EPA Utah Ruling to Stymie New Coal Plant Development – All Over America

This hasn’t been the coal industry’s month.

First, Barack Obama, who is expected to push hard for federal carbon regulation, was elected president. And now, in a landmark decision with far-reaching implications, the EPA Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) has rejected a federal air permit for a proposed new coal plant in Utah over climate change pollution concerns.

The EAB ruled that the EPA’s regional Denver office had no valid reason to give a green light to a 110-megawatt expansion of the "Bonanza" coal facility -- not without forcing limits on CO2 emissions using the "best available control technology (BACT)."

And so the board sent the matter back to the Denver region for "reconsideration." When that decision comes down, it should have "implications far beyond this individual permitting process," said the EAB.

From its ruling (full 69-page decision here):

In remanding this permit to the Region for reconsideration of the CO2 BACT issue, we recognize that the issue of whether CO2 is "subject to regulation under [the] Act" is an issue of national scope and that all parties would be better served by addressing it in the context of an action of nationwide scope rather than in the context of a specific permit proceeding.

Indeed, the decision is expected to affect permitting for all new coal plants across the nation, if not every industrial facility that emits carbon dioxide. Already, the EAB ruling is said to have killed at least 30 pending clean-air permits for new coal plants in the seven states under direct EPA permitting or on Native American reservations.

According to Jason Hutt, an attorney for a number of utilities, via the AP:

All permits in the pipeline are now stymied.

The Sierra Club, the group that brought the permit challenge before the EAB, called the ruling "the start of our clean energy future." Said its Executive Director Carl Pope in the Huffington Post:

This puts an effective hold on the final permitting of almost all new coal plants until the Obama administration decides on the best available control technology for CO2 emissions from coal plants.

Of course, time will tell what the decision really means, and how exactly the Obama EPA responds.

At the core of the ruling is the federal Clean Air Act (CAA) and whether -- and to what extent -- it should be used to control CO2. The US Supreme Court ruled in 2007 in Massachusetts v. EPA that carbon dioxide is in fact an air pollutant under the CAA, giving the EPA the discretion to set limits on CO2 emissions. Not surprisingly, the Bush administration refused to regulate it.

So what to expect from President-elect Obama? His energy and environment advisor Jason Grumet dropped this rather big hint in a recent interview:

Barack Obama will classify carbon dioxide as a dangerous pollutant that can be regulated should he win the presidential election on Nov. 4, opening the way for new rules on greenhouse gas emissions.

The EAB ruling may just give the Obama administration the leverage it needs to activate the CAA for official CO2 regulation once he steps into office. That would jump-start the effort to stabilize US emissions without excessive political gridlock from Congress. First up for Obama’s EPA though is to determine what exactly qualifies as "BACT" for a new coal plant -- be it co-generation, efficiency improvements or other technologies. That could take six months to a year.

So in the short term, all new coal plant development is likely to be shelved. And in the long term, it appears that great progress has been made toward tough and meaningful climate change policy in America.

• ‹ previous
• up
• next ›