Ohio EPA studying federal clean-air changes
Ohio Environmental Protection Agency officials were still reviewing proposed changes to federal clean-energy rules Tuesday afternoon, but environmental groups were quick to say the changes would be bad for the health of Americans.
The changes proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency would allow states to determine how to regulate coal power plants as well as how much the plants should be subject to the regulations. The EPA said the proposal “empowers states, promotes energy independence and facilitates economic growth and job creation.”
In a 289-page impact analysis released by the U.S. EPA, premature deaths and illnesses are predicted to increase with the proposed Affordable Clean Energy rule, which would “establish emission guidelines for states to develop plans to address greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from existing coalfired power plants,” according to the EPA. The proposed rule change announcement Tuesday opens a public-comment period before any final approval by President Donald Trump.
If approved, it would replace former President Barack Obama’s 2015 Clean Power Plan.
“We’ve seen the initial overview by U.S. EPA on the proposed Affordable Clean Energy rule and need to know more. It is a complex rule package,” said James Lee, a spokesman for the Ohio EPA. “Once we have had an opportunity to look through the entire rule package, we will be better able to talk about how it will affect Ohio.”
But Heather Taylor-Miesle, executive director of the Ohio Environmental Council, didn’t hesitate to make her feelings known on the The John E. Amos power plant operating on the banks of the Kanawha River near Winfield, W.Va., is an example of a coal-fired power plant.
proposal. “This decision is not just a slight change of course from past actions to clean up our air — it is an abrupt turn heading the wrong direction,” she said in a released statement. “If this plan goes into place, our families will be less safe and America will be further behind the rest of the world. This move will cause long-reaching problems for each breath we take.”
Models for Trump’s plan show 300 to 1,500 premature deaths would be avoided a year by 2030. The Obama plan says 1,500 to 3,600 premature deaths would be avoided. The Trump plan also projects tens of thousands of additional major asthma attacks and hundreds more heart attacks compared with the Obama plan, which has been hung up in the courts. One model in the analysis predicts 21,000 school-absence days per year.
Laura Burns, an Ohio field organizer for the nonprofit group Moms Clean Air Force, which lobbies for clean air, called the proposed rule change a “blatant disregard of health.”
“They have the numbers in front of them. This isn’t an emotional plea. ... There’s hard data showing the health of Americans, specifically children, will be affected,” she said.
Critics of the plan have argued utilities will be allowed to run older, dirtier coal-fired power plants that could undercut potential environmental benefits.
When asked about the potential for higher coal emissions, Aaron Wilson, senior research associate at the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center at Ohio State University, said, “I always bring it back to the science. ... The more greenhouse gases we have in our atmosphere, the more impacts we’ll see.”
Mike Cope, president of the Ohio Coal Association, is pleased with the proposed change.
“There’s a greater decentralization ... and we’re happy for that. We have a good relationship with the Ohio EPA. They are firm, but they are fair. We look forward to working with them,” he said.
When asked about negative health effects, Cope replied: “Balderdash. ... The industry has made extensive investments in environmental control technology over the last several years.”
Obama’s plan was designed to cut U.S. carbon dioxide emissions to 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. The rule spelled out
More than any other recent president, Donald Trump came to office promising to revive coal and restore mining jobs.
Nineteen months into his term, there has been little improvement.
The industry, which was the focus of Trump’s visit to Charleston, West Virginia, on Tuesday, has rebounded slightly from a devastating 2016, when cheap natural gas was crushing coal in the power market and three major producers were in bankruptcy. But an uptick in exports is masking a bigger problem: The industry is still losing U.S. customers as utilities increasingly turn to natural gas and renewable power to generate electricity.
Trump’s “impact on the coal sector has been extremely minimal in nature, despite his rhetoric,” said Andrew Cosgrove, a Bloomberg Intelligence senior analyst. “Power plant retirements are still happening and set to continue looking out through the end of his term.”
In fact, government analysts expect continuing declines. U.S. coal production, consumption and exports all are projected to decrease in 2019, according to the Energy Information Administration.
It’s not for a lack of trying. Trump’s visit to West Virginia — the No. 2 coal producing state — involves back-to-back campaign events Tuesday. It was timed to fall on the same day that the emission targets for states and gave officials latitude on how to achieve reductions.
The Supreme Court put the plan on hold in 2016 after a legal challenge by industry and coal-friendly states. That order remains in effect.
Many coal-fired plants, which also are being squeezed by lower costs for natural gas and renewable power and state mandates that promote energy conservation, have been retired by utilities and others.
Ohio is among the top five coal-consuming states in the nation. Almost 90 percent of the coal consumed in Ohio is used for electric power generation, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Environmental Protection Agency is slated to advance the administration’s latest effort to help the sector: a plan to dramatically scale back Obama administration limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
Analysts say the Trump proposal is unlikely to dramatically change the coal industry’s fortunes or lead to new domestic demand. But it dovetails with other Trump administration efforts to ease regulations that discouraged plants from using coal and made it more expensive to extract — changes that may help the industry at the margins.
The question isn’t how much better the industry is doing under Trump, but how much worse it would have been doing without him, said Hal Quinn, president of the National Mining Association. Trump has stopped the “bloodletting” that was under way under Obama and is “taking away some of the barriers, allowing us to compete,” Quinn said.
Even if Trump’s efforts haven’t generated big market gains, they have provided psychological relief for the battered coal industry. And politically, the president’s words and actions matter more, said Marybeth Beller, a political science professor at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia.