EPA PROPOSES LIMITS ON POLLUTION
Regulations would target power plants already in operation
The Biden administration on Thursday announced the first regulations to limit greenhouse pollution from existing power plants, capping an unparalleled string of climate policies that, taken together, could substantially reduce the nation’s contribution to global warming.
The proposals are designed to effectively eliminate carbon dioxide emissions from the nation’s electricity sector by 2040.
The regulations governing power plants come on the heels of other Biden administration plans to cut tailpipe emissions by speeding up the country’s transition to electric vehicles, to curb methane leaks from oil and gas wells and to phase down the use of a planetwarming chemical in refrigerants. Together with the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which is pouring more than $370 billion into clean energy programs, the actions would catapult the United States to the forefront of the fight to constrain global warming.
“We are in the decisive decade for climate action, and the president’s been clear about his goals in this space, and we will meet them,” Biden’s senior climate adviser, Ali Zaidi, said in a call with reporters Wednesday.
The government is not mandating the use of equipment to capture carbon emissions before they leave the smokestack, a nascent and expensive technology. Rather, it is setting caps on pollution rates, which power plant operators would have to meet. They could do that by using a different technology or, in the case of gas plants, switching to a fuel source like green hydrogen, which does not emit carbon.
The nation’s 3,400 coaland gas-fired power plants generate about 25 percent of greenhouse gases produced by the United States, pollution that is dangerously heating the planet.
The plan is sure to face opposition from the fossil fuel industry, power plant operators and their allies in Congress. It is likely to draw an immediate legal challenge from a group of Republican attorneys general that has already sued the Biden administration to stop other climate policies. A future administration could also weaken the regulation.
“This proposal will further strain America’s electric grid and undermine decades of work to reliably keep the lights on across the nation,” said Jim Matheson, president of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, which operates power plants serving the nation’s least developed communities.
Patrick Morrisey, the Republican attorney general of West Virginia, who for the past decade has led a multistate legal battle to constrain the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority, predicted that the newest proposals would not survive court challenges. “It is not going to be upheld, and it just seems designed to scare more coal-fired power plants into retirement — the goal of the Biden administration,” he said.
Sen. Joe Manchin, DW.Va., who has opposed many of his party’s climate policies, said Wednesday that he would oppose all of Biden’s nominees to the EPA unless the administration dropped the regulation — a threat that carries teeth in the narrowly divided Senate.
“This administration is determined to advance its radical climate agenda and has made it clear they are hellbent on doing everything in their power to regulate coal- and gas-fueled power plants out of existence, no matter the cost to energy security and reliability,” said Manchin, who has earned millions from his family’s coal business. Manchin faces a potentially difficult campaign next year that could pit him against Gov. Jim Justice, a Republican who has announced he will run for the Senate in 2024. West Virginia has shifted to the right; voters there backed Donald Trump over Biden by 39 points in 2020.
Michael Regan, administrator of the EPA, announced the proposed regulations in a speech on the campus of the University of Maryland on Thursday. EPA officials chose the university setting to appeal to youth climate activists.
“Every generation has its own defining challenge, one that shapes countless lives and impacts the future for decades to come, and climate change is that challenge for you,” Regan told students. “We see you, we hear you, and I am certain that President Biden does as well. That’s why when President Biden took office, he launched the most ambitious climate agenda in United States history.”
Many youth climate activists have been irate with Biden after he approved an enormous oil drilling project on pristine federal land in Alaska, known as Willow. They view the president’s actions as a betrayal of his 2020 campaign promise to halt new oil and gas drilling on public land.