What will the presidential election in November mean for U.S. environmental policy? Although we don’t yet know who the Republican candidate will be, we know all too well what will be on his environmental agenda. The endless televised debates have exposed what the New York Times called “the broken windows of the Republican idea factory.” It’s not a pretty sight.

The candidates all share the same approach to the environment. Ron Paul plans to govern primarily by abolishing things. His hit list includes America’s foreign wars, but also the Federal Reserve, most federal taxes, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and all limits on offshore drilling and the use of coal and nuclear power. Rick Santorum agrees that energy companies must be entirely deregulated. Newt Gingrich will build a moon colony by 2020, and will replace the EPA with a new agency that “will operate on the premise that most environmental problems can and should be solved by states and local communities.” Mitt Romney promises to “eliminate the regulations promulgated in pursuit of the Obama administration’s costly and ineffective anti-carbon agenda,” and to slow down or block regulations in general whenever industry complains about their costs (i.e., always).

Do we really need to slow down the snail’s pace of current environmental regulation, and pay more attention to industry as it bemoans the cost of compliance? Consider the case of coal ash: produced in stupendous quantities by coal-burning power plants, it contains dangerous concentrations of arsenic, lead, mercury and other toxic metals. Improper disposal has led to contamination of groundwater in many communities, and to occasional disasters such as the billion-gallon sludge spill that inundated Kingston, Tennessee in 2008.

This looks like the poster child for hazardous waste regulation – except that the coal industry has consistently used its considerable political clout to win special treatment. Back in 1980, near the dawn of modern waste regulations, Congress directed EPA to study coal ash in detail before applying hazardous waste rules to it.

That process of study has already stretched over more than 30 years. Under the Obama administration, closure was finally in sight; in 2009, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said she would complete regulation of coal ash that year. It turns out that the industry’s clout is undiminished, and the revised Obama plan is to punt until after the election. In January a coalition of environmental groups announced plans to sue EPA to force regulation of ash disposal.

Industry’s grumbling about regulatory costs has taken two forms. One is the claim of job losses: regulation of coal ash as hazardous waste, according to an industry-sponsored report, would eliminate more than 300,000 jobs a year. I re-examined their report and found it to be close to a complete fabrication; using standard methods of economic analysis, regulation of coal ash as hazardous waste would cause a net annual gain of 28,000 jobs.

A more exotic claim is that the stigma created by regulation of coal ash disposal would destroy the market for ash reuse. More than one-third of coal ash is recycled, often used in construction materials such as concrete, cement, and wallboard. Although EPA’s proposed rules explicitly exempt ash recycling, the industry claims that regulation of ash disposal as hazardous waste would stigmatize all uses of ash, including recycling.

If coal ash disposal bears a regulatory stigma, is it deserved? Nuclear waste is stigmatized as dangerous, which is a huge setback for any plans you might have to bury it in your backyard. No one, however, would count the lost income from your inability to open a backyard nuclear waste dump as a cost of regulation. Nor would we count the loss of income if sales dropped for a different product that was mistakenly stigmatized as nuclear waste. The latter is exactly parallel to the purported stigma effect on coal ash reuse.

Liz Stanton and I critiqued the stigma theory in testimony on ash disposal rules in 2010. At the time, the idea seemed purely hypothetical. Now the industry alleges that regulatory uncertainty and “toxic” publicity are already driving down recycling; after soaring under the previous administration, the ash recycling rate stalled in 2008-2009 and declined in 2010.

The industry has missed the obvious explanation for these trends. Coal ash is created by electricity generation; ash reuse often occurs in construction. In the economic boom before 2008, construction grew more rapidly than electricity generation, so markets for ash reuse expanded relative to the supply. In the crash after 2008, the reverse was true: construction declined more steeply than electricity generation, so reuse markets shrank relative to ash supply.

Is regulation too expensive because it calls hazardous materials hazardous, and clueless customers could accidentally extend the resulting stigma to other products? In rational debate in ordinary times, this notion would be greeted with derisive laughter, at best. Yet in a year when leading presidential candidates discuss statehood for a non-existent future moon colony, or plans to make immigrants engage in voluntary self-deportation, it’s hard to know what will count as serious.

The current administration’s environmental policies have frequently been a disappointment, but the choice in the November elections seems sure to be between disappointment and disaster.

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As communities battle toxic air, business shapes EPA and state regulation

When the top environmental regulator in Kansas rejected its bid to build two new power units in 2007, citing health concerns, Sunflower Electric Power Corp. refused to take no for an answer. When the governor vetoed bills that would have paved the way for construction in 2008 and 2009, Sunfloweragain refused to relent.

The company’s persistence paid off. In 2009, the new governor approved construction of a new coal plant in the tiny city of Holcomb, so long as Kansas legislators backed renewable energy policies at the same time. The state regulator who initially denied Sunflower’s permit? He was let go.

Sunflower said it won the permit on merit, and that political influence was not a factor.

Yet the company’s success is a telling snapshot of how, when industry flexes its muscles over Clean Air Act issues, it often wins. From Kansas to Louisiana to Texas, Wisconsin and Ohio, community groups have fought new plants, expansions and chronic emissions – only to see industry score victories with regulators and politicians.

“We’re not protecting public health today,” said Jim Tarr, an air pollution consultant in California who worked as an engineer for the Texas Air Control Board in the 1970s. “One of the primary reasons we’re not is that the environmental agencies have been co-opted by the people doing the polluting.”

Industry’s influence plays out at every step of the process: From the campaign contributions it spreads to sway policy to its role shaping clean air rules to its resistance to enforcement actions brought by regulators.

Its reach is deeper than most realize.

Two just-published reports – one from academic researchers, the other from the Environmental Protection Agency’s own inspector general – detail industry’s role in shaping Clean Air Act regulations meant to protect communities from dirty air.

The academics’ study – Rulemaking in the Shade: An Empirical Study of EPA’s Air Toxic Emission Standards – examined the level of input by industry and public interest groups at key stages as the EPA wrote rules for more than 100 major industries. Those stages: Before a proposed rule was published; once notice was given and the public weighed in; and during the final rule-writing process.

The results surprised even the study’s authors:

• At the early, pre-proposal stage, industry had an average of 84 informal communications with the EPA per rule compared to less than 1 for public interest groups;
• During the public comment period, industry provided more than 8 of every 10 comments;
• Changes to the final rule favored industry 4-1 over those benefiting public interest groups.

“We expected imbalance in engagement, but did not imagine it would be that badly skewed,” said co-author Wendy Wagner, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law.

For every two industry comments, she said, one change was made weakening the final rule.

Industry said its motivation is no secret.

“It’s survival,” said Robert Bessette, president of the Council of Industrial Boiler Owners, a trade group representing manufacturers that use boilers to power their operations. “Industry, when pushed up against the wall, reacts.”

The council is pushing back against a proposed EPA rule to curb toxic emissions from boilers – an effort that includes prodding Congress to pass legislation and meeting with the EPA and the Office of Management and Budget, Bessette said.

Political contributions help ease industry’s access. Thirteen states house three-fourths of the nation’s most worrisome air polluters – facilities listed on an EPA “watch list” of alleged violators that haven’t faced timely enforcement. Those companies, their corporate parents and executives have made nearly $60 million in overall state campaign contributions since 2006, the Center for Public Integrity found.

Facilities in the six congressional districts with the greatest number of watch list sites contributed $120,350 to their federal representatives since 2006.

Uneven state enforcement

In some states, industry influence is clear.

The EPA IG’s recent report, EPA Must Improve Oversight of State Enforcement, documents breakdowns in Clean Air Act enforcement that can translate into fewer health protections for communities in the shadow of power plants, refineries and chemical manufacturers.

“When neither states nor EPA takes enforcement actions when needed, these health benefits are not realized and premature deaths and illnesses are not prevented to the extent that they could be,” the IG concluded. “As a result, EPA cannot assure that Americans in all states are equally protected from the health effects of pollution or that enforcement of regulated entities is consistent nationwide.”

The IG said a culture of protecting industry was clear in some states with the weakest records of enforcing the Clean Air Act, such as Louisiana.

“State, EPA regional, and external interview responses attributed Louisiana’s poor performance to several factors, including a lack of resources, natural disasters, and a culture in which the state agency is expected to protect industry,” the IG found.

The EPA did not respond to the Center’s questions about Rulemaking in the Shade. In its reply to the IG’s report, the agency questioned some of the research methodology – but ultimately agreed “that state enforcement performance varies widely across the country.”

“We also agree that there are steps EPA Headquarters and regional offices can and should take to strengthen our oversight and address longstanding state performance issues,” the EPA replied.

That industry weighs in with frequency and success is no surprise to environmental activists, people who live near plant fence-lines and some political leaders who have long tangled with Big Oil.

“The fight that industry wages against any kind of threat to their pollution is across the board,” said James “Jim” Cox, a retired state senator from southwest Louisiana. “It boils down to the control the industry has of the community. It’s a jobs situation. It’s a well-organized lobbying situation.”

Health fears in Mossville

One long-running battle centers on Mossville, a small African-American community founded in the 1790s across from Lake Charles, La.

Fourteen major industrial facilities surround the community, including an oil refinery, a coal plant, chemical manufacturers and one of the largest clusters of vinyl production facilities in the United States.

For 15 years, residents have been asking government and industry to relocate them from the powerful odors and toxic chemicals released by the plants, citing reports showing dangerous levels of dioxins in the air. Dioxins, researchers say, can cause cancer and reproductive damage and slow child development.

In 1998, the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry found that Mossville residents had an average dioxin blood level three times above that in the typical U.S. community.

The report, however, did not identify the source of the exposure. A later ATSDR report said residents in the neighboring parishes of Calcasieu and Lafayette had typical blood dioxin levels. But, residents say, that report included a larger group outside Mossville. Their health fears continue.

Wilma Subra, a chemist from Louisiana who studied the community, produced a report linking dioxin levels to local industry.

As Mossville residents pressed for answers, the government continued to issue permits fueling industry’s growth. The EPA’s enforcement website lists more than a dozen facilities in Lake Charles out of compliance with the Clean Air Act.

In 2005, the people of Mossville filed an environmental racism petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, part of the Organization of American States. When the commission accepted the complaint last year, it became the first such U.S. case to move forward.

“Filing the human rights petition is really our last resort,” said one of the community’s lawyers, Monique Harden, co-director of the public interest law firm Advocates for Environmental Human Rights.

“It’s been 15 years of evolving strategies,” Harden said. “Residents want a voluntary relocation program that they help to develop. They want medical care services. They want pollution reduction and cleanup of contaminated sites. So it’s been years of trying to get both the industry in the Mossville area and governmental agencies to meet the community on these remedies.”

Some residents have been relocated, but the petition seeks a more far-reaching move-out for those who want it. It asks that the U.S. “refrain from issuing environmental permits and other approvals that would allow any increase in pollution.”

Lake Charles-area companies deny causing any harm to residents, saying they strive to curtail emissions.

“We strongly support efforts to reduce dioxins in the environment,” Georgia Gulf Corp., which makes a raw ingredient in polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, wrote on the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre website.

“Our industry is responsible for quality products that consumers want, buy and use every day. Medical supplies, medicines and pharmaceutical products, computer keyboards, PVC pipe, automobile dashboards, toys and sporting goods and food wrap are products Louisiana plants help make, and these products in turn help Louisianans enjoy a healthy and productive lifestyle,” the company wrote.

Echoing other facilities, PPG Industries said it operates “in a manner that is protective of public health, safety and the environment.” ConocoPhillips, the world’s fifth-largest refiner, declined an interview request but cited its website, saying it is committed to working with its neighbors.

‘They love their polluters’

In some communities, activists feel like lone wolves.

In Longview, in East Texas, the Eastman Chemical Co. plant is among the top national emitters of ethylene glycol, chloromethane and chloroform – compounds that can damage the nervous system, liver, kidneys or lungs. EPA records show $420,004 in Clean Air Act penalties levied in the last five years against Eastman, which manufactures more than 40 major chemical and polymer products.

Eastman said it diligently monitors emissions and its Longview site meets air-quality standards. “Protecting air quality is an essential and complex part of Eastman’s environmental program,” the company said in a statement. “The men and women at Eastman not only strive to improve Eastman’s compliance with the Clean Air Act because it is the law, but also because we and our families live in the adjacent communities.”

Over a five-year period from August 2005 to August 2010, no residents filed complaints about the facility with the Tyler office of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, records show.

That is not surprising, some say, in a region proud of the economic jolt industry provides, where Eastman Road runs astride the plant and where, in 2009, the Texas Chemical Council awarded Eastman its “Excellence in Caring for Texas” award. The plant employs more than 1,500, placing it among the largest employers in a region replete with industry.

Tammy Cromer-Campbell, a professional photographer and environmental activist, is a rare breed in Longview: a critic who stands up against pollution. She said the mission has been lonely. “They love their polluters,” Cromer-Campbell said with a laugh while driving near Longview’s industrial hub.

A co-founder of a group called WECAN – Working Effectively for Clean Air Now – she rose up at meetings of the Northeast Texas Air Care, a cooperative association of local governments and industries. Cromer-Campbell found herself the outsider looking in.

“Whenever I go to those meetings, I don’t have a crowd of people behind me, supporting me. It’s all industry,” she said. “I got burnt out. We couldn’t get a lot of other people to join me.”

Picking up the slack

Some Texas officials are frustrated, too.

Two veteran lawyers with the Harris County Attorney’s Office – whose jurisdiction includes Houston and the nation’s largest petrochemical complex – seem to be in perpetual conflict with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

One, Terry O’Rourke, called the agency “a lap dog for polluters” and said state regulators are too quick to overlook companies that poison the air and water. O’Rourke said his office, which represents the Harris County Pollution Control Services Department, has picked up the slack.

“We have to stop the pollution at its source,” said O’Rourke, who began prosecuting polluters as an assistant state attorney general in 1973. “You do it the same way you write speeding tickets. If you don’t enforce the law, everybody will be driving 100 miles per hour.”

His colleague, Rock Owens, said the TCEQ “treats the regulated community as if they are customers. It’s always with an eye toward the convenience and the bottom line of the major players.”

Owens cited a recent example. On five occasions from April 2008 through March 2010, according to a civil complaint drafted by the county attorney’s office, a Shell Chemical plant east of Houston “illegally released over eight tons of toxic petrochemicals into the air in Harris County, including known carcinogens such as benzene and butadiene. . .”

Shell, however, failed to report the releases to the county within 24 hours, as required. The TCEQ fined Shell $71,900 for one of the incidents in 2008. Owens’s office deemed this insufficient and went after Shell, preparing a complaint in 2010 that sought more than $6 million in penalties.

The case was settled this year, with Shell agreeing to pay $500,000 to the county. O’Rourke said he remains annoyed the TCEQ didn’t move more aggressively.

“That, to me, is fundamentally offensive,” O’Rourke said. “TCEQ slapped their wrist. We’ve got kids who play in schoolyards in the shadow of these [plants]. Most of them are black and brown, and a lot of them are poor. Just because they’re poor doesn’t mean they should have to breathe crap.”

He added: “We can have the largest petrochemical complex in the United States and still have a clean environment. They are not incompatible.”

In a written statement, Shell said that while it “disputes the claims and allegations made by Harris County, we are complying with the settlement in the interest of securing a timely and effective resolution to this matter.”

The TCEQ said in a statement that it has fined Shell more than $1.4 million over the past five years as a result of 26 enforcement orders, many involving “unauthorized emissions and failure to comply with permitted emission limits.”

The TCEQ “emphasizes compliance to protect our citizens from harm, coupled with swift, sure and firm enforcement for those who do not comply,” the statement said.

Owens scoffed at the amount of the TCEQ penalties, saying large companies like Shell consider them “just another part of doing business in Texas. Pay a little fine, go about your way – that’s not an effective deterrent.”

Shell, which reported profits of $18.6 billion in 2010, cited $7 billion in profits in the third quarter of 2011 alone.

