EEI, 21 States Unload on Biden EPA re New Gas-Fired Plant Regs
ELECTRICAL GENERATION | INDUSTRYWIDE ISSUES | REGULATION | STATEWIDE WV | WEST VIRGINIA
EEI, 21 States Unload on Biden EPA re New Gas-Fired Plant Regs
ELECTRICAL GENERATION | INDUSTRYWIDE ISSUES | REGULATION | STATEWIDE WV | WEST VIRGINIA
August 10, 2023
In May, the Bidenistas at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a hellscape of new regulations (681 pages) aimed at forcing coal- and natural gas-fired power plants to close (see New Biden EPA Regs a “Death Sentence” for Fossil-Fuel Power Plants). The editors of the Wall Street Journal called the new EPA regulations “An EPA Death Sentence for Fossil-Fuel Power Plants,” with the subtitle “The Biden agency’s new rule means the end of natural gas-fueled electricity.” Although usually in bed with the government, utility companies, most of them represented by the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) trade organization, filed official comments on Tuesday, objecting to the proposed regulations. Also filing comments against the regs was a coalition of 21 states headed by West Virginia. It seems nobody wants these regulations.
The EEI didn’t want to tick off the Bidenistas, so it used mealy-mouthed language to express its dissent. EEI said EPA’s proposed timetable for implementing the new kill-gas-fired-plants reg could leave grid operators short of fossil fuel-based generation that may be essential to prevent power outages. It’s not that EEI minds killing off gas-fired plants in the long term; it just doesn’t want to do so in the short term.
Recall that EPA’s original version of these onerous regs was only meant for coal-fired plants. Last-minute political prompting from the Biden White House goaded the EPA to add gas-fired plants too. But the agency hurried and cut corners to do it (see Biden EPA Cut Corners with New Reg to Limit Fossil Fuel Power Plants). EEI thinks the EPA needs to do a better job before floating the regs again.
U.S. electric utilities told EPA on Tuesday that a proposed rule to shrink power plant carbon emissions shouldn’t be implemented yet because key emerging technologies aren’t ready, offering the latest pushback to the Biden administration’s plan.
The Edison Electric Institute, which represents investor-owned utilities, pointed to technical shortcomings with the potential use of clean hydrogen and carbon capture to slash greenhouse gases in the power sector.
EPA’s proposed timetable, EEI said, could leave grid operators short of fossil-fuel-based generation that may be essential to prevent power outages in emergency situations, particularly during extreme weather when wind and solar power supplies can be low. The electric utility trade group has touted efforts by its members to lower carbon emissions in recent years — while warning of a need to move at a pace that preserves reliability.
“EPA should not finalize” standards that are based on carbon capture or blending zero carbon hydrogen with natural gas in turbine generators, EEI said in its Tuesday commentsto the agency. “If EPA moves forward with the standards as proposed … the Agency should provide electric companies and states as much compliance flexibility as possible to address achievability concerns,” it added.
EEI’s views on the rule were highly anticipated, as it is the power sector’s largest lobby group and has worked closely with the Biden administration on energy issues.
The group’s warning shows the challenge facing the Biden administration as it pushes to decarbonize the U.S. grid by 2035. Without full support from the country’s largest utilities — which determine much of the trajectory of the electricity mix — the Biden clean energy goals are unlikely to be reached, even with the incentives in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, according to analysts’ computer modeling. EEI’s comments reflect utilities’ position that the infrastructure and systems to roll out widespread carbon capture and hydrogen blending won’t be ready on EPA’s timetable and would impose high costs on utility customers.
The EPA proposal — not due to be made final until next year — would set deadlines for carbon emissions reduction for coal power plants and large gas-fired units, adding new federal requirements for what is now a mix of clean energy targets in Democrat-led states and varying goals for carbon reduction by 50 of the nation’s large utilities. Comments on the proposal were due Tuesday.
Criticism of the EPA plan would feed into expected challenges of the final regulation that could go to the U.S. Supreme Court, whose conservative majority has strictly limited EPA’s options for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The comments Tuesday reveal a sharply fractured response from within the grid industry and climate action community that split into three main camps on the rule: stop, pause and go faster.
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey (R), speaking for his state and attorneys general in 20 other states, filed opposition to the EPA proposal Tuesday, contending that “EPA has no more authority to mandate this result indirectly than it did when it tried to do so directly,” referring to EPA’s earlier power plant regulation that the Supreme Court rejected last year.
Stiff opposition also came Tuesday from the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, whose comments contended the agency’s plan relies on “inadequately demonstrated technologies with unworkable timelines that will be impossible to achieve.”
The electric cooperative group said EPA lacks the legal authority to require operators of coal-fired power plants to install what it called costly, unverified processes for capturing and removing nearly all carbon dioxide emissions from plants, or close the plants by 2040.
The EPA plan creates “direct threats to electric grid reliability that EPA fails to appropriately assess and inaccurately models. Accordingly, EPA should withdraw the Proposed Rules in their entirety,” the cooperative group said. (1)
EEI’s official comments (all 214 pages!) filed on Aug. 8:
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Pat Morrisey, WV Attorney General, is doing great work in keeping the out-of-control Biden EPA in check.
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey is leading a coalition of 21 states opposing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed new rule on existing coal-, natural gas- and oil-fired power plants, his office said Tuesday.
The proposal attempts to regulate those plants under the Clean Air Act by imposing more stringent emissions standards. It ignores last year’s rebuke from the U.S. Supreme Court in West Virginia v. EPA, which warned that EPA should not use a narrow regulatory provision to force coal-fired power plants into retirement en masse, according to Morrisey’s office.
“This proposal also strips states of important discretion while using technologies that don’t work in the real world — so it sets up the plants for failing to meet the standards dictated in the rule, leaving the plants with no other option but to cease operations,” Morrisey said in a news release. “This is designed to scare more coal-fired power plants into retirement — the goal of the Biden administration’s so-called green new deal.
“That tactic is unacceptable, and this rule appears to utterly fly in the face of the rule of law. The U.S. Supreme Court has placed significant limits on what the EPA can do — we plan on ensuring that those limits are upheld, and we expect that we would once again prevail in court against this out-of-control agency.”
The letter explains how the proposal violates the Supreme Court’s decision on West Virginia vs. EPA because Congress still hasn’t given EPA clear statutory authorization to remake the electricity grids, according to Morrisey’s office.
That means the agency cannot sidestep Congress to exercise broad regulatory power that would radically transform the nation’s energy grids — and force states to fundamentally shift their energy portfolios away from fossil fuel-fired generation, according to Morrisey’s office.
Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Virginia joined Morrisey in the letter. (2)
Comments from the 21 states to the EPA:
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Don’t expect the tone-deaf Bidenistas to pay any attention to the criticisms from the EEI or the 21 states.
(1) E&E News – Energywire (Aug 9, 2023) – Utilities say EPA power plant rule isn’t ready
(2) Clarksburg (WV) WV News (Aug 8, 2023) – 21 states, including West Virginia, oppose EPA’s proposed power plant rule
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