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U.S. Panel Splits Over New Technology Rules for Carbon Dioxide
2010-09-28 14:26:03.549 GMT
By Simon Lomax
Sept. 28 (Bloomberg) -- A panel advising the Obama
administration on carbon dioxide regulations is deadlocked over
what pollution-cutting technology power plants, factories and
refineries should be required to use starting in 2011.
After nearly a year of talks, the work group couldn't
reconcile "divergent points of view," according to a copy of
its report to the Environmental Protection Agency. Companies
represented on the panel included utilities American Electric
Power Co. and Southern Co. It also included officials from
national environmental groups and state regulatory agencies.
"There were points in this process where you could not get
enough Novocain to make it bearable," said David Doniger, a
policy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council and a
member of the 45-member Climate Change Work Group established in
October 2009 by the EPA.
The federal agency plans to enforce greenhouse gas limits
under the existing Clean Air Act after Congress failed to pass a
new cap-and-trade law in which companies would have bought and
sold the right to pollute. Starting next year, some newly built
or modified sources of industrial pollution, such as power
plants, would have to use the "best-available" technology to
cut their carbon output.
The EPA hasn't yet announced what it considers the best-
available technology and the work group was established to help
the agency make that decision. While the deadlock on the panel
won't stop the EPA from moving ahead, it shows the agency will
have a fight on its hands no matter what it decides, said Peter
Glaser, a Washington-based partner at law firm Troutman Sanders
LLP.
'Litigated Debate'
"We are going to have a very long, protracted, litigated
debate," Glaser, whose clients include coal-mining companies,
said in a telephone interview.
The EPA's plans are already under attack in federal court,
with at least four lawsuits challenging recent decisions by the
agency concerning greenhouse gases, Glaser said.
In Congress, a Republican-led effort to strip the agency of
its authority over greenhouse gases was defeated in the Senate
in June. Still, some Democrats, including West Virginia Senator
Jay Rockefeller and Texas Representative Gene Green, have called
for a two-year suspension of the agency's carbon rules for
industrial sources to give lawmakers more time to come up with
another plan.
During the work group's negotiations over best-available
control technology, some companies that own and operate power
plants were "extremely reluctant" to make any concessions,
Doniger said in a telephone interview.
Fuel Switching
They rebuffed proposals to use the best-available-
technology requirement to force some power plants to switch from
coal to cleaner burning natural gas, Doniger said. Mandated
improvements in energy-efficiency, which would cut emissions by
saving fuel, and technology that converts coal into a synthetic
gas were also rejected, he said.
"The circumstances don't seem to be right for
negotiating," Doniger said.
Power companies are fighting efforts to define the best-
available technology because they reject the idea of regulating
greenhouse gases from industrial sources under the Clean Air
Act, John McManus, American Electric's vice president of
environmental services and a member of the EPA's advisory panel,
said in a telephone interview.
Regulatory Debate
While the Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that greenhouse gases
could be regulated under the Clean Air Act, the regulatory
programs established by the statute aren't up to the task,
McManus said.
Those programs work for problems like smog and acid rain
because there is proven "back-end control technology" that can
be fitted to the smokestack of a power plant to capture those
pollutants, he said.
Equipment that captures and stores carbon dioxide is still
being developed, with the Obama administration spending $1
billion on revamping an Illinois power plant to test the
viability of capturing carbon dioxide and sending the gas via
pipeline to sites where it will be stored underground. American
Electric is also testing carbon-capture technology at a coal-
fired plant in West Virginia.
The Clean Air Act "was never intended for an issue like
this one" and the EPA should give Congress more time to pass
legislation that includes greenhouse-gas limits while
recognizing carbon-capture technology isn't ready yet, McManus
said.
'More Rational'
"We really need legislation that comes up with a more
rational system," he said.
The agency's decision won't be binding on state and local
air quality agencies, Bill Becker, executive director of the
National Association of Clean Air Agencies, said in a telephone
interview.
Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA's definition of best-
available technology is a guidance document for the state and
local authorities who decide on a case-by-case basis which power
plants, factories and refineries need to install new pollution
controls, Becker said.
"It's guided by EPA materials but it is a decision by the
permitting authority, not by EPA," he said.
For Related News and Information:
Top environment stories: GREEN <GO>
Stories about U.S. and climate: TNI US CLIMATE <GO>
Global emissions data: EMIS <GO>
Northeast U.S. trading: RGGI <GO>
--Editors: Dan Stets, Bill Banker
To contact the reporter on this story:
Simon Lomax in Washington at +1-202-654-4305 or
slomax@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Dan Stets at +1-212-617-4403 or dstets@bloomberg.net.