Working Washington

Big industry pays big lobbying fees to press its agenda in Washington.

The Washington lobby shop for San Antonio-based Valero Energy Corp., for instance, spent $496,000 in the first three quarters of this year pressing environmental issues ranging from air and water quality to fuel specifications.

The company also hired outside lobbyists to work the aisles of Congress and federal agencies, according to Senate lobbying disclosure records.

One firm, Bracewell & Giuliani, spent $140,000 lobbying for Valero on “clean air, energy legislation and other environmental issues relating to the refining industry.” Among the lobbyists is a former acting general counsel for the EPA.

Six Valero plants – five refineries and one ethanol plant – are on the EPA’s November Clean Air Act watch list.

Still, the company’s message to its shareholders has been reassuring. Even if “one or more [enforcement actions] were decided against us, we believe that there would be no material effect on our financial position or results of operations,” Valero said in its 2010 annual report.

A Valero spokesman declined to comment, saying, “Our advocacy efforts are outlined in required filings.”

‘There were abuses’

Industry often prevails over critics – and, sometimes, regulators.

In Holcomb, Kan., residents so far have been unable to stop the Sunflower power plant even after the state initially shot it down.

After Roderick Bremby, then head of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, denied Sunflower’s initial permit application, project supporters pushed bills in the state legislature clearing the way for construction.

In 2008 and 2009, Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius vetoed the bills.

Less than a month after an April 2009 veto, Sebelius left to become secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Lt. Gov. Mark Parkinson took over, and, by May 4, had struck a deal with Sunflower.

Before the plant could be built, it had to get a permit – a lengthy process allowing public input. The clock was ticking: If the permit wasn’t issued by January 2011, new rules would require the plant to do more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In November 2010, as the January deadline loomed, Parkinson fired Bremby.

In a statement the week after the firing, Parkinson said the decision wasn’t related to the Sunflower permit. “When evaluating the permit application,” Parkinson said, “what I have told the acting Secretary is simply this: I don’t care whether you approve the permit or not, but I do care that Kansas follows the laws and regulations governing the process.”

But Bremby, who is now commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Social Services, said during a speech at a Kansas community college this February that the permit approval process “was not a benign, pristine, routine bureaucratic process. Unfortunately, there were abuses.”

On Dec. 16, 2010, the Kansas department approved Sunflower’s permit.

Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law firm, soon challenged the permit in court, accusing state officials of rushing the permitting process because of pressure from Sunflower and the governor’s office. The result, the firm alleged, was a flawed permit.

Among the concerns expressed in Earthjustice’s legal brief: State regulators allowed Sunflower to underestimate the amount of toxic air pollution it would release, shielding it from requirements to install better pollution controls.

Sunflower spokesperson Cindy Hertel said the permit “was thoroughly vetted” by state regulators. “As far as influencing anyone, we certainly did not,” she said.

Some in Holcomb want the new plant for the economic boost Sunflower promises will come, but others are worried. Lee Messenger, who lives a few miles from the current plant and the proposed site for the new one, fears the expansion will drain the town’s water supply and pollute the air.

“We don’t get a chance to vote on anything,” said Messenger, 81. “These politicians like to think we elected them to take care of us. But they take care of themselves first. “

Kansas regulators declined to comment on Sunflower’s permit, citing the ongoing court case. In a brief, lawyers with the state attorney general’s office wrote, “The accusations of political bias and procedural impropriety are factually unsupportable in the administrative record.”

Business-friendly regulators

Some grassroots groups worry that state environmental agencies lean too heavily toward business interests.

In Wisconsin, Scott Walker swept into the governor’s office in 2010 on a message of job creation. Soon after, he appointed Cathy Stepp, a former Republican state senator, to head the state’s Department of Natural Resources.

Stepp had been a vocal critic of the department she now leads. In June 2009, she posted on aconservative blog that some who worked at the state agency “tend to be anti-development, anti-transportation, and pro-garter snakes, Karner blue butterflies, etc. … So, since they’re unelected bureaucrats who have only their cubicle walls to bounce ideas off of, they tend to come up with some pretty outrageous stuff that those of us in the real world have to contend with.”

The department’s No. 2 official, Matt Moroney, said that before joining the department, Stepp “was representing a constituency. She was listening closely to some of her business friends and looking at how to improve DNR.”

Her current job, he said, “is a completely different role for her.” Stepp has focused on cutting waste and streamlining the agency. This October, department officials testified in favor of a bill in the state legislature that would restrict the number of times regulators could ask companies for more information on a permit application. It would also impose stricter time limits for the department to approve permits.

Environmental groups say the department’s new approach, coupled with tightening budgets, will undermine attempts to curb pollution. “They are going to these public hearings and advocating for taking their own authority away,” said Shahla Werner, director of the state’s Sierra Club chapter. “It’s surreal to watch.”

Paint-eating pollution

Middletown, Ohio, has lived under the cloud of AK Steel for nearly a century. The largest employer in the Ohio town 40 miles north of Cincinnati, AK Steel has for decades pumped out pollution that takes the paint off residents’ cars and settles in their siding, some say.

“It got into people’s gardens, and kids playing in the yard would come in with their feet black from the soot,” said longtime resident Rachael Belz.

In 2000, the Department of Justice sued AK Steel over violations of the Clean Air and Clean Water acts. The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency joined the suit, which settled out of court and required the company to clean up Dicks Creek, which runs between the facility and a neighboring school. AK Steel committed to $66 million in pollution-control upgrades.

The facility remains on the EPA’s Clean Air Act watch list, and some say problems linger. “We still have soot in our house,” said Belz, who suffers from asthma. “You can’t sit outside on your porch for more than 10 to 15 minutes without crap flying into your coffee.”

An AK Steel spokesman said the company does not know why it is on the watch list and has complied with regulations. He declined further comment.

During the civil case, residents launched a campaign to pressure the company to meet its promises. Elected officials, community organizer Belz said, made themselves scarce.

But politicians, from the city council to the governor’s office to U.S. Rep. John Boehner – a regular beneficiary of AK Steel contributions – were on hand to cheer the company’s 2010 expansion plan. Boehner did not reply to interview requests.

“We do our campaigns in part,” Belz said, “because we can’t count on our politicians.”

Paul Abowd, Rachael Marcus and Fred Schulte contributed to this report.

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WASHINGTON – Today the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the first national standards to protect American families from power plant emissions of mercury and air toxics like arsenic, acid gas, nickel, selenium, and cyanide. These new Mercury and Air Toxics Standards will slash emissions of these dangerous pollutants by relying on widely available, proven pollution controls that are already in use at more than half of the nation’s coal-fired power plants. Here’s what people across the country, including environmental, faith, public health and business leaders are saying about Mercury and Air Toxics Standards:

Albert A. Rizzo, MD, American Lung Association:

“Since toxic air pollution from power plants can make people sick and cut lives short, the new Mercury and Air Toxics Standards are a huge victory for public health. The Lung Association expects all oil and coal-fired power plants to act now to protect all Americans, especially our children, from the health risks imposed by these dangerous air pollutants.”

American Businesses for Clean Energy, American Sustainable Business Council, Ceres, Environmental Entrepreneurs, Main Street Alliance and the Small Business Majority:

“Our experience has shown that the Clean Air Act yields substantial benefits to the economy and to businesses, and that these benefits consistently outweigh the costs of pollution reductions. We believe the finalization of MATS [Mercury and Air Toxics Standards] is a meaningful step towards economic recovery and growth.”

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg:

“Today, the President has done the right thing by ignoring the false claims of a narrow special interest and siding with the public health and the public good. The new EPA mercury standards will save countless lives and improve the quality of life for millions. The new rules will also accelerate the country’s move away from heavily polluting coal power plants to cleaner energy sources that will continue to stimulate investment and economic activity long into the future.”

Howard Learner, Environmental Law & Policy Center:

“These standards mean power plants will invest in modern pollution controls, and that investment will create jobs, cleaner air and better public health. Illinois adopted mercury pollution reduction standards in 2006 and modern control equipment has been installed at almost all coal plants in the state. The technology works, the lights have stayed on, mercury pollution has been reduced and children’s health is better protected. It’s time for the holdout utilities to stop crying wolf, stop stalling and clean up their pollution to protect children’s health and our rivers and lakes.”

