Coal in your stocking: Guide details North American coal-burning emissions.

It’s that time of year when people compile Top 10 lists—10 best of this, 10 worst of that, 10 best funny cat videos, 10 worst campaign ads (which presupposes the questionable assumption that there are any good campaign ads).

Just in time for the coffee table book season, the North American Commission on Environmental Cooperation has published an online volume (Spanish and French versions also available) detailing the air emissions of some 3,000 power plants in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico—the three parties to the NAFTA trade deal that has a lesser-known environmental side agreement that spawned the commission.

The document, which details top 10 lists for power plants in each of the three countries, is a treasure trove for pollution voyeurism, although the data is of 2005 vintage, the most recent year the commission could pull together information from across the continent. Being parochial, we’ll let our Canadian and Mexican readers explore the emissions profiles of their countries’ champion power plants. Here in the U.S., the winners, all of them coal-fired, are:

Carbon dioxide – Top spot belongs to the mammoth Scherer facility near Macon, Ga., a 3,520-megawatt plant owned by a group of Southeastern utilities. Scherer emitted more than 23.4 million tons of CO2 in ’05. Going full blast, Scherer burns nearly 1,300 tons of coal per hour. But Scherer’s CO2 emissions rate—tons per megawatt-hour—was not the highest. Within the top 10 for CO2, that honor goes to Westar Energy’s 1,857-megawatt Jeffrey Energy Center, a plant burning Powder River Basin coal north of Topeka, Kansas, that powered out 1,086 kilograms of CO2 per megawatt-hour.

Mercury – The top emitter was Luminant’s 1,880-megawatt Monticello plant in northeast Texas, which burns mostly lignite, a low-grade coal variety, but also throws some higher quality Powder River Basin coal into the mix. A total of 977 kilograms of mercury went out Monticello’s stacks in ’05.

Sulfur dioxide – Georgia Power’s 3,500-megawatt Bowen plant, north of Atlanta, released more than 169,000 tons of SO2, an acid precipitation and particulate precursor, back in 2005. Scrubbers went operational at Bowen three years later with the goal of knocking SO2 emissions down by 95 percent, so the commission’s numbers don’t reflect the better news coming out of Bowen.

Nitrogen oxides – The 2,040-megawatt Four Corners coal plant, located on Navajo land in northwestern New Mexico and owned by a consortium of Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas utilities, released 37,870 tons of NOx, another acid precipitation and particulate precursor. Four Corners is the focus of a legal battle over its emissions; a coalition of tribal and environmental organizations filed suit two months ago under the Clean Air Act’s New Source Review provision to force plant owners to install NOx controls.

There’s more data for numbers junkies to trawl through in an interactive database here. Meanwhile, I’m going Christmas shopping. Don’t think I’ll be buying any books about coal for the kids’ stockings, however.

Read more: http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/blogs/republican/dirtiest-coal-plants-1211#ixzz1gUEWOpAU

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The state of Michigan has approved the first federal air permit for a coal-fired power plant under U.S. EPA’s new climate regulations, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) announced today.

The permit would allow Wolverine Power Supply Cooperative Inc. to build a 600-megawatt power plant at the site of a limestone quarry near Rogers City, Mich., about 200 miles north of Detroit and across Lake Huron from Ontario.

State officials said today that the Cadillac, Mich.-based company’s project satisfies all state and federal clean air laws.

That includes new rules put in place by the Obama administration that require new industrial facilities — among them coal-fired power plants, the largest source of man-made emissions that are linked to climate change — to show that they would use the best available control technology (BACT) to control greenhouse gases.

Vince Hellwig, air quality director at the MDEQ, said Wolverine’s permit is in line with guidance from EPA that told companies to focus on making the most of their energy.

“For the type of plant they’re proposing, it should be very efficient,” Hellwig said in an interview today.

Today’s decision is a victory for Wolverine, which has seen its project snarled by politics.

Michigan originally denied Wolverine a permit after the state’s public service commission said the project was not needed and would raise local electricity costs by about 60 percent. Former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) made headlines by opposing the plant, saying it would result in local power customers paying higher rates than in any state but Hawaii.

A state court overruled that decision this January, saying that cost concerns were not a reason to block an air permit. By then, Granholm had been replaced by newly elected Gov. Rick Snyder (R), who allowed the project to proceed.

Wolverine, which serves about 220,000 homes and businesses in northern Michigan, now has 18 months to begin construction.

Ken Bradstreet, a spokesman for the power cooperative, said Wolverine is pleased by the “significant milestone,” but it will need to take a more thorough look at the permit requirements and the company’s finances before it decides whether to build the plant.

‘A little bit different’

The permit says the plant would be fueled by a mix of 95 percent coal and 5 percent woody biomass, which state officials decided would cut the project’s carbon dioxide emissions.

Like coal, biomass releases carbon dioxide when it is burned, but using biomass instead of coal could lighten the load on the atmosphere because fallen trees and other dead plants release the gas anyway if they are left to decompose.

A study by researchers at Michigan Technological University and Michigan State University found that biomass would cut the project’s CO2 emissions if used properly.

