EPA Issues Air Toxics Cap for U.S. Coal-Fired Power Plants
December 21, 2011, 5:40 PM ESTBy Mark Drajem
(Updates with comment from Jackson in third paragraph.)
Dec. 21 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama’s administration issued the first U.S. standards to cut mercury and other toxic emissions from coal-fired power plants, winning praise from health advocates who say the step is long overdue.
The Environmental Protection Agency rule, the most expensive under review by Obama’s administration, would force producers such as Southern Co. to install pollution-control devices or close coal plants and substitute natural gas or wind generation. Most of the 1,100 U.S. plants already comply.
“This has been 20 years in the making,” Lisa Jackson, the EPA administrator, said today at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington. “This is a great victory for public health, especially for the health of our children.”
The rule, proposed in March, caused a split within the electric industry, with companies such as Atlanta-based Southern and American Electric Power Co. saying it would force them to retire needed plants. Proponents such as Chicago-based Exelon Corp. say they spent billions of dollars on pollution controls and natural-gas plants, anticipating new rules, and want competitors to make the same investments.
The EPA says the standard, estimated to cost $9.6 billion a year, will save lives and create $90 billion in annual benefits. It will also boost employment as power producers install scrubbing systems made by companies such as Babcock & Wilcox Co. or Alstom SA, the agency said.
Mercury, Acid Gases
The EPA proposal incorporates three separate limits: one for mercury, a second for acid gases and a third for particulate matter, which is used to target emissions of metals such as chromium, selenium and cadmium.
In its March proposal, it said the regulation could prevent 17,000 premature deaths from toxic emissions. Today it lowered that estimate to 11,000, according to the statement. Jackson said improved estimates for benefits from a rule to combat pollution across state borders leaves the mercury standard with fewer toxics to remove.
The changes announced today include easing off on mandatory controls for particulate matter, dispatching with pollution caps when plants are starting up or shutting down, and allowing companies greater leeway to average mercury emissions across units. Those changes will save utilities about $1 billion annually, EPA said in a fact sheet.
Presidential Memorandum
The rule was accompanied by a presidential memorandum that directs the EPA to use authority in the law to give power companies more time beyond the three-year deadline to install equipment or shut old plants. The EPA said in its statement that it wants to make “broadly available” a fourth year, and will offer more time to deal with local reliability issues. In most cases that extra time will not be necessary, the EPA said.
Critics say the rule will force plant closures, raising the cost of electricity and endangering the reliability of the distribution grid. In addition, they have said the health benefits the EPA is claiming are overstated, as they have already been accounted for in previous pollution measures.
“It will increase the cost of power, undermining the international competitiveness of almost two dozen manufacturing industries, and it will reduce employment upstream in the mining sectors,” Scott Segal, a lobbyist at Bracewell & Giuliani LLP in Washington representing companies such as Southern, said in an e-mail before the rule was released. “Given that the rule is one of the most expensive air rules ever, the American public deserves better.”
Pollution Controls
About 40 percent of coal-fired power plants don’t have the pollution controls necessary to comply with these rules, according to the EPA.
A separate EPA measure on power-plant emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide that float across state lines is set to take effect in 2012, and is being challenged by power companies in court. This rule is likely to face challenges in court and in Congress as well.
The two rules together are the most far-reaching actions to curb pollution since Clean Air Act was amended in 1990, according to the American Lung Association.
This is a “huge victory for public health,” Albert A. Rizzo, chief of pulmonary and critical-care medicine at Christiana Care Health System in Wilmington, Delaware, and the association’s national volunteer chairman, said in the EPA’s statement.
--Editors: Steve Geimann, Judy Pasternak
To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Drajem in Washington at mdrajem@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Steve Geimann at sgeimann@bloomberg.net