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel:

“I commend the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for introducing new standards to reduce levels of dangerous toxins in our air. Limiting emissions of mercury and other pollutants from coal and oil-fired power plants will save thousands of lives, protect public health, and create jobs for Americans. Our experience in Illinois has shown that mercury emissions can be dramatically reduced without any impact on reliability, cost, or quality of service. We must continue to clean our air and clean up this industry across the country, to create opportunities for Americans and allow all Americans to lead healthier lives.”

Alan Baker, American Public Health Association:

“The dangerous health risks associated with coal-burning power plants is no longer an elusive, distant threat. Exposure to air pollution and toxic chemicals can cause asthma and heart attacks, harm those suffering from respiratory illness and in some cases lead to death. Implementing these critically needed standards could mean the difference between a chronic debilitating, expensive illness or healthy life for hundreds of thousands of American children and adults.”

The Rev. Fletcher Harper, GreenFaith:

“The EPA’s new rule is a vital step forward morally and religiously.  The great religious traditions to which so many US citizens belong – from Judaism, Christianity and Islam to Hinduism, Buddhism and more – are overwhelmingly clear that protecting life and the environment represent a moral responsibility, and that we are called to steward and protect an earth which, ultimately, does not belong to us.  By saving thousands of lives – many of them from our nation’s most vulnerable communities – and by preventing toxic emissions, this rule will help ensure that future generations inherit a healthier, cleaner planet.”

Shannon Baker-Branstetter, Consumers Union:

“The health risks that mercury exposure poses are serious, especially since those most at risk are children and other vulnerable populations. Mercury from large industrial sources contaminates the air we breathe and common foods that many Americans eat. Regulating mercury emissions is just a common sense way to protect consumers from these health hazards and today’s announcement is a critical step towards that goal.”

Rev. Canon Sally G. Bingham, President of Interfaith Power & Light President:

“This is good news for the religious community across America. The finalization of the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards shows us that the 40-year old Clean Air Act is still an invaluable tool to carry out our call to be stewards of God’s Creation and to serve the least among us.”

Lauren Randall, Environment America:

“Today President Obama stood up to the polluters and protected kids’ health. This landmark achievement reflects what every parent knows, which is that powering our homes should not poison kids.”

Roberto Carmona, Voces Verdes:

“Voces Verdes applauds the Obama Administration’s important new standard to control and curb mercury and other toxic air pollution from power plants. This historic rule will benefit our nation as a whole and Latino families everywhere preventing the harmful effects of these pollutants, such as respiratory diseases, developmental problems and heart attacks in our communities. This rule protects our health while also creating thousands of jobs from the manufacturing, engineering, installation and maintenance of pollution controls to meet these standards, potentially including 46,000 short-term construction jobs and 8,000 long-term utility jobs. This is an important move to protect the public health while ensuring a brighter future for our communities.”

Robert D. Brook, M.D., University of Michigan and American Heart Association:

“This historic action taken today by the EPA will mean that all of us now and in the future can expect to suffer fewer cardiovascular problems caused by breathing harmful air pollutants from power plants, and also see a reduction in other health issues related to mercury and fine particulate matter. Though much progress has been made in cleaning our nation’s air over the past few decades, these added safeguards should help to further reduce cardiovascular disease, the No. 1 killer in the United States. With these standards in place, generations of Americans will now be able to breathe even cleaner air, a fact we should all be proud of as a nation.”

Benjamin Todd Jealous, NAACP:

“This rule is a smart, sensible and overdue step to limit the dangerous effects of these toxins and address the racially disparate impact of air pollution. The standards will save millions of dollars in medical expenses by helping to prevent new cases of asthma attacks and other respiratory diseases that often strike families that can least afford it, while advancing a healthier quality of life for families across the nation.”

Larry Schweiger, National Wildlife Federation:

“Our children and grandchildren will inherit a safer world thanks to the leadership of President Obama and Administrator Jackson. At long last, these prudent and overdue limits on unchecked mercury and toxic air pollution will ensure our fish will be safe to eat, and our children can breathe easier.”

Gene Karpinski, League of Conservation Voters:

“Today is a historic day for the health and safety of our children. We strongly applaud the Obama administration for setting new limits on mercury and other toxic air pollution from power plants – limits that will save lives, prevent illnesses like asthma and bronchitis and create jobs in pollution control technology.”

PJM:

“PJM and four other RTO/ISOs proposed in comments to the EPA a process to ensure that reliability in our respective regions can be maintained as the final Mercury and Toxics Standards (MATS) Rule is implemented. The final MATS rule will have different degrees of impact in various parts of the country. We at PJM are pleased that the EPA Administrator has included the key elements of our proposed process to preserve reliability into documents accompanying the Final Rule. We at PJM intend to work with EPA, FERC, the states and others to ensure that process can be effectively utilized to address particular reliability challenges and ensure that the reliability of the electric grid is maintained during this critical period.”

Senator Patrick Leahy (Vt.):

“I commend the Environmental Protection Agency for doing the right thing, under tremendous special interest pressure, in standing up for the public’s interest. The Utility Air Toxics Rule to control toxic air pollutants such as mercury is a health and environmental breakthrough for the American people, and especially for Vermonters. Finally, after 20 years of dodging regulation, coal- and oil-fired electric power plants, the largest contributors of these toxics, will be held accountable for the pollution they emit, just as many other industries are.”

Senator Ben Cardin (Md.):

“Clean air is essential for the health of every American and it’s also good business. It’s time for the rest of the country’s electricity generation sector to catch up with Maryland and do what our power producers have been doing for years now to protect children from toxic mercury and air toxics pollution…Mercury is an extremely harmful neurotoxin that our country’s largest source producers, power plants, must act to address. The doomsday scenarios described by our nation’s power companies who irresponsibly continue to operate the nation’s oldest and dirtiest power plants are not based in reality. The rule being finalized today is the result of litigation demanding EPA to comply with the Clean Air Act.”

Senator Tom Carper (Del.):

“With this decision, I believe the Environmental Protection Agency has provided a reasonable and achievable schedule for our dirtiest power plants to reduce harmful air toxic emissions. At the same time, I believe the Environmental Protection Agency has given enough flexibility to industry and states to meet those targets and address any possible local reliability concerns. These clean air investments will be a win-win-win as we save thousands of lives, save billions of dollars in health care costs and work productivity, and create good paying jobs here at home by cleaning up these dirty power plants. In fact, this new rule is expected to produce 46,000 jobs in the near term during the installation of the needed clean air technology, and thousands more for long-term utility jobs.”

Senator Bernie Sanders (Vt.):

“I strongly support the Clean Air Act standards announced today that will slash toxic air pollution, such as mercury and arsenic, from our nation’s power plants. We know from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that mercury can cause brain damage and is particularly harmful to infants and young children. We also know that installing the necessary pollution control scrubbers and equipment will create jobs as we update our power plants. This clean air rule is long overdue, and I commend EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson for protecting our families’ health and wellbeing.”

Frances Beinecke, Natural Resources Defense Council:

“The magnitude of these health benefits could make this rule one of the biggest environmental accomplishments of the Obama administration. I applaud the administration’s continued leadership in making our air cleaner and safer to breathe.”

U.S. Commerce Secretary John Bryson:

“For business leaders, there are few challenges greater than uncertainty, and by issuing today’s ruling, this Administration has answered definitively a question that has hung over the U.S. energy industry for nearly 20 years,” Bryson said. “These new standards have benefits that far exceed costs, and the flexibility built into their adoption will help guarantee that implementation will proceed in a thoughtful, common-sense way that limits negative impacts on businesses.”

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack:

“By reducing emissions of highly toxic pollutants such as mercury, we are ensuring that our air and water are cleaner and American families are safer. Folks in rural America have a great appreciation for the land and work hard to preserve our environment for future generations. These standards support their efforts by improving millions of acres of polluted ecosystems that will create better habitat for fish and wildlife and provide more recreational opportunities for all Americans to enjoy.”

Energy Action Coalition:

“Young voters are thrilled that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and the Obama Administration are standing up to big polluters to protect our generation’s health and spur job creation in the clean energy economy. This decision shows the Obama Administration’s commitment to stand up to Big Coal and Oil to protect the air we breathe. We hope the Administration will continue to stand up for the health and safety of Americans and the environment in the coming year.”

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.):

“Today, the EPA has taken an important step to protect public health, particularly the health of children. After years of Rhode Island receiving pollution from out-of-state power plants, the largest sources of toxic air pollution will finally be required to reduce emissions of these dangerous chemicals. I applaud our local utility, National Grid, for its support of these new clean air protections.”

Senator John Kerry (Ma.):

“The bottom line is, this will mean fewer heart attacks and asthma attacks, fewer kids exposed to mercury, and thousands of good jobs for the American workers who will build, install, and operate the equipment to reduce these toxic pollutants. Smart health and environmental protections go hand in hand with economic growth and reliable, affordable energy.”

Representative Elijah Cummings (Md.):

“These new standards, which have been twenty years in the making, will safeguard American families and protect our environment from dangerous mercury and toxic air pollution. I commend the EPA for finalizing rules that will prevent thousands of premature deaths and hundreds of thousands of heart attacks and other illnesses. These new national standards will create thousands of American jobs and generate health and economic benefits worth tens of billions of dollars.”

Representative Ed Markey (Mass.):

“This rule to limit mercury and other dangerous toxics is one of those times when you can truly say ‘we’re doing it for the kids. While the Obama administration wants to cut mercury pollution to protect kids and pregnant mothers, Republicans want to knife the MACT, stopping these standards from ever going into effect. The 91 percent reduction in mercury in Massachusetts since 1996 shows that these standards are attainable. The standards will reduce mercury by increasing innovation, as entrepreneurs and inventors will discover new and better ways to cut pollution and move to cleaner forms of energy that produce no pollution at all, like wind and solar power. I commend the Obama administration, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, and the staff at the EPA for their dedication to the health and well-being of America’s kids.”

Business Council for Sustainable Energy:

“Uncontrolled toxic air emissions are real and sizeable threats, both to public health and to the economy. Families, companies and investors need certainty on air emissions policy for healthier living and for economic growth. The finalization of the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards provides more certainty on emissions policy and will drive investment in innovative technologies and America’s energy infrastructure. American businesses can keep the lights on and grow the economy while protecting public health. Shifting to lower emissions technologies and resources while upgrading our nation’s electric generation infrastructure will help drive economic growth and create jobs.”

Senator Barbara Boxer (Calif.):

“Power plants are not only the nation’s largest source of dangerous mercury emissions, but they also pollute the air we breathe with lead, arsenic, chromium, and cyanide. These hazardous air pollutants are known to cause cancer, harm children’s development, and damage the brain and nervous system of infants. EPA estimates that this new clean air rule will annually prevent up to 11,000 premature deaths, 4,700 heart attacks, 130,000 asthma attacks and many other health benefits. The science and methodology used to determine these benefits have been extensively peer reviewed by EPA’s independent Science Advisory Board and the National Academies of Science. The agency estimates that this clean air rule will also provide up to 46,000 construction jobs and 8,000 long-term jobs in the utility industry. EPA’s action today will generate jobs and protect the health and safety of families across the country.”

Illinois Governor Pat Quinn:

“In Illinois, we have seen the benefits of enacting stringent requirements for reducing mercury emissions over the last several years. As a result, thousands of pounds of harmful mercury emissions have been kept out of our air. The President’s action will protect millions of Americans from these dangerous emissions just like we have been doing in Illinois.”

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius:

“When the Environmental Protection Agency announced achievable new standards today for mercury and other toxic pollutants from power plants, it took a critical step forward in promoting a safe and healthy environment where all families can raise their children free from dangerous chemical exposure. At the Department of Health and Human Services, we know that people’s health is not just determined by what happens in the doctor’s office. It depends on where we live and work, what we eat and the air we breathe.”

And here is a link to a statement by President Barak Obama regarding the announced Mercury and Air Toxics Standard (MATS):

President Obama Announces Historic New Mercury Emissions Standards

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Historic ‘mercury and air toxics standards’ meet 20-year old requirement to cut dangerous smokestack emissions

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, the first national standards to protect American families from power plant emissions of mercury and toxic air pollution like arsenic, acid gas, nickel, selenium, and cyanide. The standards will slash emissions of these dangerous pollutants by relying on widely available, proven pollution controls that are already in use at more than half of the nation’s coal-fired power plants.

EPA estimates that the new safeguards will prevent as many as 11,000 premature deaths and 4,700 heart attacks a year. The standards will also help America’s children grow up healthier – preventing 130,000 cases of childhood asthma symptoms and about 6,300 fewer cases of acute bronchitis among children each year.

“By cutting emissions that are linked to developmental disorders and respiratory illnesses like asthma, these standards represent a major victory for clean air and public health– and especially for the health of our children. With these standards that were two decades in the making, EPA is rounding out a year of incredible progress on clean air in America with another action that will benefit the American people for years to come,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards will protect millions of families and children from harmful and costly air pollution and provide the American people with health benefits that far outweigh the costs of compliance.”

“Since toxic air pollution from power plants can make people sick and cut lives short, the new Mercury and Air Toxics Standards are a huge victory for public health,” said Albert A. Rizzo, MD, national volunteer chair of the American Lung Association, and pulmonary and critical care physician in Newark, Delaware. “The Lung Association expects all oil and coal-fired power plants to act now to protect all Americans, especially our children, from the health risks imposed by these dangerous air pollutants.”

More than 20 years ago, a bipartisan Congress passed the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments and mandated that EPA require control of toxic air pollutants including mercury. To meet this requirement, EPA worked extensively with stakeholders, including industry, to minimize cost and maximize flexibilities in these final standards. There were more than 900,000 public comments that helped inform the final standards being announced today. Part of this feedback encouraged EPA to ensure the standards focused on readily available and widely deployed pollution control technologies, that are not only manufactured by companies in the United States, but also support short-term and long-term jobs. EPA estimates that manufacturing, engineering, installing and maintaining the pollution controls to meet these standards will provide employment for thousands, potentially including 46,000 short-term construction jobs and 8,000 long-term utility jobs.

Power plants are the largest remaining source of several toxic air pollutants, including mercury, arsenic, cyanide, and a range of other dangerous pollutants, and are responsible for half of the mercury and over 75 percent of the acid gas emissions in the United States. Today, more than half of all coal-fired power plants already deploy pollution control technologies that will help them meet these achievable standards. Once final, these standards will level the playing field by ensuring the remaining plants – about 40 percent of all coal fired power plants – take similar steps to decrease dangerous pollutants.

As part of the commitment to maximize flexibilities under the law, the standards are accompanied by a Presidential Memorandum that directs EPA to use tools provided in the Clean Air Act to implement the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards in a cost-effective manner that ensures electric reliability. For example, under these standards, EPA is not only providing the standard three years for compliance, but also encouraging permitting authorities to make a fourth year broadly available for technology installations, and if still more time is needed, providing a well-defined pathway to address any localized reliability problems should they arise.

Mercury has been shown to harm the nervous systems of children exposed in the womb, impairing thinking, learning and early development, and other pollutants that will be reduced by these standards can cause cancer, premature death, heart disease, and asthma.

The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, which are being issued in response to a court deadline, are in keeping with President Obama’s Executive Order on regulatory reform. They are based on the latest data and provide industry significant flexibility in implementation through a phased-in approach and use of already existing technologies.

The standards also ensure that public health and economic benefits far outweigh costs of implementation. EPA estimates that for every dollar spent to reduce pollution from power plants, the American public will see up to $9 in health benefits. The total health and economic benefits of this standard are estimated to be as much as $90 billion annually.

The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards and the final Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, which was issued earlier this year, are the most significant steps to clean up pollution from power plant smokestacks since the Acid Rain Program of the 1990s.