Hellwig said Michigan decided to treat biomass as carbon-neutral for the Wolverine project because EPA is still studying the same question. The state also looked at carbon capture and storage technology, in which the emissions from a power plant would be trapped and injected into underground rock formations, but decided the technology was not available or affordable, he said.

Because the Wolverine permit could set a precedent, it will likely be challenged in court by environmental groups that are trying to block new coal plants from being built across the country.

Anne Woiwode, director of the Michigan chapter of the Sierra Club, said the federal Clean Air Act gives states the power to stop pollution by blocking projects entirely, and Michigan should use it. She criticized Snyder for reversing his predecessor’s stance.

“There isn’t a need for Wolverine to build a new coal plant,” Woiwode said today. “They can meet their energy needs through other means.”

The permit comes as the Obama administration is defending its greenhouse gas rules, which were put in place to comply with a 2007 Supreme Court decision, against attacks by critics on Capitol Hill who say they will hike the cost of energy. As it has reviewed the first few permits under the greenhouse gas rules, EPA has largely stood aside.

This project was no exception.

EPA raised just a few technical concerns when it commented on the draft permit. Federal officials “appreciate the effort that MDEQ has put forth in developing this proposed permit record considering greenhouse gases are newly regulated pollutants,” wrote Pamela Blakley, chief of air permits for the Chicago-based Region 5 office, in a letter this spring.

Some industry lobbyists have argued that the new greenhouse gas rules will be strict enough and confusing enough that it will be impossible for U.S. businesses to build new coal plants. But Hellwig said the changes to permitting were manageable.

“It was a process — we had to do the learning too,” he said. “It was a little bit different, but in many ways the same. You go through the same steps, the same process, for any BACT analysis.”

Click here to read the permit.

Click here to read the MDEQ’s response to comments.

Reprinted from E&E News PM with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC., www.eenews.net, 202/628-6500.

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Over the last few years, some of world’s brightest minds have become fascinated with a seemingly simple idea: easing the threat of climate change by pulling carbon dioxide out of the air.

The concept is entirely different fromcapturing and sequestering carbon dioxide from power plants and other big polluters before it enters the air. Rather, the aim would be to remove the gas from the planet’s ambient air, where it exists in low concentrations everywhere.

In 2007 the British billionaire Richard Branson and Al Gore, the former vice president, created a $25 million prize for the first creator of such a technology, and millions of dollars in venture capital have since flowed to start-up companies tackling the problem.

But a new study casts serious doubts on whether such efforts will ever yield an economically viable tool for fighting global warming. The study, released on Monday by the American Physical Society, the world’s largest group of physicists, finds that while removing carbon dioxide from ambient air is technically feasible, the cost is likely to remain prohibitively high.

The report concluded it would cost at least $600 a ton to capture carbon dioxide from the air, compared with an estimated cost of about $80 a ton to capture the gas from a typical coal power plant.

The most significant hurdle is the extremely low concentrations of carbon dioxide in air, compared with the stream from a coal-fired power plant or other large emitter, saidRobert H. Socolow, a Princeton physicist and a co-chairman of the report.

The flue gas from a coal plant is roughly 10 percent carbon dioxide, while carbon in the ambient air is around four-hundredths of a percentage point.

“We have to deal with our centralized power sources first,” Mr. Socolow said. “This is not an assignment for the next few decades.”

The conclusion was greeted with dismay by several leading scientists who have championed air capture as a climate change solution, however.

Wallace S. Broecker, a professor of geology at Columbia University and a pioneering climate change researcher, said it was premature to write off the technology, which was still in its infancy. “It’s something that’s so promising, it’s a crime not to explore it,” he said.

“The cost depends on how widely it’s implemented,” Dr. Broecker added. “The first computers cost a fortune, and now they cost almost nothing.”

Developing a workable system to capture and sequester carbon emissions directly from power plants is far more pressing, said Michael Desmond, a chemist and senior internal consultant at BP who served as co-chairman of the report. “You’ve got to get your entire electric infrastructure decarbonized,” Mr. Desmond said. “It’s only there where air capture starts to make sense.”

The development of carbon capture technology for power plants and other large emissions sources has made significant strides in recent years, and the federal stimulus package included billions of dollars for research and demonstration projects.

But wide-scale deployment in the United States will almost certainly require the passage of federal climate legislation setting a price for carbon dioxide emissions; such legislation failed to clear the Senate last year and is unlikely to be revived anytime soon.

Spending on carbon capture from ambient air, by contrast, has been far more modest, totaling just tens of millions of dollars. Kilimanjaro Energy, a California start-up and one of the leading developers of ambient air carbon-capture technology, for instance, has spent just over $11 million on research and development, said Nathaniel David, the firm’s president.

The idea of capturing carbon in ambient air has found some bipartisan support in the Senate, where a bill to reward researchers who develop carbon-removal technology was reintroduced last month with a Republican sponsor.

Klaus S. Lackner, a physicist and director of the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy at Columbia University’s Earth Institute who created the company’s technology, criticized the American Physical Society study as too narrowly focused, saying it had analyzed only outdated technology.

