EPA official: Carbon rules for existing power plants ‘on the table’ in 2014

Posted on 04/12/2013 by Environment and Energy Daily

(Photo by Michael M. via Creative Commons)

By Jean Chemnick

Acting U.S. EPA Administrator Bob Perciasepe said on a call with reporters Wednesday that the agency would collaborate with states to curb greenhouse gases from existing power plants in an effort that would start in fiscal 2014.

On the call to discuss EPA’s new budget proposal, Perciasepe said the agency continues to review comments on its proposed new source performance standard for future power plants. The agency faces a statutory deadline Saturday to finalize the rule, but EPA hasn’t sent it yet to the Office of Management and Budget for review.

When the new power plants rule is finished, Perciasepe said, EPA looks forward to “working with states on existing sources, but we’re not there yet.”

He added, “But that’s certainly something that will be on the table in this next fiscal year.” →

Chicago-area lakefront, rail yards among other provisions of EPA settlement

Posted on 04/11/2013 by Kari Lydersen

State Line power plant. (Photo by Eric Allix Rogers via Creative Commons)

A recent Environmental Protection Agency settlement seals the fate of a Chicago-area coal plant that’s already been shut down for more than a year, but residents will see additional benefits from other provisions.

The consent decree announced by the EPA April 1 mandates that Dominion Energy “permanently retire” the State Line power plant on the Illinois-Indiana border and install pollution controls on another coal-fired plant in Kincaid, central Illinois.

However, State Line has actually been closed since March 2012, because of competition from cheap natural gas and the impending cost of pollution controls required to meet new federal environmental regulations. There was never any indication it would reopen, and last summer it was sold to a Texas company that specializes in demolishing power plants.

But residents of northwest Indiana and the Chicago area should theoretically still see some improvement in local air quality, thanks to mitigation requirements in the consent decree that mandate Dominion fund investments to reduce diesel emissions from rail yards, trucks and buses in the Chicago area. →

Betting on Indiana coal: Duke wants ratepayers to fund retrofits, environmentalists cry foul

Posted on 01/23/2013 by Kari Lydersen

The Gibson Generating Station in southwest Indiana. (Photo by Duke Energy via Creative Commons)

Coal-fired power plants around the country are closing due to environmental regulations and competition from cheap natural gas, but during hearings before the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission earlier this month, officials from one of the state’s largest utilities sought to buck the trend.

Duke Energy Indiana is seeking permission from the state regulatory commission to bill ratepayers for making retrofits to three of its Indiana coal-fired power plants in order to comply with looming federal environmental regulations, most importantly the Mercury and Air Toxics Standard (MATS) with a 2015 deadline.

Environmental groups that submitted testimony at the hearing argued that investing in the aging coal plants is a bad deal for ratepayers, who will pick up the cost since Indiana is a regulated energy market. And, they say, it unwisely continues a dependence on electricity sources that emit high levels of carbon dioxide, further contributing to climate change.

Instead, they told the commission, Duke should invest in natural gas, energy efficiency and other options. The Indiana Citizens Action Coalition, Valley Watch, Save the Valley and the Sierra Club intervened in the regulatory proceedings (the Sierra Club is a member of RE-AMP, which also publishes Midwest Energy News).

The commission is currently considering Duke’s request to pass on about $400 million worth of pollution control investments to ratepayers for its Cayuga, Gibson and Gallagher coal plants, as phase two of an ongoing retrofit program. Duke told the commission it plans to close a fourth coal plant, the Wabash River station, though there is a possibility one of its units would be retrofitted as a natural gas plant. The average age of the four coal plants is 45 years. →

As Jackson departs, what’s next for EPA?

Posted on 01/04/2013 by ClimateWire

(Photo by Linh Do via Creative Commons)

By Tiffany Stecker

Whoever fills the vacancy in the administrator’s office at U.S. EPA will be given a long list of expected rules and be warned of legal battles needed to implement them.

Then he or she will have to brace for continuing controversy over how to use what will likely be less resources.

As Lisa Jackson bids farewell to the agency, the new administrator has an extensive to-do list for climate and air quality efforts. Carbon emissions limits for newly built power plants that were proposed last March must be finished, and standards for existing power plants — the leading source of carbon dioxide emissions in the country — have yet to be drafted.

The agency must also propose performance standards for CO2 from oil refineries. These New Source Performance Standards are the outcome of a settlement between EPA and a coalition of environmental groups and states in 2010.

“If there’s anything we’ve learned in environmental protection over the past 40 years, it’s that uncertainty is a killer,” said Becker. “Uncertainty in funding makes our already difficult challenges more daunting.”

The next EPA administrator “will have to be extremely strategic and thoughtful about resources allocation in the agency,” added Becker. “Much of that will be totally out of their control.” →

Minnesota lawmaker aims to roll back EPA regional haze powers

Posted on 10/11/2012 by Greenwire

A taconite plant in Silver Bay, Minnesota. (Photo by anthonylibrarian via Creative Commons)

By Manuel Quinones

Minnesota Republican Rep. Chip Cravaack is pushing for legislation to roll back the EPA’s ability to promulgate federal air visibility guidelines.

