Skipping the bridge

The EPA’s clean energy plan reverses policy on a proven natural gas solution.

For years energy analysts have viewed natural gas as the bridge to a cleaner energy future, but the final draft of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan tries to leap that gap in a single bound. This is a stark shift from the EPA’s draft plan, which took a realistic approach toward natural gas as a proven alternative to dirty coal.

The Clean Power Plan creates individual goals for 47 states to reduce their carbon output as part of a national, and global, effort to fight climate change (“Obama plan on emissions facing cloud of opposition,” Page A1, Tuesday). Vermont is exempted because it doesn’t have any large fossil fuel power plants, and Hawaii and Alaska aren’t covered due to their own unique power grids.

The 2014 draft plan was true to President Barack Obama’s rhetoric about looking at “all of the above” when it comes to reducing pollution and carbon output. In addition to renewable energy sources, the EPA originally provided emission rate credit incentives for states to switch from coal to natural gas under the voluntary Clean Energy Incentive Program. With these policies in place, the EPA predicted a spike in natural gas use — that much touted bridge. However, the final version of the Clean Power Plan provides incentives for wind and solar, and for energy efficiency.

Under these new standards, states that replace coal with natural gas will have to do so by increasing the output of currently existing gas plants, instead of building new ones. The EPA estimates that this new rule means that gas power plant construction drops by somewhere between 39 percent to 68 percent from where it otherwise might have been.

If the EPA’s goal is to reduce carbon output, then it should be promoting proven solutions. Over the past decade, natural gas has fueled an unexpected decline in U.S. carbon production. Energyrelated emissions of carbon dioxide fell by 12 percent between 2005 and 2012, according to the Energy Information Administration. In that time, power derived by natural gas grew by about 50 percent. Hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling brought cheap natural gas to market, undercutting the cost of coal and forcing the Energy Department to recalculate its predictions on carbon pollution.

Rather than relying on a time-tested natural gas strategy, however, the EPA has placed its bets on renewable energy sources that still haven’t reached the scale necessary to replace coal. While the use of wind and solar continues to grow, and the cost per megawatt continues to fall, there are still technological and infrastructure barriers in the way. A lack of transmission lines leaves wind and solar resources stranded far from the cities that actually consume energy. Scientists and engineers have yet to prove up grid-scale batteries that can juice up on excess power when the sun shines and the wind blows and distribute that power when it is needed later. There’s little doubt that the future holds plenty of promise for renewable energy resources but there are still bridges left to cross.

The Obama administration likes to say that the science on global climate change is settled. We know that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. We know that there’s more carbon in the atmosphere than at any other point in human history, in addition to increasing absorption by the oceans. We know that global temperatures are climbing. But we also know that natural gas power plants can work to reduce carbon dioxide output.

If Obama and the EPA want to put factual policy ahead of politics, then they should practice what they preach. Instead, they’ve played a game of bait and switch with a natural gas industry that’s done more to reduce U.S. carbon emissions than any government mandate.