Dr. Lackner said his design, which uses a plastic that absorbs carbon dioxide when dry and releases it to the air when wet, would eventually be capable of capturing the gas for far less than $600 a ton.

“I can assure you that if I believed it would cost $600 a ton, I would have given up long ago,” he said.

Mr. David of Kilimanjaro Energy also said the report had failed to take into account the use of captured carbon dioxide as a feedstock for biofuels, like those made from algae.

“What we’re into is making fuels,” he said. “If you can grab CO2 from the atmosphere and can do it economically, you can find yourself in the midst of the fuel business.”

Mr. Desmond, a co-chairman of the report, said his group had struggled to get sufficient data from private companies engaged in research into direct air capture. In the absence of data, claims that the process could be done cheaply were almost impossible to verify, he said.

“In the big scheme of things, those numbers don’t seem credible,” he said. “That’s my concern.”

Other analysts had mixed views. In an e-mail message, Sasha Mackler, director for energy innovation at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington institute, agreed that direct air capture of carbon dioxide was probably decades away from making economic sense. But the market for alternative fuels could make the process far more profitable than forecast in the report, Mr. Mackler said.

“We are at far too early a stage to predict how this field will emerge in the years ahead,” he said. “Now is not the time to be taking options off the table.”

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Can natural gas be a panacea for America’s energy problems?

Several recent developments highlight the appeal of natural gas, especially in a policy landscape that does not price greenhouse gas emissions. Natural gas produces half as much carbon dioxide as coal and about 30 percent less than oil.

In its annual outlook released last week, the Energy Information Administration projected that domestic shale natural gas will fill an increasingly important role in U.S. energy consumption. Oil giant Shell said last week it will produce more gas than oil by 2012, illustrating the shift among the oil industry into the gas sector.

Utilities are starting to replace their old coal-fired power plants with new gas plants. Natural gas complements renewable energy production when, for example, the wind is not blowing or the sun is not shining. The recently discovered resources of shale gas in the Northeast and Louisiana indicate that historically volatile gas prices could be more stable in the future.

Politically, President Obama has cited natural gas as one of the top areas where Republicans and Democrats can find bipartisanship. But so far that hasn’t proven true: Lawmakers are divided over hydraulic fracturing, a controversial method to extract shale gas also dubbed “fracking.”

Should Congress and the administration seek to incentivize natural gas in areas like electricity production and heavy-duty vehicles? Can lawmakers and various interest groups find common ground on fracking? Should natural gas no longer be considered a “bridge” fuel to renewable energy, given that Congress is not poised to pass comprehensive climate legislation any time soon?

Check out varied expert responses to this question as posed by The National Journal.

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by Michael Goggin, American Wind Energy Association

Washington, DC, United States – Recent data and analyses have made it clear that the emissions savings from adding wind energy to the grid are even larger than had been commonly thought. In addition to each kilowatt-hour (kWh) of wind energy directly offsetting a kWh that would have been produced by a fossil-fired power plant, new analyses show that wind plants further reduce emissions by forcing the most polluting and inflexible power plants offline and causing them to be replaced by more efficient and flexible types of generation.

At the same time, and in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the fossil fuel industry has launched an increasingly desperate misinformation campaign to convince the American public that wind energy does not actually reduce carbon dioxide emissions. As a result, we feel compelled to set the record straight on the matter, once and for all.

Fossil Fuel’s Desperate War against Facts

Not to be deterred by indisputable data, numerous refutations, or the laws of physics, the fossil fuel lobby has doubled down on their desperate effort to muddy the waters about one of the universally recognized and uncontestable benefits of wind energy: that it reduces the use of fossil fuels as well as the emissions and other environmental damage associated with producing and using these fuels.

For those who have not been following this misinformation campaign by the fossil fuel industry, here is a brief synopsis. Back in March 2010, AWEA heard public reports that the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States (IPAMS), a lobby group representing the oil and natural gas industry, was working on a report that would attempt to claim that adding wind energy to the grid had somehow increased power plant emissions in Colorado.

Perplexed at how anyone would attempt to make that claim, AWEA decided to take a look at the relevant data, namely the U.S. Department of Energy’s data tracking emissions from Colorado’s power plants over time. The government’s data, reproduced in the table below, show that as wind energy jumped from providing 2.5% of Colorado’s electricity in 2007 to 6.1% of the state’s electricity in 2008, carbon dioxide emissions fell by 4.4%, nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide emissions fell by 6%, coal use fell by 3% (571,000 tons), and electric-sector natural gas use fell by 14%. (Thorough DOE citations for each data point are listed here (PDF).) Two conclusions were apparent from looking at this data: 1. the claim the fossil fuel industry was planning to make had no basis in fact, and 2. the fossil industry was understandably frustrated that they were losing market share to wind energy.

Change in Colorado Power Plant Fossil Fuel Use and Emissions from 2007-2008, as Wind Jumped from Providing 2.5% to 6.1% of Colorado Electricity

In early April, AWEA publicly presented this government data, and when the fossil fuel lobbyists released their report later that month it was greeted with the skepticism it deserved and largely ignored. Case closed, right? We thought so, too.