Combined, the two rules are estimated to prevent up to 46,000 premature deaths, 540,000 asthma attacks among children, 24,500 emergency room visits and hospital admissions. The two programs are an investment in public health that will provide a total of up to $380 billion in return to American families in the form of longer, healthier lives and reduced health care costs.

More information: http://www.epa.gov/mats/

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More than 20 years ago, Congress ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate toxic air pollution. It’s done that for most industries, but not the biggest polluters — coal and oil-burning power plants.

The EPA now plans to change that later this week, by setting new rules to limit mercury and other harmful pollution from power plants.

When Congress first told the EPA to regulate toxic air pollution in 1990, pediatrician Lynn Goldman was investigating the impact of mercury from mining operations on Native American families living near a contaminated lake.

“We had children that had levels that were many times higher than levels that are considered to be safe,” Goldman says.

Their families caught and ate a lot of local fish, and Goldman says she had to advise them to stop. The fish had too much mercury.

From The Plant To Plate

Goldman, now dean of George Washington University’s school of public health, says mercury damages children’s developing brains, impairing their verbal ability.

Mercury from mine tailings, medical waste and especially air pollution adds up. It accumulates in the food chain, mostly in fish; pregnant mothers pass it to their children. Studies suggest hundreds of thousands of babies each year are born with high mercury levels.

“Children who live closest to the plants are most affected by them,” Goldman says.

Goldman headed the EPA’s toxics office during the Clinton administration and worked on limiting mercury. It wasn’t easy, and she says the power industry and its supporters resisted.

“I think from day one everybody knew that regulating mercury from especially power plants wasn’t going to be easy,” she says. “I don’t think anybody thought that today, 21 years later, we would still be in a position where this had been controlled.”

New Rules

When President George W. Bush took office, the power industry persuaded his EPA to adopt soft limits on mercury, but federal courts said that regulation was too weak, so it never went into effect.

Now, the court has set a deadline of Friday for the EPA to issue a new rule. The language the EPA wants would require quick action, stating that within three years, power plants that burn coal would have to cut more than 90 percent of the mercury from their exhaust.

They’d also have to slash arsenic, acid gases and other pollutants that cause premature deaths, asthma attacks and cancer. But even now, some power companies have been furiously fighting the EPA’s rule — especially its deadlines.

“It’s physically impossible to build the controls, the generation, the transmission and the pipelines needed in three years,” says Anthony Topazi, chief operating officer for Southern Company, which provides electricity to nearly 4 million homes and hundreds of thousands of businesses in the Southeast.

Topazi says electricity rates will go up, putting marginal companies out of business. He says unless his company gets six years, it will not be able to keep the lights on.

“We will experience rolling blackouts or rationing power if we don’t have simply the time to comply,” Topazi says.

Paul Allen, senior vice president of Constellation Energy, says that’s not his company experience. Constellation installed controls for mercury and other pollutants on its big power plant outside Baltimore, and he says it took a little more than two years. At the peak of construction, it put 1,300 people to work as well.

“We don’t believe jobs will be destroyed, and we do think that it’s time to get on with this work,” Allen says.

Allen says the power industry had plenty of warning that this was coming.

About a dozen states — Massachusetts, for example — have already required power plants to clean up mercury.

Ken Kimmell, the commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, says though power plants in his state have slashed mercury pollution, his department still has to advise people not to eat fish caught in streams and lakes.

“The mercury levels in the fish are still too high for it to be safe to eat, and that’s because we’re still receiving an awful lot of mercury from upwind power plants,” Kimmell says.

Those upwind power plants are in other states, and Kimmell says that’s why it’s so important for the EPA this time to adopt strong nationwide rules with tough deadlines, despite all the political pressure it’s under not to do so.

View the excellent “Poisoned Places” searchable map here.

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An unusual confluence of environmental, political and economic events are colliding to take down the coal-fired power plant, shifting American power generation from the country’s historically dominant fuel source.

House Republicans and some in the industry have argued EPA’s steady stream of air permits could blow Old King Coal right off his perch at the helm of America’s power grid.

But a closer look shows that the regulations are only an accelerant, and only in some cases, to the direction many power companies are already taking. And the rules may, in fact, give many power companies the cover to launch costly new projects with huge returns, and to tighten markets in a way that could drive up prices and profits.

No doubt, some companies stand to lose. The winners and losers are bound to shift. But there are multiple culprits: a lagging economy, the discovery of huge resources of domestic natural gas and an administration predisposed to push through more stringent environmental demands (buoyed by new technologies making cleaner coal plants a possibility).

Coal won’t stop being a dominant source of American power. But many companies are shutting down many older, dirtier coal plants because it makes better economic sense.

In 2010, 44.9 percent of power generation was coal-based, according to the Edison Electric Institute. Natural gas had 23.8 percent of the market share, nuclear 19.6 percent, and the rest was made up of hydro, renewables and other methods of power generation.

But the discovery of the Marcellus Shale in the mid-Atlantic region, along with more cost-efficient hydraulic fracturing due to changing technology, means natural gas prices have dipped dramatically in recent years — and they’re expected to stay that way.

The North American Electric Reliability Corp. says in its most recent report that the main new sources of power added to the grid in the immediate future will be natural gas, solar and wind power projects.

For example, in late November, SolarCity and Bank of America-Merrill Lynch announced financing for a five-year plan to build $1 billion in solar power plants near military housing across the country, providing 300 megawatts of power.

This comes as about 48 gigawatts of coal retirements at 231 plants will have retired from 2010 to 2022, according to the Edison Electric Institute. That’s 14.1 percent of the total 339,000 megawatts of coal-fired power generation in 2010, or about 5 percent of overall power. M.J. Bradley & Associates — a firm representing many power plants in favor of the rules — keeps a list that currently includes 228 power plants set to retire in the next several years. All except six are more than 30 years old; the majority are older than 50 years.

Typically, 15,000 to 20,000 megawatts of new power are built each year, says John Hanger, former secretary of the Pennsylvania environment department.

Building new projects is pricey, reaching into the billions for new plants. But in most states — rate structures vary — a power company can regain that investment, building the costs into its rate structure. And after initial investments, upgraded power plants are more efficient to run.

It’s a given that EPA rules — particularly EPA’s cross-state air pollution rule, which goes into effect Jan. 1, and a mercury and air toxics rule for power plants, due next week — are forcing or accelerating shutdowns of many older, polluting coal-fired power plants.

What that means for reliability in the electric grid is not as simple. EPA, the Energy Department and supporters of the rules, which include some large utilities, say that demand will be met and allowances can be made to make sure that margins stay wide to meet power demands without a danger of blackouts on peak days.

The depressed economy has resulted in sluggish electricity demand. But with weather becoming more extreme, peak electricity demands — for instance during snowstorms or hot summer days — have become steeper in recent years. If something happens to a “base” unit — in a storm or because of malfunctioning equipment — there needs to be enough power that can be immediately generated to meet electricity needs.

That’s the “reliability margin” that many operators are concerned about meeting.

But it’s not all about EPA rules. There are other incentives for power companies to remove these older — and less efficient — coal-fired power plants from the grid.

Take, for instance, Michigan’s Consumers Energy. On Dec. 2, CE canceled its planned $2 billion 830-megawatt coal plant project near Bay City, Mich. But the company isn’t blaming EPA regulations.

“Frankly, … it was an economic decision,” CE spokesman Jeff Holyfield said. The company wasn’t worried that the coal plant wouldn’t meet EPA requirements. The coal-fired plant is not viable because recession has cut into demand for electricity, a steep drop in natural gas prices, and there is a surplus in electric generation in the Midwest region, Holyfield said. He added that the company expects power demand to hit pre-recession levels again by 2012.

CE still got something in exchange for the plant that will never be: It convinced state legislators to change a 2000 Michigan deregulation law that allowed customers to switch to out-of-state power marketers, flipping back and forth based on whoever has the lowest rates. The law was intended to encourage competition and bring other providers into the state. But that never came, Holyfield said. And deregulation was a bad deal for CE. It meant the company couldn’t always count on keeping its customers. Now the law has been mostly scrapped, winning CE a more stable portion of the power market, Holyfield said.

