David Sassoon's Climate Chronicles

The EPA issued a letter today stating that Sunflower Electric must restart the permit application process if it wants to build an 895 MW coal plant in Kansas, a permit the company thought it had already secured in a back room deal with the governor.

The move by the EPA's Region 7 administrator highlights the ability of the federal Clean Air Act to protect the public health and welfare, despite political horse trading.

Kansas Gov. Mark Parkinson had negotiated a private agreement with Sunflower for construction of the plant, and subsequently the state Legislature made the agreement part of a law that the governor signed on May 22.

Today, however, the EPA informed all stakeholders that the plant still must meet requirements of the Clean Air Act. The agency laid out in detail what those requirements are in a six-page letter (attached below).

"This means that the governor's back room deal will be forced into the light of day for the public to examine," said attorney Amanda Goodin of Earthjustice, a public interest law firm that has been representing the Sierra Club in the case.

Read More

Bookmark/Search this post with:

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

• Add new comment
• 1 attachment

Six days after succeeding Kathleen Sebelius as governor of Kansas, Mark Parkinson announced a deal with Sunflower Electric Corp. that would allow construction of an 895 MW coal-fired power plant.

The surprise deal seemed like the end of a long, drawn-out battle, with the coal industry outlasting the steady opposition and multiple vetoes from the former governor, who left the unresolved matter behind when she became the U.S. health secretary.

But it now looks like the battle might not be over after all and that Gov. Parkinson's back room deal might unravel.

A decision is imminent from the EPA on what Sunflower needs to do to secure a permit to finally build its power plant, and the expected verdict is stark: start over.

There were four signatures on the two-page letter dated June 15 that was sent to The Honorable Barack Obama, President of the United States – signatures of three ambassadors and one charge d'affaires from nations most Americans could not find on a map.

The Federated States of Micronesia. Republic of the Marshall Islands. Republic of the Fiji Islands. Papua New Guinea.

The letter contained a plea:

Mr. President, please understand that your leadership is indispensable. We are representatives of all vulnerable small island states around the world and the many other low-lying coastal countries that face the growing threat of extinction from climate change. The future of our societies depends on you.

And they asked him for something very specific and reasonable:

A new study published today by the National Academy of Sciences confirms unequivocally that a class of gases, whose use is expected to skyrocket in the developing world as living standards improve, poses an unforeseen and potentially grave threat by worsening global warming.

These "super greenhouse gases" known as hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, were originally developed to replace the use of ozone-depleting aerosols and are now commonly found in refrigerators, air conditioners and automobile cooling systems. If left unchecked, their build-up in the atmosphere could negate current efforts to reduce carbon dioxide to safe levels by 2050.

This emergency within the climate emergency has largely escaped public notice, but the new study is expected to raise its profile.

“You could undo the work on CO2 if you don’t do something about HFCs,” said Mack McFarland, a co-author of the paper and chief atmospheric scientist of Dupont, a leading HFC manufacturer. "I wouldn't call it an emergency but an opportunity."

In developing nations, use of HFCs is expected to increase 800% more than in developed nations, according to the study. The gases will find their way into billions of individual products whose disposal cannot be controlled, and will accumulate in the atmosphere, adding to the "radiative forcing" – or warming – of the climate.

Each molecule of these super GHGs has a global warming potential (GWP) many thousands of times greater than a molecule of CO2. HFC 134a, for example, is used in automobile air conditioning systems and has a global warming potential 1,430 times greater than CO2.

"The contribution of these chemicals to global warming will be much larger than we thought," said Guus Velders of the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, the lead author of the study, who spoke to SolveClimate in advance of the publication.

"If left unchecked, HFCs would be the same as all the passenger cars in the world, times three. It's an unexpected finding, and it would be good to pay attention."

A battle is brewing in Congress over a climate and energy issue that is pitting the U.S. Senate and states west of the Mississippi against the U.S. House and states east of the mighty river.

It's a fight over expansion of the electric grid – the building of a new "transmission superhighway" – with boosters claiming you can't have a clean energy future without it, and more cautious skeptics saying it could be a huge waste of money that would hurt both the economy and the climate.

A scene from this unfolding political drama was performed before Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts last week, who held a hearing on the future of the grid in his House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment and set the stage with his opening comments.

The landmark climate bill he has co-sponsored with Rep. Henry Waxman of California calls for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to report back to Congress within three years with recommendations for grid development. Markey said:

Some believe we should go further, by substantially expanding federal authority to plan and site new transmission lines. That includes overriding state decisions to reject proposed lines and using federal eminent domain authority if necessary. I think we need to look closely and skeptically whether such a step is warranted at this juncture.

Markey urged caution (see complete statement, attached below) as did many others who testified, including Christopher Miller, president of the Piedmont Environmental Council:

"Current and proposed transmission policies may produce a transmission grid that is over-built, overly complex and subject to reliability problems, and encourages increased reliance on fossil-fuel generation rather than distributed renewable generation, energy efficiency, conservation, and load management."

Nevertheless, action on federal transmission policy is picking up steam, with various proposals under consideration in both the House and the Senate, driven more by politics than policy wisdom.

Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) has been trying for the past year to get Congress to set up an independent corporation dedicated to clean coal development. He introduced the Carbon Capture and Storage Early Deployment Act (HR 6258), which provoked some hearings in 2008, but it went nowhere and died. So this spring he reintroduced the bill, virtually unchanged (HR 1689).

What happened next is further proof of the enormous leverage Boucher wields as a coal state Democrat in shaping national climate legislation.

