What We Won by Defending EPA

Jun 24, 2011

Last winter, we asked you to help defend the Environmental Protection Agency. It worked! The Senate, by a vote of 50 to 50 on April 6th, rejected an effort to strip EPA of the authority to address climate change. Thank you for your lobbying!

Our message then was necessarily simple: Don’t touch EPA or the Clean Air Act. There were too many negative bills moving too fast to explain what was really at stake. Because we were on the defensive, it would be easy to miss the enormous positive benefits for the planet. EPA’s regulations could reduce our carbon dioxide emissions by one third – 33% starting this year.

EPA’s Regulations Target Coal

The coal industry often complains that EPA regulations target them. They are right. Of course the reason is that coal-fired power plants are old, dirty and account for a significant portion of our annual carbon dioxide emissions. Because of our concern about climate change, we focus on carbon dioxide, but coal-dependant utilities have much larger concerns. New EPA regulations will require them to control toxic pollutants like mercury and arsenic for the first time, radically reduce acid rain pollutants, particulates and ozone, use less cooling water and dispose of coal ash properly.

Certainty Brings Voluntary Compliance

Once it became clear that, in spite of the wave election in 2010, Congress could not stop EPA from regulating greenhouse gases, businesses finally had certainty. After five years of proposed climate legislation and bills to strip EPA of the authority to address climate change, the road ahead is clear. Industry knows what to expect: reductions of carbon pollution will happen. They also know they will have to reduce all of their emissions radically.

Industry likes regulatory certainty, because it enables them to make the investment decisions necessary to reduce their emissions. Many companies have assumed for decades that they would have to reduce carbon pollution and have already begun upgrading their equipment. Now, the laggards can no longer avoid the issue.

How Many Tons of Carbon Dioxide Did We Keep Out of the Atmosphere?

Utilities still use many coal-fired power plants that were built before the Clean Air Act was adopted in 1970. Most of these have no pollution controls. The cost of meeting EPA requirements at these plants is prohibitive and they will be forced to close. Two of the most coal-dependent utilities in the country have already announced closures: the Tennessee Valley Authority will close 18 coal plants; American Electric Power will close 24. Industry predicts that a total of 50 gigawatts or 13% of coal-fired electric generating capacity will be closed. The 87% of coal plants that continue to operate will have to upgrade their pollution controls and reduce all of their pollution, including carbon.

It is difficult to translate plant closures and improved emissions controls into tons of carbon kept out of the atmosphere. It is however possible to give some plausible numbers based on conservative assumptions. If you assume that closed plants account for 13% of all coal-plant emissions of carbon dioxide, 244 million metric tons (MMTCO2e) will not enter the atmosphere each year. Half of that amount will be emitted by the gas plants that replace them, so the net savings would be 122 MMTCO2e. If the remaining coal plants reduced their emissions by 50% that would prevent another 803 MMTCO2e.

Being very conservative, the successful defense of EPA will prevent 925 MMTCO2 entering the atmosphere each year. In percentage terms that is a 17% reduction that started last January and will all happen in the next few years. Preserving EPA’s authority reduces annual CO2 emissions by 17% long before 2020 as promised by President Obama in Copenhagen in 2009.

Hybrid Semis Rolling Down the Interstates!?

The successful defense of EPA also saved fuel efficiency (CAFE) standards issued in 2010 for cars, light and medium trucks. The right of states to adopt California’s 60 mpg standard for passenger cars was also saved. Even more importantly we protected EPA’s authority to set fuel efficiency standards for large trucks and buses for the first time. CAFE standards for this category will be issued by the end of the summer. Apparently, hybrid diesel/electric trucks are currently being designed to meet the anticipated standards.

It is impossible to estimate the emission reductions that will come from these efficiency gains, but, since new standards for cars could be twice as strict as before and large trucks and busses are being regulated for the first time, huge gains are likely. If transportation sector emissions were cut in half over the next decade, 878 MMTCO2e would not enter the atmosphere. That is an additional 16% reduction in annual emissions of carbon dioxide.

All This Is Happening Now

EPA issued the first permits restricting carbon dioxide while Congress debated the fate of the program last winter. Because the Clean Air Act is a well-developed regulatory program, EPA was able to require real reductions this year. The reality and immediacy of the permit limits fueled the ferocity of the Congressional debate.

Few people appreciate that it would take decades before any new climate law could begin reducing emissions. Many of the regulations EPA is now issuing are implementing, for the first time, programs created by the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. It has taken 20 years of rulemaking and litigation to reach the point where real limits will be in permits. The European Union’s Emissions Trading System has been in operation for 8 years and has yet to produce a drop in CO2 emissions. The Clean Air Act is the only program reducing carbon pollution now. The Defense of EPA is Part of the Ongoing Climate/Energy Debate

The defense of EPA was part of the much larger debate in Congress about climate change and our energy future. This debate is a political vortex that pulls any remotely related issue into one intense ongoing debate. In 2009 and most of 2010, the debate focused on comprehensive climate legislation. In 2009 and 2010 it moved to EPA’s regulations affecting coal-fired power plants. Recently high gasoline prices turned into a fight about ending subsidies for fossil fuels and corn-based ethanol. It has become one of those inescapable issues, lurking around almost every political corner. Wherever the debate arises next and whatever form it takes, each win moves us toward a low carbon future.

Footnotes

1. In making calculations we used 2009 data from United States Energy Information Administration, Emissions and Greenhouse Gases in the United States in 2009 (March 2011) http://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/ghg_report/pdf/0573%282009%29.pdf

2. It is impossible to know how much the old plants are really used. In some systems they are used only to meet peak demand. In other systems they are heavily used because they produce cheap electricity. Old plants almost certainly dirtier than new ones, but it is difficult to get a firm number for how much more pollution they emit.

3. All pollution figures are given in carbon dioxide equivalents is the same as carbon dioxide. This standard measure is used by the Energy Information Agency in its report.

4. 50% reductions are plausible because these same coal plants have to reduce their acid rain pollutants by much more than that. EPA predicts that its acid rain rules will force these plants to reduce their sulfur dioxide (SO2) by 70% and their nitrogen oxides (NOX) by 52%.