CE spent about $25 million in planning the abandoned coal plant project, but it is appealing to the electric commission to allow the company to regain the costs from rate payers.

Peak demand days benefit the power companies, though, Holyfield said. On most days, a megawatt hour would cost something like $30 to $50. But on a 100-degree July day, the same megawatt hour can cost $5,000 because of simple demand. Generally, “the power you generate at that peak time is a lot more valuable than the power you generate at 2 o’clock in the morning,” Holyfield said.

So tighter margins and higher demands mean some companies could do better with fewer electric generating units in the game.

CE also announced plans to “mothball” seven smaller coal-fired units at three plants in 2015. The units won’t be shut down completely, Holyfield said. But they will be taken offline because the high cost of upgrades to meet new EPA pollution limits outweighs the financial benefits of keeping them running. But the company should have no problem meeting their customer demand, Holyfield added.

That is in part because the company has plans to invest $6.6 billion over the next several years to upgrade five major coal-fired units to meet emissions requirements and build several renewable energy projects, including 250 megawatts of power at two new wind farms entering the market in 2012 and 2015. The company expects the projects will create more than 2,000 construction jobs in Michigan.

Of course, coal retirements aren’t all natural market forces — environmentalists would like some credit.

“The Bay City plant is the 159th coal plant project to be abandoned since the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign begin in 2005,” spokesman Kady McFadden said. Several more will be announced soon.

The campaign is focused on retiring existing coal plants and replacing them with efficiency measures and clean energy, McFadden said, to great success, aided by market forces that have made coal-fired power plants a less desirable choice.

Recently, Great River Energy built a $437 million coal and steam power plant — the Spiritwood Station — west of Fargo, N.D., she noted.

The plant is state of the art. But the plant already is being “mothballed” because of a lagging economy, the company announced last week.

That’s one “epic case of coal plant buyer’s remorse,” McFadden said.

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Are electricity reliability concerns about EPA air quality rules reliable?

On December 16, the Environmental Protection Agency plans to finalize its proposed rule limiting mercury and other hazardous air emissions from power plants.

If EPA goes ahead, does that mean the lights will go out in coal country? If your only source of information is press releases coming out of what Ronald Reagan called the “puzzle palace” on Capitol Hill, you’d best lay in a  supply of candles. But The Daily Green’s readers don’t take everything they hear coming out of Dee Cee at face value, right?

Reliability of the electric power system–its ability to deliver juice 24/7/365–has been one of the neuralgic issues surrounding EPA’s proposed rule, which comes straight out of the Clean Air Act’s provision requiring limits on 189 toxic air pollutants using what the law calls “maximum achievable control technology,” or MACT in the acronym-happy world of environmental politics. So, when you hear politicians rattling on about “Utility MACT,” that’s what they’re talking about.

For all intents and purposes, the rule would apply to coal-fired power plants and would come into force in 2015. Critics say the rule would force utilities to shut down coal plants, impairing reliability, or force them to take too many of them down at once for pollution control retrofits, also impairing reliability.

A trio of reports published last week put the reliability issue under a scope. They were issued by the Department of Energy, a consulting firm working for gas and nuclear utilities that support the rule, and by an outfit called the North American Reliability Corp., or–if you can stand another acronym–NERC. Under a federal law enacted in 2005, NERC sets and enforces electric power reliability standards. NERC also publishes annual reliability assessments.

In varying degrees, all three reports steered well clear of apocalyptic predictions. To be sure, some coal plants that lack sulfur dioxide scrubbers are likely to close, but in many cases, those plants are decades old and due for retirement. Should utilities decide to retrofit the old beaters rather than close them and replace them with cleaner gas-fired generation, EPA can, on a case-by-case basis, give them an extra year or longer to comply. If more time is needed, EPA can stipulate that the plants in question can run only to maintain local reliability.

NERC’s assessment, the most conservative of the three, looked at two scenarios, a “moderate case” and “strict case” to assess impacts of Utility MACT and three other EPA rules on reliability. NERC said “reserve margins”–the wiggle room that regional grids should have to ensure that power is delivered reliably during peak demand periods–could be too narrow for comfort in Texas by 2013 and in New England by 2015. Likewise, margins might slip below NERC targets in the lower Mississippi River Valley and in Kentucky and Tennessee by 2018. The question in NERC’s mind is whether enough clean new power plants can be brought on line fast enough to replace the dirty old ones, and/or whether utilities can get enough time to bring their plants up to snuff.

Neither the Department of Energy (DOE) nor M.J. Bradley Assoc., consultant for the Clean Energy Group of utilities, believes there will be a reliability problem. DOE modeled a “stress test” on utilities–sort of like the stress tests the Treasury Department has done on banks–to determine whether utilities could keep the lights on and still comply with EPA rules.

DOE modeled two rules, Utility MACT and another one, already finalized, that  limits emissions that cause downwind smog and particulate pollution. DOE said the stress test was deliberately designed to be more stringent than what EPA is likely to require. The result? “Target reserve margins can be met in all regions, even under these stringent assumptions.” Texas might need a bit more gas generation capacity, but otherwise the system looks capable of handling compliance.

Likewise, says the Bradley report, pointing out that development of gas-fired power plants is galloping ahead, with 38,000 megawatts under construction. Bradley’s conclusion complements an August report by the Congressional Research Service, which found that impacts of EPA rules will fall hardest on coal plants that are more than 40 years old. Said the CRS report: “Many of these plants are inefficient and are being replaced by more efficient combined cycle natural gas plants, a development likely to be encouraged if the price of competing fuel–natural gas– continues to be low, almost regardless of EPA rules.”

If one thinks that concerns about reliability have been overblown, there is plenty of food for thought.

Read more: http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/blogs/republican/epa-air-pollution-rules-2011#ixzz1gU93Kp2S

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Remember way back, uh, two days ago when I wrote a post arguing that new EPA rules will not threaten electric system reliability? Well, just in the last day or so, more evidence has emerged to support that position. I enjoy being right, so I’m doing a follow-up post. Hopefully this will not be a daily thing.

First, as Inside EPA reports, the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), a trade group for investor-owned utilities, has done its own internal study on coal-plant shutdowns. Now, you have to keep in mind that EEI and other industry groups have, in public anyway, been making hysterical predictions about a huge wave of immediate plant shutdowns that will cast whole regions of the country into darkness. So what do they find when they study the matter internally?

• There will be far fewer shutdowns than industry shills are predicting — around 321 plants, or 48,000 megwatts’ worth (roughly 14 percent of current coal capacity, or 5 percent of total generation capacity).
• The shutdowns will take place over a much longer period of time than industry shills are predicting — over a decade rather than in the next two or three years.
• Most of the closures are happening for other reasons, unrelated to EPA rules — the plants are old, they’re uneconomic to run, they’re getting beat by cheap gas.

So the fear mongering of right-wingers and industry PR flacks is belied by the industry’s own estimates. For lots more on this, I recommend John Hanger’s blog posts here and here.

Second, the Dept. of Energy (DOE) has just released its own in-depth study [PDF] on the reliability question. It’s interesting because DOE deliberately analyzed a worst-case scenario, a “Stringent Test Case” that the agency acknowledges is more severe than what’s actually anticipated when the rules are implemented.

Even using that extreme case, DOE found that “the overall supply-demand balance for electric power in each region examined would be adequate,” and furthermore, that “mechanisms exist to address such reliability concerns or other extenuating circumstances on a plant-specific or more local basis.” This is more or less what other analysts have found as well.

In short, there’s a growing — at this point overwhelming — body of evidence that it is perfectly possible to shut down the nation’s dirtiest coal plants and still keep the lights on. This won’t stop industry shills from fear mongering, but it should fortify the spines of wishy-washy moderates in Congress.

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(Image: Flickr/pawpaw67)

 

Constellation Energy Group Inc. spent $885 million cleaning up pollution from its coal-fired power plant in Baltimore. Now it’s urging the White House to reject pleas from competitors that they can’t do the same before a 2015 deadline.

Constellation’s Brandon Shores spewed the most hazardous materials from its smokestacks of any U.S. power plant in 2008. Forced to act by a state law, the company reduced the emissions by more than 90 percent by 2010.

