LITTLE ROCK — The Environmental Protection Agency proposed the first limits on greenhouse-gas emissions from U.S. power plants on Tuesday, ignoring protests from industry officials and Republicans who have said the regulation will raise electricity rates and kill off coal as a fuel source.
But the proposal also fell short of environmentalists’ hopes because it goes easier than it could have on coal-fired power, one of the largest sources of the gases blamed for global warming.
“The standard will check the previously uncontrolled amount [of carbon pollution] that power plants ... release into our atmosphere,” Lisa Jackson, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, said Tuesday. But “it also creates a path forward for future facilities to use technology that burnscoal while releasing less carbon pollution.”
There are four coal plants in Arkansas plus another that is scheduled to be completed this year.
Entergy Arkansas owns White Bluff, a 1,659-megawatt plant near Redfield, and the 1,678-megawatt Independence plant near Newark.
Southwestern Electric Power Co. and Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corp. own the 528-megawatt Flint Creek Power Plant near Gentry in Northwest Arkansas. SWEPCO is the primary owner of the 600-megawatt John W. Turk Jr. plant in Hempstead County that is scheduled to open late this year.
SWEPCO has said it plans to install a “scrubber” on the Flint Creek plant to reduce its emissions. Entergy also has considered adding a scrubber to the White Bluff plant.
There is also the $1.3 billion, 665-megawatt Plum Point Energy Station, which opened in 2010 near Osceola.
Peter Main, a spokesman for SWEPCO, said the company will be reviewing the new EPA rule to determine whether there are any potential effects on SWEPCO’s coal plants.
Entergy did not return a call seeking comment.
Older coal-fired power plants have been shutting down across the country because of falling natural gas prices, demand from China driving up the price of coal and weaker demand for electricity.
Regulations from the EPA to control pollution and toxic emissions from power plants have also helped push some into retirement.
On Tuesday, Republican leaders again accused the Obama administration of clamping down on homegrown sources of energy and said the rule raised questions about the sincerity of President Barack Obama’s pledge for an “all-of-the-above” energy policy.
“This rule is part of the Obama administration’s aggressive plan to change America’s energy portfolio and eliminate coal as a source of affordable, reliable electricity generation,” said Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., who as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee has led the charge against environmental regulations.
A letter from 221 lawmakers to the White House this year asked that the rule be dropped, and the EPA issued two sets of standards last year targeting other pollution from coal plants.
“I continue to be outraged at this administration’s war on coal,” Rep. Ed Whitfield, a Kentucky Republican, said in a statement. “We’re seeing coal-fired electricity plants close and will likely see electricity rates skyrocket because of EPA’s other regulations.”
The rule announced Tuesday could either derail or jumpstart plans for 15 new coal-fired power plants in 10 states, depending on when they start construction. Those that break ground in the next year would be exempt from the new limit. Those that start construction later will have to eventually comply with the rule.
Existing power plants, even if they make changes that increase emissions, would not be covered. And new ones would have years to meet the standard and could average their emissions over three decades to meet the threshold.
But eventually, all coalfired power plants would need to install equipment to capture half of their carbon pollution. While not commercially available now, the EPA projects that by 2030 no new coal-fired power plant will be built without carbon capture and storage.
By contrast, a new naturalgas-fired power plant would meet the new standard without installing additional controls.
“There are areas where they could have made it a lot worse,” said Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, a coalition of power companies. Still, “the numerical limit allows progress for natural gas and places compliance out of reach for coal-fired plants” not planning to capture and sequester carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas.
Steve Miller, chief executive officer and president of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, a group of coal-burning electricity producers, took a more dismal view of the proposal.
“The latest rule will make it impossible to build any new coal-fueled power plants and could cause the premature closure of many more coalfueled power plants operating today,” Miller said.
The regulation, which was due to be released last July but has been stuck at the White House since November, stemmed from a settlement with environmental groups and states.
The rules aren’t final, and, if approved, they could be changed by a future Republican administration. The rules will be open for comment for the next 60 days, but the EPA has not set a date to issue the final rules.
Some scientists say that unless carbon dioxide from power generation and industry levels out and reverses within a few years, the Earth will be set on a possibly irreversible path of rising temperatures that lead to ever greater climate catastrophes.
The government already controls global-warming pollution at the largest industrial sources, has adopted the firstever standards for new cars and trucks and is working on regulations to reduce greenhouse gases at existing power plants and refineries.
Some states, including Washington, Oregon and California, already limit greenhouse gas pollution. And two other states, Montana and Illinois, require carbon capture and storage for all new coalfired power plants.
Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, an advocacy group fighting coal-fired power, said in an interview that the regulation shows that Obama is moving to a cleaner energy future.
“It’s a strong move,” Brune said. “It means there will never be another coal plant built without new technology, and it probably means even those won’t be built because they can’t compete.”
Other advocacy groups, however, said the regulation was imperfect, since it “grandfathers” in existing plants.
“EPA also must focus on the main source of power plant carbon emissions - existing coal-fired plants, many of them more than 50 years old, which are responsible for nearly 40 percent of U.S. carbon emissions,” said Kevin Knobloch, the president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, who said the regulation was a historic step to “trim” carbon emissions.
The 10 states with proposed new coal-fired generation that could be covered by the regulation are Texas, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Idaho, Kentucky, Michigan, Georgia, Utah, Wyoming and Kansas.
Information for this article was contributed by Dina Cappiello of The Associated Press, David Smith of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and Mark Drajem of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 03/28/2012