After the initial release of the report fell flat, the fossil fuel industry tried again a month later. John Andrews, founder of the Independence Institute, a group that has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding from the fossil fuel industry, penned an opinion article in the Denver Post parroting the claims of the original report. Fortunately, Frank Prager, a vice president with Xcel Energy, the owner of the Colorado power plants in question, responded with an article entitled “Setting the record straight on wind energy” that pointed out the flaws in the fossil industry’s study and reconfirmed that wind in fact has significantly reduced fossil fuel use and emissions on their power system. Having been shot down twice, we thought that the fossil industry would surely put their report out to pasture.

Yet just a month later the report resurfaced, this time in Congressional testimony by the Institute for Energy Research, a DC-based group that receives a large amount of funding from many of the same fossil fuel companies that fund the Independence Institute. The group has continued trumpeting the report’s myths at public events around the country and on their website, and these myths are now beginning to spread through the pro-fossil fuel blogosphere. In recent days, these myths have re-appeared in columns by Robert Bryce, a senior fellow at the fossil-funded Manhattan Institute.

The fossil fuel industry’s desperate persistence and deep pockets make for a dangerous combination when it comes to distorting reality, so we’d like to once and for all clarify the facts about how wind energy reduces fossil fuel use and emissions.

The Truth about Wind and Emissions

The electricity produced by a wind plant must be matched by an equivalent decrease in electricity production at another power plant, as the laws of physics dictate that utility system operators must balance the total supply of electricity with the total demand for electricity at all times. Adding wind energy to the grid typically displaces output from the power plant with the highest marginal operating cost that is online at that time, which is almost always a fossil-fired plant because of their high fuel costs. Wind energy is also occasionally used to reduce the output of hydroelectric dams, which can store water to be used later to replace more expensive fossil fuel generation.

Let’s call this direct reduction in fossil fuel use and emissions Factor A. Factor A is by far the largest impact of adding wind energy to the power system, and the emissions reductions associated with Factor A are indisputable because they are dictated by the laws of physics.

In some instances, there may also be two other factors at play: a smaller one that can slightly increase emissions (let’s call it Factor B), and a counteracting much larger one that, when netted with B, will further add to the emissions reductions achieved under Factor A (let’s call this third one Factor C).

Factor B was discussed at length in an AWEA fact sheet (PDF) published several years ago. This factor accounts for the fact that, in some instances, reducing the output of a fossil-powered plant to respond to the addition of wind energy to the grid can cause a very small reduction in the efficiency of that fossil-fueled power plant. It is important to note that this reduction in efficiency is on a per-unit-of-output basis, so because total output from the fossil plant has decreased the net effect is to decrease emissions.

As a conservative hypothetical example, adding 100 MW of wind energy output to the grid might cause a fossil plant to go from producing 500 MW at 1000 pounds of CO2 per megawatt-hour (MWh) (250 tons of CO2 per hour) to producing 400 MW at 1010 pounds of CO2/MWh (202 tons of CO2 per hour), so the net impact on emissions from adding 100 MW of wind would be CO2 emissions reductions of 48 tons per hour. Unfortunately, fossil-funded groups have focused nearly all of their attention on Factor B, which in this example accounts for 2 tons, while completely ignoring the 50 tons of initial emissions reductions associated with Factor A. (See Footnote 1.) A conservative estimate is that the impact of Factor B is at most a few percent of the emissions reductions achieved through factor A.

Factor C is rarely included in discussions of wind’s impact on the power system and emissions, but the impact of Factor C is far larger than that of Factor B, so that it completely negates any emissions increase associated with Factor B. Factor C is the decrease in emissions that occurs as utilities and grid operators respond to the addition of wind energy by decreasing their reliance on inflexible coal power plants and instead increase their use of more flexible – and less polluting – natural gas power plants. This occurs because coal plants are poorly suited for accommodating the incremental increase in overall power system variability associated with adding wind energy to the grid, while natural gas plants tend to be far more flexible. (Footnote 2)

To summarize, the net effect of Factors A, B, and C is to reduce emissions by even more than is directly offset from wind generation displacing fossil generation (Factor A).

Study after Study

Unsurprisingly, government studies and grid operator data show that this is exactly what has happened to the power system as wind energy has been added. A study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) released in January 2010 found drastic reductions in both fossil fuel use and carbon dioxide emissions as wind energy is added to the grid. The Eastern Wind Integration and Transmission Study (EWITS) used in-depth power system modeling to examine the impacts of integrating 20% or 30% wind power into the Eastern U.S. power grid.

The EWITS study found that carbon dioxide emissions would decrease by more than 25% in the 20% wind energy scenario and 37% in the 30% wind energy scenario, compared to a scenario in which our current generation mix was used to meet increasing electricity demand. The study also found that wind energy will drastically reduce coal generation, which declined by around 23% from the business-as-usual case to the 20% wind cases, and by 35% in the 30% wind case. These results were corroborated by the DOE’s 2008 technical report, “20% Wind Energy by 2030,” which also found that obtaining 20% of the nation’s electricity from wind energy would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 25%.

