EPA proposed new rules to limit carbon emissions from coal and gas-fired power plants

The purpose of the proposed EPA rule is to force the premature closure of coal and natural gas power generating plants with total disregard for the resulting instability of the nation's power grids.

The proposed rule to limit carbon emissions from coal and natural gas-fired power plants lived up to expectations with its unobtainable goals, overreaching scope, and unconstitutional policymaking. This proposed rule is essentially Obama’s 2015 “Clean Power Plan” on steroids. This rule was likely written by the same people that wrote the 2015 plan and are still hanging around the EPA, along with their friends in the anti-fossil fuel NGOs, such as Environmental Defense Fund and others, because there has always been a swinging door between the EPA and these NGOs.

This proposed rule, titled Greenhouse Gas Standards and Guidelines for Fossil Fuel-Fired Power Plants, puts natural gas in the same category as coal: they are so bad that they must be eliminated. The fact that CO2 emissions in the U.S. have been declining for years precisely due to natural gas power generation replacing coal-fired generation seems to be ignored by the EPA. This trend will continue, but that is not good enough for the EPA. It wants even more significant reductions and plans to achieve that goal by eliminating coal and natural gas for power generation regardless of the impact on U.S. electric grids.

A significant difference between this EPA’s latest proposed rule and the 2015 Clean Power Plan is that instead of allowing the industry to decide how they will comply with the regulations, this version mandates that fossil fuel power generation facilities spend trillions of dollars for carbon capture and sequestration, CCS, a technology that does not exist at the scale required to achieve the desired goals. Large-scale CCS is years, if not decades, away from industrial-level carbon capture and the pipeline infrastructure to transport CO2 from the point of capture to the storage areas.

The anti-fossil fuel NGOs have had some successes in halting the construction of natural gas pipelines, and they will likely oppose pipelines that carry CO2 because CO2 has been demonized as the most dangerous substance in the world, capable of destroying the planet. Why would they allow a pipeline carrying CO2 to be built anywhere? One NGO recently said:

“Any compromise that would fast track fossil fuel projects or erode bedrock environmental protections like the National Environmental Policy Act or the Clean Water Act is a non-starter – period,” Sierra Club Executive Director Ben Jealous said in a statement.

Likewise, the storage or sequestration of CO2, which involves pumping CO2 underground, will encounter significant public pushback. As Executive Director of the Barnett Shale Energy Education Council during the “shale boom” days, I know firsthand that some of the public did not readily accept the idea of pumping water and additives into the ground for fracking. As people better understood hydraulic fracturing, many of those concerns were alleviated. However, the pushback against transporting and sequestering planet-killing carbon dioxide will be challenging to overcome.

What is terrifying about the proposed new rules is the EPA’s complete disregard for the stability of the U.S. electrical grid and their willingness to risk the health and safety of the economy and United States citizens. The timing of this EPA proposed rule is interesting as it comes just weeks after all four FERC Commissioners testified before the Senate Energy Committee that coal plants are needed to maintain the electrical grid's stability. That came after the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) issued warnings for years about the potential grid problems due to the increase in retirements of dispatchable electricity generation.

EPA claims their proposal “relies on proven, readily available technologies to limit carbon pollution,” which I assume is carbon capture. But in the Wall Street Journal on May 12, 2023, the day the EPA announced their proposed rules, was an article titled “Carbon Capture Is Hard. This Plant Shows Why.” The article describes where CCS currently stands:

Only one commercial power plant in North America is currently operating with carbon capture. Its experience hasn’t been as smooth—or climate-friendly—as proponents of the rules might hope. 

The facts do not support EPA’s statement that CCS is a “proven, readily available technolog(y).”   

A clear-headed analysis clearly shows that the EPA proposal to eliminate coal and natural gas from power generation is not grounded in reality, is unachievable, and, as far as global CO2 emissions are concerned, will accomplish nothing because U.S. CO2 emissions are a small part of worldwide emissions. The graph below shows that U.S. CO2 emissions are 14.6% of worldwide emissions, while China’s emissions are 27.7%. Furthermore, China has been clear that they are prioritizing economic growth, not the reduction of carbon dioxide, in the next few decades. If all U.S. CO2 emissions were eliminated, global emissions would continue to rise.

What happens next?

Obama’s 2015 Clean Power Plan was shot down by the Supreme Court in West VA v. EPA, with the Supreme Court ruling that Congress had not given the EPA power to impose the proposed rules. Nothing has changed since then. Congress has not given Congress the EPA the power to implement such rulings, so the Supreme Court is likely once again to shoot down this EPA plan. Of course, getting through the legal system will take years, but hopefully, the courts will stop the implementation of the EPA regulations until the Supreme Court rules.

If the real purpose of the EPA’s proposed rules is to move the U.S. to carbon-free power generation, why not just eliminate all the chaos, legal processes, and potential damage to the power grids and implement a bold plan to enable more nuclear power to generate electricity? The technology behind nuclear power generation has progressed by leaps and bounds in recent years. It is time for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to begin fast-tracking the latest nuclear power technology and establish the U.S. as the world’s leader in zero-carbon emissions power generation. If the United States has the will, this can happen in the same time frame as the EPA’s latest proposed regulations.