It designed and built a combination of chemical scrubbers and fabric filters in less than three years. That’s the deadline in a proposal by the Environmental Protection Agency that’s now awaiting approval by the White House. While rivals such as American Electric Power Co. are lobbying for a delay, Constellation is urging President Barack Obama to stick to the EPA’s plans.

“Long timelines are the enemy of good results,” Paul Allen, chief environmental officer of the Baltimore-based company, told reporters Nov. 21. “It’s better to turn all of your energy to it, galvanize the workforce and get it over with.”

The divide in the electric industry contrasts with almost- unanimous opposition to other proposed regulations, such as standards for smog-producing ozone that Obama ended up scrapping in September. The split should make it easier politically for the White House to stand by the EPA’s proposal, according to Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, an advocacy group in Washington.

Southern Seeks Delay

Allen said he cited Brandon Shores as an example in a meeting with officials from the White House Office of Management and Budget on Nov. 17. “We are unapologetic that we would like to see a level playing field,” he said.

The so-called air toxics rule, which would mandate that coal-fired plants cut emissions of mercury, arsenic and acid gases, would cost $11 billion in 2015, according to the EPA, making it one of the most expensive regulations weighed by the Obama administration. It’s scheduled to be issued in two weeks.

The EPA says that cutting those pollutants would save lives and create 9,000 more jobs than would be lost, as power producers install pollution-scrubbing systems or build new plants.

American Electric and Southern Co., the two biggest U.S. producers of electricity from coal, are pushing the administration to put off the new regulations or delay their deadline for implementation. Those companies say the EPA’s proposed deadline can’t be met.

‘Just Not Achievable’

“Three years is absolutely inadequate — at least six years are needed to comply,” Anthony Topazi, chief operating officer of Atlanta-based Southern, said in testimony to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Nov. 30. “We cannot err on the side of putting the reliability of the system at risk.”

American Electric, based in Columbus, Ohio, said in June that if a series of proposed EPA rules go forward it would close parts or all of 11 power plants, eliminating as many as 600 jobs.

“The timetable does not make sense,” Nick Akins, the company’s chief executive officer, said in an interview Nov. 2. “It’s just not achievable.”

Applying for Time

American Electric estimates that installing a required pollution scrubber and waste-water equipment can cost $520 million to $640 million for an 800-megawatt plant. That’s in line with the $885 million Constellation spent on Brandon Shores, a plant that can generate 1,300 megawatts, enough to power more than 1 million typical homes, based on data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Constellation, which sells power in competitive markets, can move faster than largely regulated utilities such as American Electric, which must get approval from state regulators before taking on costly new capital projects, according to Melissa McHenry, an American Electric spokeswoman.

The Office of Management and Budget is reviewing the EPA’s proposal and may change it. The EPA would let power producers apply for more time if they try and fail to meet the 2015 deadline, according to people familiar with its proposal. That stops short of the across-the-board delay sought by some power companies.

Constellation’s support for the EPA’s regulation and deadlines is backed by Exelon Corp., the largest U.S. producer of nuclear power, which has bid to purchase Constellation for about $7.9 billion in stock. Public Service Enterprise Group Inc., which spent $1.3 billion since 2007 to clean up two coal- fired New Jersey power plants, also opposes putting off the deadline.

Community Utilities

Among those lobbying for a delay are the nation’s community and state-owned utilities, which together have 200 coal-fired plants. They say they will need 77 months, or more than six years, to plan for upgrades, convene public meetings, obtain financing and build the control technologies.

“The sheer scale of the efforts will be enormous,” Mark Crisson, president of the American Public Power Association in Washington, representing such utilities, wrote in a letter to the budget office on Nov. 16.

A tight deadline for plants nationwide to install equipment such as scrubbers may create a shortage of the pollution-control devices and skilled workers, Southern’s Topazi said.

In Baltimore, Heather Lentz, Brandon Shores’ general supervisor, stood on the roof above the rumbling steam generators and pointed to a collection of buildings, on what had been an open field, where the plant’s emissions are cleaned.

Clouds of Steam

Exhaust from the 3,000-degree boilers had shot straight up a smokestack when the plant was built in 1984. It now goes through a structure called a baghouse to pull out the largest particles, and then a catalytic reducer to capture nitrogen oxide. After that it’s blown into the scrubber, where much of the remaining sulfur dioxide is removed by limestone-spiked water.

Billowing clouds of steam rise from the new smokestack. Fly ash, most of which is recycled into concrete, is pulled from the bottom.

In 2008, when the plant’s renovation was under way, it generated 18.6 million pounds of hazardous air pollution, making it the most polluting plant in the country, according to EPA data. By last year that had fallen to 1.6 million pounds, and the complex dropped to 41st of more than 500 plants nationwide.

Constellation says it met the state of Maryland’s pollution-control deadline of Jan. 1, 2010, without a hiccup in delivering electricity.

“It’s entirely possible to comply with these rules and remain a profitable company,” Allen said.

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2011 has been a big year for cleaner air in the Midwest, because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has taken several long-overdue steps.

In October, the EPA finalized the Cross State Air Pollution Rule, a Clean Air Act standard designed to prevent pollution from power plants in one state from crossing borders and harming health and air quality in downwind states. The result will protect hundreds of millions of Americans, providing up to $280 billion in benefits by preventing tens of thousands of premature deaths, asthma and heart attacks, and millions of lost days of school or work due to illness.

This December, EPA will put in place Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, a second important effort to protect Midwesterners and all Americans from toxic air pollutants such as mercury, arsenic, chromium, nickel and acid gases from power plant smokestacks. While mercury is a neurotoxin that especially hurts women of childbearing age, unborn babies and young children, the other toxic metals can cause cancer.

Taken together, MATS and the Cross-State Rule launch the next phase in the Clean Air Act’s 40-year record of creating a healthier, more prosperous nation.

These changes also will boost our economy. When the EPA rolls out the mercury rule in December, it will end more than two decades of delay and uncertainty utilities have faced since Congress directed the agency to set standards reducing toxic air emissions. Today, 44 percent of coal-powered plants don’t use modern pollution control technology.

The EPA’s rules will level the playing field for plants that have already installed or are planning to invest in air pollution controls to meet the updated clean air safeguards, thus closing a competitive gap and strengthening the market for cleaner electricity production.

EPA’s analysis shows that new jobs will be created as more power plants install modern pollution-control equipment. That technology — often designed and produced by American companies — will need to be installed, operated and maintained by American builders, workers and engineers. The EPA estimates that the power plant mercury and toxics standards will support 31,000 short-term construction jobs and 9,000 long-term utility jobs.

Beginning in 2012, the EPA will expand the Cross State Rule’s proven air-quality standards to Kansas and help our downwind neighbors better control pollution emitted by power companies in our area.

Farther east, utilities have been working toward the emission reductions goals envisioned in the rule by installing pollution-control equipment to meet previous market regulatory programs. Those efforts proved the technology and market do work.

Utilities serving more than 2 million Kansans have sued to block the EPA’s Cross-State rule. The utilities asked the EPA to retract our new rules before Jan. 1. If not, the power companies have threatened brownouts, rolling blackouts and targeted service interruptions to big industries.

Kansans also should know that in the EPA’s 40-year history, there have been no instances in which the Clean Air Act has contributed to electric grid reliability problems, and should any arise, the Clean Air Act gives us the tools to address them on a case-by-case basis.

EPA’s analysis and studies by other utility groups have indicated that it will be largely the oldest, dirtiest plans that shut down because they would no longer make economic sense to continue operations. Our analysis shows there is adequate power-generating capacity remaining.

For more than 40 years, the Clean Air Act’s common-sense pollution controls have made our families healthier by promoting economic competition and innovation. With two important updates to the Clean Air Act in 2011, we are working to write the next chapter in that history of success.

By doing that, the EPA’s clean air work helps meet this generation’s responsibility to leave our kids a world as healthy and full of opportunity as the one we inherited from our parents.

Karl Brooks is administrator for the U.S. EPA’s Region 7 which includes Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri and nine tribal nations.

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