The fact that this study found emissions savings to be even larger than the amount directly offset by adding wind energy is a powerful testament to the role of Factor C in producing bonus emissions savings. By running scenarios in which wind energy’s variability and uncertainty were removed, NREL’s EWITS study was able to determine that it was in fact these attributes of wind energy that were causing coal plants to be replaced by more flexible natural gas plants. (See page 174 of the study.)

As further evidence, four of the seven major independent grid operators in the U.S. have studied the emissions impact of adding wind energy to their power grids, and all four have found that adding wind energy drastically reduces emissions of carbon dioxide and other harmful pollutants. While the emissions savings depend somewhat on the existing share of coal-fired versus gas-fired generation in the region, as one would expect, it is impossible to dispute the findings of these four independent grid operators that adding wind energy to their grids has significantly reduced emissions. The results of these studies are summarized below.

Independent Grid Operators’ Calculations of Wind’s Emissions Savings

It is even more difficult to argue with empirical Department of Energy data showing that emissions have decreased in lockstep as various states have added wind energy to their grids. In addition and in almost perfect parallel to the Colorado data presented earlier, DOE data for the state of Texas show the same lockstep decrease when wind was added to its grid. This directly contradicts the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States report when it attempts to claim that wind has not in fact decreased emissions in Texas.

Specifically, DOE data show that wind and other renewables’ share of Texas’s electric mix increased from 1.3% in 2005 to 4.4% in 2008, an increase in share of 3.1 percentage points. During that period, electric sector carbon dioxide emissions declined by 3.3%, even though electricity use actually increased by 2% during that time. Because of wind energy, the state of Texas was able to turn what would have been a carbon emissions increase into a decrease of 8,690,000 metric tons per year, equal to the emissions savings of taking around 1.5 million cars off the road.

A Time for Change

The fossil fuel industry’s latest misinformation campaign is reminiscent of scenes that played out in Washington in previous decades, as tobacco company lobbyists and their paid “experts” stubbornly stood before Congress and insisted that there was no causal link between tobacco use and cancer, despite reams of government data and peer-reviewed studies to the contrary. It’s time we enacted the strong policies we need to put our country’s tremendous wind energy resources to use, creating jobs, protecting our environment, savings consumers money, and improving our energy security, even if it means leaving a few fossil fuel lobbyists behind.

Michael Goggin is electrical industry analyst at AWEA.

Footnotes:

1 Mr. Bryce’s recent Wall Street Journal article is the most creative in its effort to exaggerate Factor B and downplay factor A. In his article, Bryce exclaims about the “94,000 more pounds of carbon dioxide” that the IPAMS study claimed were emitted in Colorado due to Factor B. To be clear, 94,000 pounds is equivalent to the far less impressive-sounding 47 tons of carbon dioxide, or the amount emitted annually on average by two U.S. citizens. Yet just a few paragraphs later, Mr. Bryce speaks dismissively when noting a DOE report that found that, on net, wind energy would “only” reduce carbon dioxide by 306 million tons (enough to offset the emissions of about 15 million U.S. citizens).

2 It is important to keep in mind that the supply of and demand for electricity on the power system have always been highly variable and uncertain, and that adding wind energy only marginally adds to that variability and uncertainty. Electric demand already varies greatly according to the weather and major fluctuations in power use at factories, while electricity supply can drop by 1000 MW or more in a fraction of a second when a large coal or nuclear plant experiences a “forced outage” and goes offline unexpectedly, as they all do from time to time. In contrast, wind output changes slowly and often predictably.

[Editor's note: Footnotes 3-11 are embedded as links into the text above.]

Chart Footnotes:

12 Texas ERCOT Study (PDF)

13 Transmission Expansion Plan, Vision Exploratory Study, Midwest ISO (2006)

14 Mid-Atlantic Study (PDF)

15 New England Study (PDF)

This article first appeared in the August 2010 issue of Windletter and was republished with permission from the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA).

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TOPEKA — A measure tucked into the state budget could prevent Kansas from implementing Environmental Protection Agency rules on greenhouse gases.

The proposal was shepherded through by Sen. Tim Huelskamp, R-Fowler, during the final days of the legislative session that ended last week.

“Instead of supporting sound science and common sense, the EPA has chosen to take the radical path of attempting to regulate carbon dioxide and methane,” said Huelskamp, who also is running for the 1st District congressional seat, currently occupied by Jerry Moran.

“I’m determined to do what is best for our Kansas economy, and that is to oppose the EPA implementation of their cap-and-trade regulatory scheme at every possible opportunity,” he said.

The amendment to the appropriations bill would prohibit any state agency from spending state funds “to plan, draft, propose, promulgate, finalize or implement any rules and regulations pursuant to the Clean Air Act involving the greenhouse gases identified” in the EPA’s endangerment finding.

EPA has declared that climate-changing greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare and need to be regulated. Those gases include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment, which enforces environmental rules, is the target of the amendment, and a major issue before KDHE is a pending permit for an 895-megawatt coal-fired electric power plant in southwest Kansas, known as the Sunflower Electric Power Project.

In 2007, KDHE Secretary Roderick Bremby denied the permit for the project, citing the effects of the proposal’s potential carbon dioxide emissions on health and environment.