His bill was incorporated wholesale as pages 52-75 into the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES), the climate bill Reps. Henry Waxman and Ed Markey are shepherding through the House.

It fills section 114 of the Clean Energy Title of the Waxman-Markey bill, and it is a giant gift to the utility industry. It would create the Carbon Storage Research Corporation and funnel $10 billion to support the corporation over the next 10 years, with up to $500 million designated simply for "administrative expenses" to be spent at the discretion of its officers.

The most curious part is where all that money is going to come from. The answer: from every ratepayer who uses electricity, in the form of an almost invisible tax that would average 50-cents-a-month, conveniently referred to as an "assessment."

If Florida embraced its solar and wind power potential and got 20 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2020, it would create 37,000 new jobs, generate more than $16 billion in economic activity by 2025, and cut greenhouse gas emissions by 319 million tons, a new study commissioned by the state Department of Environmental Protection shows.

The just-released report examined 28 policy measures in Republican Gov. Charlie Crist's 2008 Climate Action Plan, including the 20 percent by 2020 renewable electricity standard.

In all, it found that implementing the full Climate Action Plan could add almost 150,000 new jobs and bring almost $40 billion in increased economic activity to the Sunshine state.

Unfortunately, the Florida legislature undermined the governor's efforts to turn that renewable energy standard into law this spring during what longtime observers of the statehouse said was one of the most dysfunctional and depressing legislative sessions in memory.

The new report reveals just how much economic opportunity was squandered by recalcitrant lawmakers, even as they faced a $6 billion budget deficit.

After that astonishing lapse of legislative judgment, the governor's office is now shifting to Plan B: It hopes to tap into the billions of federal stimulus dollars that are being made available to state energy offices around the country.

America's future climate law began working its way through Congress this week, rewritten with new details and changes that were negotiated to give the coal industry generous incentives and the regulatory certainty to compete for a place in the nation's energy future.

Here's how Rep. Rick Boucher of Virginia, a lead negotiator for coal state Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, described the deal they worked out:

I’ve been working extensively to fashion a controlled program that Congress can adopt which will preserve coal jobs, create the opportunity for increasing coal production and keep electricity rates in regions like Southwest Virginia affordable. The compromise that I have reached with Chairman Waxman achieves those goals.

Boucher and fellow coal state Democrats cut those deals with the bill’s authors, Reps. Henry Waxman and Ed Markey, with President Obama – a "clean coal" supporter – giving them a free hand to arrive at the formula that would secure the votes needed for passage.

Although the president called for a polluter-pays 100% auction of carbon allowances when he asked Congress for a climate law, the now 932-page American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 does the precise opposite: It contains a formula that gives most of the allowances to polluters for free – with about a third of them going to the coal-dominated power industry at no cost.

The free allocations were one major reason that Greenpeace withdrew support for the bill within hours of its introduction, but most of those in the climate community who have weighed in so far have been willing to swallow compromises that would have been unthinkable in January. Al Gore's support for the bill remains undiminished. Paul Krugman at The New York Times summed up the prevailing attitude best:

The legislation now on the table isn’t the bill we’d ideally want, but it’s the bill we can get — and it’s vastly better than no bill at all.

As climate actors start wading further into the details of the bill's provisions, however, they may find themselves hard pressed to justify passive acquiescence while enduring the certain further weakening of the bill on the Senate floor.

Ground zero of the contention centers around coal, an embattled industry which emerged from the negotiations with a surprisingly good deal. The bill contains performance standards for new coal plants that are weaker than those in the original Waxman-Markey discussion draft, funnels billions in funds and incentives to the development of "clean coal," and strips EPA of authority to proceed with development of regulations for smokestack CO2 produced by the industry.

Further, although the bill imposes a gradual economy-wide emissions cap, the penalty for non-compliance or failure to achieve target reductions would amount to no more than a slap on the wrist, given the low price permits are expected to fetch on the market for some time.

Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll, LLP, which traces its origins to the 19th century, is today one of the largest law firms in the United States, with 550 practicing attorneys working out of 12 offices around the country. Earlier this week, two lawyers in its Climate Change Group, Robert B. McKinstry, Jr and Caleb Holmes, sent a detailed memo to the firm's clients.

Titled: "EPA Regulatory Proposals Represent the First Steps of an Economy-Wide Program for Regulation of Greenhouse Gas Emissions," the memo suggested "Those who are facing regulation would be well-advised to begin preparing."

Below is the memo, reprinted in full with permission of the authors and the firm.

The Obama administration is talking with two voices on the question of what to do about a class of highly potent greenhouse gases known as "super GHGs," with the State Department jockeying with anonymous White House sources for control of the spin.

On one side of the issue is the State Department, whose e-mail to media is headlined: "United States Signals Interest in Potential Ways to Address Hydrofluorocarbons." Its first line:

On May 4, 2009, the State Department wrote to the Secretariat of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, expressing interest in a proposal that calls for amending the Montreal Protocol to phase down consumption and production of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). 

On the other side is an unnamed source at the White House, who spoke today to The New York Times, which ran a story by John Broder headlined Obama Not Seeking Quick Climate Action Under Ozone Treaty. Sounds like a done deal.

Not so fast. Compare the emphasis in the two communications and the real story becomes the debate within the administration of what to do with a leadership opportunity for rapid climate action. It would allow the U.S. to make a big impression on the international stage and make significant progress on protecting the planet.

Far from being over, the drama is just beginning to unfold.