy three years from now. Several analyzes have predicted that the Inflation Reduction Act will reduce emissions by at least another billion tons by 2030.

That could put the nation on track to fulfill Mr Biden’s promise that the United States would cut its greenhouse gases in half by 2030 and stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere altogether by 2050, though analysts point out that more policies need to be put in place. to achieve the latter goal.

That’s the action all major industrialized nations must take, scientists say, to prevent the global average temperature from rising by 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to pre-industrial levels. Beyond that point, the impacts of catastrophic heat waves, floods, droughts, crop failures and species extinctions would become significantly more difficult for humanity to handle. The planet has already warmed by an average of 1.1 degrees Celsius.

“Each of these different regulations from the EPA adds to the whole picture needed to keep this ocean liner away from the worst climate catastrophe,” said Dallas Burtraw, an economist with Resources for the Future, a nonpartisan research organization focused on on energy and environmental policy.

EPA officials say the proposed regulations are designed to provide industry flexibility. For example, coal plants that retire before 2032 may not need to install new pollution controls such as carbon capture technology. About a quarter of the working coal-fired power plants are already scheduled to retire in 2029according to the Energy Information Administration.

While the proposed rules would increase costs for power plant operators, the EPA estimates that limiting smokestack pollution by 2042 would provide a net economic benefit of up to $85 billion through improved public health from lower levels of soot and sulfur dioxide, which spit out too. coal plants.

According to the EPA, by 2030, the proposed standards would prevent about 1,300 premature deaths, more than 800 hospital and emergency room visits, more than 300,000 asthma attacks, 38,000 school absences, and 66,000 lost workdays

In some ways, the EPA regulation is designed to accelerate changes already underway in the energy industry.

Coal, the nastiest fossil fuel, is in decline – no new coal-fired power plants have been built in the United States in the past decade. In the same time frame, the cost of wind and solar energy has fallen sharply and electricity generation from wind turbines and solar panels has fallen. more than tripled. Wind now generates more than 10 percent of the country’s electricity, and solar energy now yields about 3 percent and growing fast. As a result, planet-warming pollution from power plant chimneys dropped by about 25 percent in the last decade, without any direct regulation.

In recent years, many major electric companies have announced goals to stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by 2045 or 2050.

“Our emissions continue to fall as an industry, and we predict that will continue to do so regardless of the rule,” said Emily Fisher, executive vice president of clean energy and general counsel at the Edison Electric Institute, an organization that works on behalf of electric utilities owned by investors.

But some lobbyists say the timeline proposed by the Biden administration goes beyond what the industry can achieve.

“They didn’t just come up with those goals on the back of an envelope,” said Jeffrey Holmstead, an attorney who represents fossil fuel and electric companies at the firm Bracewell LLP. If the intention is to go significantly faster, then companies are going to be really concerned.”

Lissa Lynch, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group, said electric companies had complained about new clean air regulations for decades, but had finally succeeded in complying. “The industry always claims they are impossible to comply with, cost too much money, threaten reliability and the economy,” she said of the regulations. “Ultimately, they continue to innovate and comply, often well ahead of deadlines.”

Nearly a decade ago, Mr Biden’s former boss, President Barack Obama, attempted to regulate power plant emissions. His government wrote broad and ambitious regulations designed to replace coal-fired power stations with wind farms and solar panels.

That policy was never implemented. It was first blocked by the Supreme Court and later reversed by President Donald J. Trump.

Last summer, the Supreme Court upheld that the EPA has the authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, but to a limited extent.

Biden administration officials involved in the new power plant rule — many of whom worked on the defunct Obama rule — have tried to make sure it stands up to close scrutiny this time around.

“In light of what the Supreme Court ruled, they’re not going for a home run,” said Richard Lazarus, a professor of environmental law at Harvard Law School. “They swing for a hit.”