In 2008 and 2009, Sunflower Electric and Colorado-based Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, which would own most of the power from the project, pushed through legislation to overturn Bremby’s decision. Then-Gov. Kathleen Sebelius vetoed that legislation several times.

When Mark Parkinson became governor in 2009, after Sebelius’ departure to join President Barack Obama’s Cabinet, Parkinson made a deal with Sunflower and Tri-State to build a smaller project.

The amendment to the budget bill is now in the hands of Parkinson, who can let it become law or apply a line-item veto to it. Parkinson’s office said the governor has not yet received the appropriations bill but that once he does he will thoroughly consider every proviso before taking any action.

Environmentalists are unhappy with the amendment but, ironically, they are not asking for Parkinson to veto it.

Given Parkinson’s deal-making with Sunflower on the coal plant, they don’t see much help coming from the Statehouse.

“At this point, we’re not inclined to use the legislative process to combat these special interests anymore,” said Stephanie Cole, a spokeswoman for the Kansas chapter of the Sierra Club. “The legislative process is being abused. We will focus on the Sunflower project in the courts.”

Scott Allegrucci, director of the Great Plains Alliance for Clean Energy, said the provision wouldn’t stand up in court and probably would invite more scrutiny from the EPA on Kansas environmental regulation.

“We might consider more direct oversight by EPA a much more responsible and dependable pathway to regulatory certainty in Kansas,” Allegrucci said.

EPA’s Regional Administrator Karl Brooks has already written a letter to Parkinson and Bremby expressing concerns about any provision that would block federal rules.

In that letter, Brooks warns that if a state doesn’t follow federal pollution laws, the EPA will exercise its authority to make sure that projects seeking permits adhere to federal requirements.

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The world seems awash in natural gas.

In the United States, new production from once hard-to-tap shale rock is booming in places like Texas, Louisiana and the Northeast. There are also plans to construct a mammoth gas pipeline through Canada to bring Alaskan North Slope gas to market.

In Australia and Qatar, liquefied natural gas terminals have started supplying fast-growing Asian countries, and more are under construction.

In Africa, rich natural gas deposits off the coast of Angola are slated for both the domestic market and export to Europe, which still gets a big part of its supply from Russia’s huge reserves. Plans are also underway to supply both Europe and Asia with the sizable gas reserves in Iran and Iraq.

Forecasting agencies, long known to play it safe before touting new trends, are only predicting a modest increase in gas’ share of the world’s overall energy mix by 2030.

But some analysts are saying it could be much higher, with big implications for the electricity markets – and coal-fired power plants in particular.

How much do we have?

In the United States, it’s this shale natural gas that’s got everyone so excited.

This gas has been known about for some time, but new drilling and extraction technology has now made it commercially viable. There are some concerns over the environmental impact of this drilling, especially water pollution, but the sheer amount of new gas is getting major attention.

“We’ve basically won the lottery,” Michael Ming, president of Research Partnership to Secure Energy for America, an organization that studies new natural gas developments, said during a recent Time Inc. conference on energy technologies.

The amount of gas reserves in these new shales could double the nation’s known stockpile of natural gas, according to U.S. Geological Survey estimates.

Yet the U.S. Energy Information Administration is only forecasting a rise in natural gas production of under 20% by 2030. And as our overall energy use is expected to rise as well, natural gas’ share of our overall energy mix will be little changed. EIA’s estimates are in-line with other private forecasts.

Ming is among those who believe estimates for natural gas use are too small. He pointed to estimates from 10 years ago that said just 1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas was likely in Texas’ Barnett Shale. That estimate is now 50 trillion cubic feet.

“There’s a lot of conservatism right now,” he said in an interview with CNNMoney. “We’re just at the very tip of this pyramid.”

What We Use it For

Natural gas can be used for many things – to power cars, heat homes, cook, or generate electricity.

It’s this last use that will likely represent the biggest opportunity for gas in the next couple of decades.

For the last several years utilities have scrapped plans to build coal-fired power plants in favor of natural gas plants, which emit about half the carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas. This move has become known in the power industry as the “dash to gas.”

But that dash has been only half-hearted, said Peter Tertzakian, chief energy economist at ARC Financial, a Calgary-based private equity firm.

Over a decade ago utility execs were promised natural gas would be abundant and cheap. But the production didn’t pan out as planned, and gas prices spiked even before oil prices did earlier this decade.

Prices have since dropped significantly, partially due to all the new shale gas, but utility execs are still leery this resource is for real.

‘It’s a question of believing,” said Tertzakian, who also thinks the estimates for future natural gas use are low. “Once they believe the trend, gas demand is more likely to gain momentum.”

One company that seems to believe is Exxon Mobil.

Late last year, Exxon (XOM, Fortune 500), the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, paid $41 billion for XTO (XTO, Fortune 500), a natural gas company that primarily operates in the Untied States and is big player in the shale area.

Many analysts took Exxon’s entry into this space as a sign that the shale gas boom is here to stay.

