The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) just finalized rules to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. But it still doesn’t take action against the country’s gas-fired power plants. That’s a major oversight considering that the U.S. gets 43 percent of its electricity from gas, more than any other energy source.
EPA Administrator Michael Regan says the agency is taking more time to tighten rules for existing gas-fired power plants. But waiting too long risks leaving the decision to a possible future Trump administration, which tried to gut environmental protections last time. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking for the US to meet its climate commitments under the Paris Agreement. Under that agreement, the Biden administration has committed to cutting its carbon pollution in half from 2005 levels by the end of the decade.
“An incremental approach won’t get us there.”
“An incremental approach will not get us there,” wrote Marcene Mitchell, senior vice president for climate change at the World Wildlife Fund, in an emailed comment The edge. “The Biden administration has a responsibility to set a clear direction for phasing out fossil fuels. They have taken comprehensive action before and we now expect comprehensive action that will not be undermined by loopholes.”
The EPA says it is taking action on existing natural gas facilities – that it is, in fact, committed to “expeditiously proposing greenhouse gas emissions guidelines for these facilities” and plans to propose new rules. However, currently only submissions for the proposed rule are being collected in a “non-regulatory protocol,” which, according to EPA’s website, is “not related to the development of a rule.” We’ll speak with EPA Administrator Michael Regan later today about how the process might work.
“What we’re doing with the status of existing natural gas facilities is a direct response to … both our industry stakeholders and our environmental stakeholders who have said ‘you can do better.’ And we’ve decided to take on that challenge ” said Regan in a press conference yesterday.
The agency did not say how long that process might take, but said it could leave the decision to voters in November. When Donald Trump was in office, his administration rolled back more than 100 environmental regulations. Trump replaced the Obama administration’s proposed power plant pollution regulations with his own weaker measures, which a federal court blocked before they could be implemented.
Even now, the EPA’s power plant regulations are likely to be challenged in court and by a divided Congress. The agency’s ability to regulate the energy sector has already been limited by the Supreme Court. In 2022, it was ruled that the EPA cannot limit greenhouse gas emissions in a way that determines what energy sources the US uses. In other words, it can’t openly push utilities to switch to renewable energy like solar and wind. The decision effectively forced the EPA to rely on controversial carbon capture technologies in any effort to reduce power plant emissions.
Under rules announced today by the EPA, newly built gas-fired power plants and existing coal-fired power plants must ultimately “control 90 percent of their carbon pollution.” In this case, control actually means capturing CO2 emissions using technologies that remove the greenhouse gas from smokestack exhaust before it can enter the atmosphere.
Carbon capture technology is loved by fossil fuel companies and despised by many environmental and health advocates – because instead of phasing out fossil fuel power plants, utilities can keep these plants open longer while meeting climate goals. This is a major disappointment for communities that had hoped that the transition to renewable energy would eliminate other pollutants such as soot and smog from power plants.
“We’re talking about experimentally implementing all of our hopes and dreams for the future [carbon capture] technology,” says Maria Lopez-Nuñez, board member of the Climate Justice Alliance and deputy director of the Ironbound Community Corporation in Newark, New Jersey.
Lopez-Nuñez says she lives in a neighborhood with three power plants within four square miles. When the Biden administration first proposed tougher carbon emissions standards for power plants last year, it also referenced existing gas-fired power plants — but similarly relied on carbon capture to clean them up. This would not have eliminated other air pollutants from power plants that her community struggles with, Lopez-Nuñez says.
She wants the EPA to consider the cumulative impacts of power plants on residents when drafting new rules and thinks it’s worth taking a risk in the upcoming presidential election if the agency is serious about crafting tougher rules .
“You better not mislead people with the delay, because our impression is that the delay is intended to strengthen the rule, not … just delay it until the election.” This is not a political game, you know , there are real lives at stake,” she says.
Another big problem is cost
Another major problem with carbon capture is cost. According to a 2021 Government Accountability Office report, the Department of Energy (DOE) has already lost hundreds of millions of dollars funding carbon capture projects that ultimately failed. After spending $684 million on carbon capture projects at six coal-fired power plants, only one got off the ground – the others simply couldn’t sustain themselves financially. The only project that was able to become operational later had to be shut down in 2020 because it also couldn’t sustain itself during the pandemic, but went back online last year in Texas.
Given these challenges, EPA’s final rule also gives power plants more time to comply with pollution reduction measures. Power plants have until 2032 to comply, two years later than the EPA originally proposed last year. The Biden administration sought to reduce the cost of carbon capture by expanding tax credits for the technologies in 2022. The hope is that it will be cheaper in the future than when these DOE-funded projects failed.
According to the EPA, coal-fired power plants are dirtier than gas-fired power plants and are therefore still the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the power sector. The new rules are expected to prevent 1.38 billion tons of carbon pollution by 2047, the equivalent of eliminating nearly a full year’s worth of emissions from the energy sector. The EPA today also tightened limits on mercury emissions, water pollution and coal ash from power plants. Overall, the measures sparked widespread celebration among environmental groups.
“The new standards announced today will dramatically reduce climate pollution while ensuring millions of people have cleaner, safer air and water,” said Abigail Dillen, president of the environmental justice nonprofit Earthjustice, in an emailed comment The edge. “Tackling pollution from existing gas-fired power plants is the essential next step.”