Texas regulators vow to fight EPA coal plant rules
Warning that nearly 60% of its electricity from coal-fired power plants could go away under proposed federal regulations, the Texas grid operator offered the state Public Utility Commission a variety of blackout scenarios it could face at different levels of coal plant retirements.
The rundown included scenarios based on the retirement of coal and gas-steam plants producing 900 megawatts and 3,300 megawatts of the 14,321 megawatts now generated from coal plants in the state, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.
The planning comes in the wake of pollution standards proposed earlier this year by the Environmental Protection Agency that would require virtually all coal- and natural gasfired power plants in the United States to install carbon capture equipment on their smokestacks or utilize clean hydrogen fuel, with deadlines for compliance beginning in seven years.
The reductions anticipated in Thursday’s report were just the beginning. ERCOT representatives said the council’s next report to the PUC could include scenarios assuming the loss of 8,300 megawatts from coal plants. That sparked the ire of the PUC members.
“I fear that if we start subtracting massive amounts of megawatts out of the models, due to hypothetical federal regulations which we are sure to litigate and go all the way to the
U.S. Supreme Court, which will take some time, I believe it will blow out the top of our models (and) unduly alarm the public,” Commissioner Will Mcadams said.
“There’s no way the Public Utility Commission is going to allow this to happen,” he said.
Ultimately, commissioners told Kristi Hobbs, ERCOT’S new vice president of system planning and weatherization, that the grid operator shouldn’t include scenarios assuming 8,300 megawatts of coal plant retirements in its next report.
ERCOT spokesperson Trudi Webster was unable to immediately confirm how soon ERCOT is expecting these various levels of coal plant retirements.
Federal regulations
ERCOT is concerned about five rules being considered by the EPA it believes could negatively impact the Texas power grid, especially in peak demand times, CEO Pablo Vegas told ERCOT directors in August.
One of those rules, proposed in May, limits greenhouse gas emissions from coal- and gasfired power plants.
The regulations, if finalized, would mark the first time the federal government has restricted carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, which generate about 25% of the country’s greenhouse gas pollution.
If adopted, the proposals would require nearly all coal plants to reduce or capture almost all of their CO2 emissions by 2038, or be forced to retire. The EPA proposals come as climate scientists warn the world is not cutting greenhouse gas emissions fast enough to prevent the worst effects of climate change.
The proposals also seek to reduce harmful air pollutants from coal and natural gas plants, which are often located in low-income or minority communities.
The proposed emissions limits would in 2030 alone prevent approximately 1,300 premature deaths, 800 hospital and emergency room visits and 300,000 cases of asthma attacks, according to the EPA.
The other proposed EPA rules that concern ERCOT include those that require inactive coal plants to clean up contamination, cut pollution from power plants to mitigate air pollution across state lines, and set new standards for power plants to reduce toxins such as mercury.
Reliability concerns
ERCOT and the PUC have said they are worried that retiring coal and natural gas plants too quickly could affect the reliability of the state’s power grid. Reliability has been a main focus of regulators, who desperately want to prevent another blackout after the deadly power outages of Winter Storm Uri in 2021.
That’s why the reliability standards ERCOT presented Thursday at the PUC meeting garnered so much discussion. ERCOT submitted 48 potential blackout scenarios based on how much new dispatchable generation it could procure and how much that would cost, assuming various standards of one outage every five, 10, 15 or 20 years.
Dispatchable generation is a frequently-used term in the industry referring to power-generating resources that could be turned “on” for power when it’s needed, such as natural gas, coal, nuclear and geothermal energy.
Texas officials dispute whether battery storage counts as dispatchable. That’s in contrast to resources such as solar and wind power which depend on weather conditions to generate electricity.
ERCOT’S Hobbs wanted to remove the one outage every five years standard from the report. But Commissioner Jimmy Glotfelty asked ERCOT to keep those details in the report as a useful data point.
“In this future world where people have power walls and (backup power generators) in their house, an hour or two each five years is not a bad rate for outages,” Glotfelty said.
Ahead of this winter, ERCOT has secured more than 3,300 megawatts of electricity to help prevent outages during extreme cold weather conditions, at a cost of nearly $30 million, Davida Dwyer, its chief counsel told the PUC.
ERCOT was challenged by this summer’s hot temperatures, but ultimately made it through without the need for outages despite a grid emergency in September.