“They don’t move fast and they aren’t leading edge, but they don’t make a lot of big mistakes,” said Tommy Mann, global head of natural gas at the consulting firm Accenture. “If Exxon is looking at it, there must be something there.”

What it Changes

If natural gas use spreads substantially, its growth will likely be in the power sector.

While it can be used in cars, most analysts say that beyond use in busses or fleet vehicles that have set routes, the infrastructure really isn’t there to support widespread use in cars. And the heating market is fairly well tapped.

But in making electricity, it could have real benefits. Ming, from Secure Energy, said that used in the most efficient power plants, natural gas is actually 70% cleaner than coal.

He is promoting an effort to replace the oldest, dirtiest 30% of the country’s coal- fired power plants with natural gas, a move he says would shave almost 10% off the country’s total greenhosue gas emissions.

Coal power plants will still exists, but impacts from cheap, widespread natural gas are clear.

“The real loser is coal,” said Noel Tomny, head of global gas at the energy consultants Wood Mackenzie.

As for the environment, many say a move to natural gas is a good thing but doesn’t replace the need to build more renewables and ultimately get fossil fuels out of the electricity generation business all together.

“Gas doesn’t get us there,” said Dave Hamilton, director for global warming and energy projects at the Sierra Club, referring to the 80% drop in emissions most scientists say are needed by 2050 to avoid the worst effects of global warming.

It may not get us there. But without huge advances in renewable energy, removing all fossil fuels from the electricity market will be a tough proposition. Gas may be the next best thing.

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Carbon dioxide is dangerous, says Lisa Jackson, administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It is dangerous, like the growling exhaust pipe of a 25-year-old Chevy Corvette or the sulphurous plume from a coal-fired power station. Overnight, America has decided: carbon-dioxide pollution is a public health hazard and emitters will be shunned like cigarette smokers.

The EPA’s decision on Monday to treat CO2 as if it were a noxious poison was craved and dreaded in equal measure by climate activists and industrialists. It is a bombshell, more than just a public relations ploy to make President Obama look cool at the Copenhagen summit. It unleashes one of the toughest US regulators and gives it a mandate to go after heavy industry with compliance orders and fines. Power generators, oil refiners, chemical manufacturers and cement makers have been warned: the bloodhounds of the EPA will hunt you down and curb your emissions.

This is politics, of course. A lot must happen before the EPA begins to slap fines on recalcitrant power companies. The agency needs to draw up regulations that work — a monumental task. It needs to decide which CO2 abatement technologies are effective and affordable — at present, there are no commercial carbon-capture technologies, only government-subsidised pilot projects.

But make no mistake: this is the beginning of America’s puritanical crackdown on carbon. If you are surprised that the atmospheric gas that feeds the roses in your garden is being labelled a dangerous poison, remember that America doesn’t regulate its citizens with the gentle persuading hand of the Queen; it does so with the passion of the religious convert. If the EPA is unchallenged, carbon will be hunted down, in the tailpipes of cars in Los Angeles and in the stacks of power plants in Virginia.

America’s electricity industry has reacted with alarm to Ms Jackson’s decision. The US is mostly powered by coal, a fossil fuel that accounts for 80 per cent of America’s abundant greenhouse gas emissions. America has enormous coal reserves — indeed Warren Buffett has just made a big bet on the coal industry, buying a controlling interest in Burlington Northern Santa Fe, a railroad group that trucks coal from mines in Wyoming to Texas and southern California.

There is an alternative to the EPA’s bloodhounds: two climate change Bills making their way through the US Congress would create cap-and-trade systems to offer incentives to industry to curb emissions. The two Bills are similar and both give huge exemptions to power companies in the form of free emission allowances. The American legislation is, in microcosm, what a new Copenhagen climate treaty might look like: a hotchpotch of complex regulation, extravagant concessions, get-out clauses and bribes to politically sensitive groups.

On the one hand, America has the hydroelectric-powered Washington State, where Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell waves the climate-change hockey stick. At the other end of the country, you have coal-fuelled states, such as Georgia, where a federal tax on top of the monthly utility bill spells political death. So, inequality in the carbon burden means taxing Pacific Coast liberals in order to subsidise coalmining rednecks.

It begs the question whether a climate change Bill is possible. That is where the threat of the EPA looms. In a landmark case in 2007, the Supreme Court found that CO2 was an air pollutant within the meaning of the America’s Clean Air act, opening the door for Monday’s statement by Ms Jackson. Climate activists have been waiting for this moment, when the EPA would aim its guns at Big Oil and Big Coal.

Mr Obama is probably not keen to let the EPA do its job. It would be a blunt instrument and politically dangerous, for the important reason that the EPA would be “fair”. Unlike a congressional Bill, with its tweaks, trade-offs and bungs, the EPA would regulate carbon, everywhere. There would be no concessions: every tonne, whether emitted by car, cow or chemical plant, would have to be measured and fined.

The impact on US industry would be harsh and investment would flee from energy-intensive industries. Carbon leakage to Asia would become a flood and, quickly, a hue and cry would build for stringent US tariffs on Chinese goods.