Cravaack’s H.R. 6507 would compel the agency to approve Minnesota Pollution Control Agency plans for dealing with regional haze. The agency would also temporarily be prohibited from pre-empting state standards.

The legislation focuses on processing facilities for taconite, a certain type of iron deposit that helps fuel the economy in Cravaack’s northeastern Minnesota district. In August, EPA proposed rules targeting emissions from those facilities.

The agency said best available retrofit technology, or BART, “is a requirement of EPA’s regional haze rule which has not been satisfied by Minnesota or Michigan for its subject taconite plants.” →

Federal appeals court tosses EPA cross-state pollution rule

Posted on 08/21/2012 by Greenwire

By Jeremy P. Jacobs

A federal appeals court Tuesday threw out U.S. EPA’s latest attempt at regulating harmful air emissions that cross state lines, a significant blow to the Obama administration.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled 2-1 that EPA’s Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, or CSAPR, be remanded to the agency and instructed EPA to try again. In the meantime, the court left in place the Clean Air Interstate Rule, or CAIR, which the same court ruled in 2008 doesn’t do enough to protect public health.

Judge Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the majority that EPA has overstepped its Clean Air Act authority.

“In this case,” he wrote, “we conclude that EPA has transgressed statutory boundaries.” →

Prairie State reverses course on Illinois coal ash site

Posted on 07/25/2012 by Dan Ferber

This diagram from an Army Corps of Engineers permit application shows the proposed location of a coal ash storage facility in Washington County, Illinois.

In 2005, Colin Kelly, then president of Prairie State Generating Company, was sworn in at a local zoning board hearing in Nashville, Illinois, a small town nestled in cornfields 60 miles southeast of St. Louis.

The company wanted to begin building the Prairie State Energy Campus, which is now the largest coal-fired power plant under construction in the United States.

The 1,600 MW plant would generate thousands of tons of coal ash, which includes toxins like arsenic, mercury, and cadmium. So the local zoning board in Washington County, Illinois, asked Kelly what his company planned to do with the plant’s coal ash if they granted the zoning variance needed to build the plant.

“All waste products will be disposed of outside of Washington County in disposal sites properly permitted by the state of Illinois,” Kelly told the zoning board.

That was then, and this is now.

On June 26, the Washington County Board met behind closed doors with the lawyer from Prairie State and passed an amendment to an ordinance that granted the company permission to build a 720-acre coal ash landfill on flat farmland near the controversial Marissa, Illinois, plant.

The amendment allowed the company to bypass the normal zoning process, which would have involved public hearings, and negotiate a contract for the landfill with the county—all out of the public eye. →

Video: EPA’s Lisa Jackson on ‘The Colbert Report’

Posted on 07/20/2012 by Ken Paulman

EPA administrator Lisa Jackson explains the origins of the EPA, as Stephen Colbert asks why she hates American jobs and wants to continue cleaning up the environment when it’s already clean: “It’s like unions and child labor laws – we don’t need those things anymore.”

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Neighbors of Indiana refinery to receive real-time pollution information

Posted on 07/18/2012 by Kari Lydersen

The BP refinery at Whiting, Indiana. (Photo by Eric Allix Rogers via Creative Commons)

For the past few years neighbors of the BP Whiting oil refinery in northwest Indiana, just across the border from Chicago, have watched the already-sprawling facility expand its footprint with new equipment to process tar sands oil from Alberta.

Tar sands and the chemicals used to dilute it so it can be transported through pipes mean more impurities and pollutants to be removed in the refining process, so local residents and environmental and health groups feared serious increases in pollution with the tar sands expansion.

But a new “open path” monitoring system likely to be announced in coming days – the result of an environmental justice lawsuit filed by neighbors – along with an EPA consent decree announced May 23 means BP Whiting can be a model for other refineries and also offers residents a chance to actively watch for signs of excessive pollution. →

Small producers hit with fallout from biodiesel fraud

Posted on 07/13/2012 by Dan Haugen

Photo by Chris Dunphy via Creative Commons

Small and midsize biodiesel producers are struggling to sell renewable fuel credits in the wake of recent fraud allegations, which have made buyers skeptical of working with lesser-known firms.

A federal jury found a Maryland man guilty last month of selling $9 million worth of fraudulent renewable fuel credits to brokers and oil companies, which have since had to pay fines and purchase new credits.

The credits, known as Renewable Identification Numbers, or RINs, are used to track oil companies’ compliance with the federal Renewable Fuel Standard, which calls for using 36 billion gallons of biofuels by 2022.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reiterated in a Congressional hearing this week that it’s up to refiners and others to perform their own due diligence on credits they buy.

The response from industry, however, has simply been to avoid buying from all but the biggest and most well-known biodiesel producers, shutting many smaller players out of the market. →

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