There would be another important consequence of an EPA audit of US industry and that would be a huge rush to natural gas. Coal has secured a get-out for the time being in the congressional Bills. Without special treatment, however, the only quick lower-carbon solution available to US power utilities is huge investment in efficient gas-fired generation plant. Gas produces a third of the CO2 emissions of coal and, after new discoveries, gas in the US is extremely cheap. If Ms Jackson has her way, this could be America’s big dash for gas.

carl.mortished@thetimes.co.uk

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The Environmental Protection Agency, about to declare heat-trapping gases to be dangerous pollutants, has embarked on one of the most ambitious regulatory challenges in history.

The move is likely to have a profound effect across the economic spectrum, affecting transportation, power plants, oil refineries, cement plants and other manufacturers.

It sets the agency on a collision course with carmakers, coal plants and other businesses that rely on fossil fuels, which fear that the finding will impose complex and costly rules.

But it may also help the Obama administration’s efforts to push through a federal law to curb carbon dioxide emissions by drawing industry support for legislation, which many companies see as less restrictive and more flexible than being monitored by a regulatory agency. And it will lay a basis for the United States in the negotiations leading up to a global climate treaty to be signed in Copenhagen in December.

Once made final, the agency’s finding will pave the way for federal regulation of carbon dioxide, methane and other heat-trapping gases linked to global warming.

In practical terms, the finding would allow quick federal regulation of motor vehicle emissions of heat-trapping gases and, if further actions are taken by the E.P.A., it could open the doors for regulatory controls on power plants, oil refineries, cement plants and other factories.

On Friday, the E.P.A. sent its finding to the Office of Management and Budget for review, according to a Web site that lists pending federal rules. Once the budget office clears the finding, it can be signed by the E.P.A.’s administrator, Lisa P. Jackson. There is also likely to be a public comment period on the proposed finding, but there is wide expectation that it will be put in place.

Some policy makers greeted the agency’s action as the first step in a new approach to climate change.

“This finding will officially end the era of denial on global warming,” Representative Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who leads a select committee on global warming, said in a statement.

But Bill Kovacs, a specialist on global warming issues with the United States Chamber of Commerce, said that an endangerment finding would automatically provoke a tangle of regulatory requirements for businesses large and small.

If finalized, the finding by the agency could lead to a vast extension of its reach. Much is unknown about the details of what the E.P.A. is proposing, including how stringently the agency would regulate the emissions and how it would go about doing so.

But in February, Ms. Jackson indicated she was aware the agency could be stepping into a minefield by issuing such a finding. “We are poised to be specific on what we regulate and on what schedule,” she said at the time. “We don’t want people to spin that into a doomsday scenario.”

Experts said Monday that the E.P.A.’s action would put pressure on Congress to pass federal legislation that could supplant the agency’s plan or guide how it was carried out. A federal bill is preferred by many environmentalists and policy makers, as well as by industry.

John D. Walke, a senior lawyer at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said he welcomed the agency’s decision but hoped it would ultimately lead to federal legislation.

“For some period we may have parallel efforts of Environmental Protection Agency pursuing or even adopting regulation while the eventual main show will be in Congress,” Mr. Walke said.

Still, many doubt that legislation to cap emissions can pass this year, in the midst of a recession and at a time when carbon dioxide emissions are down because production is lower.

The E.P.A.’s move is the latest in a flurry of proposals that signal its determination to break from the Bush administration, which infuriated environmentalists by sidestepping the issue of regulating heat-trapping gases.

Earlier this month, the agency proposed creating a greenhouse-gas emissions registry, which would require industries — including oil refineries and cement makers, as well as utilities and pulp and paper manufacturers — to report how much pollution they were emitting.

The endangerment proposal is another step. In 2007, the Supreme Court ordered the E.P.A. to determine whether carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases qualified as pollutants under the Clean Air Act. Ms. Jackson, the agency’s administrator, suggested to The New York Times in February that she hoped to act on emissions of heat-trapping gases by early April, before the second anniversary of the court’s ruling.

The Bush administration had stalled in complying with the court order, opting for more study of the issue, although there was wide consensus among E.P.A. experts that a determination that carbon dioxide was a danger to the public was supported by scientific research.

Asked about the E.P.A.’s move, the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, emphasized the importance of going through Congress. “The way to deal with greenhouse gases,” Mr. Gibbs said, “is to work with Congress in order to put together a plan that deals with this and creates a market for renewable energy.”

There are several reasons that there is a widespread preference for a legislative “cap-and-trade” approach to regulating carbon dioxide emissions, as opposed to E.P.A. regulation.

A central reason, said Paul Bledsoe of the National Commission on Energy Policy, is that Congressional action is less subject to litigation and could not be easily overturned by a new administration.

But a deeper concern among the industry is that regulation by the E.P.A. is a blunt tool. The agency’s regulatory powers have previously been applied mainly to pollutants that do damage on a regional level, like nitrogen oxide and hydrocarbons.

By contrast, carbon dioxide, methane and other heat-trapping gases that the E.P.A. proposes to regulate do harm on a global scale.

“The act does not deal well with an emission that’s virtually ubiquitous and travels through the atmosphere,” said Carol Raulston, a spokesman for the National Mining Association, a coal industry group.

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