NWF says mercury control costs are negligible, industry disagrees
| A report by the National Wildlife Federation
released earlier this month concluded that older coal-burning power plants
can be retrofitted with technology to cut mercury emissions at a cost of
about "one cup of coffee per household per month," but federal
regulators and the power industry said the report wrongly calculates the
economics of pollution controls, which they said currently have no
guarantees. "NWF and other reviews they cite tend to rely upon the representation of pollution control equipment manufacturers. This is like citing advertising as scientific evidence," said Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, which represents a half-dozen power generating companies. "ERCC members know that equipment manufacturers will not guarantee their work; they will not certify that their controls achieve a 90% reduction," Segal said. "Specifically, no vendor of activated carbon injection is willing to guarantee that it will attain 90% - or any other figure - removal efficiency in year-round use. And yet, that is precisely the level of certainty EPA and state will require should NWF get their way." The NWF report, "Getting the Job Done: Affordable Mercury Control at Coal-Burning Power Plants," examined power plants in the coal-dependent states of Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Dakota and determined that achieving 90% mercury control could cost the average residential customer from 67 cents to $2.14 a month. Industrial customers would pay an extra $100 to $300 on average monthly electricity bills of $7,000 to $30,000 and commercial customers that pay on average $300 to $600 a month for power would pay an extra $5 to $15, according to the report. "For the price of one cup of coffee per household per month, our nation could dramatically reduce the toxic mercury pollution from coal-burning power plants that contaminates our waters and wildlife," the NWF report said. The organization said it focused on activated carbon injection and fabric filters technology that has been "fully tested" to achieve 90% mercury reductions and is commercially available, and it used recent cost data from the Environmental Protection Agency to estimate using the technology on the various boilers. NWF dismissed industry claims that the technology for 90% mercury reduction is not ready and said the available technology works on bituminous, sub-bituminous and lignite coals. EPA, however, agreed with the utility industry and said mercury reductions would require a significant investment and as a result, could lead to switching to gas-fired generation, which would cost consumers substantially more. EPA plans to finalize regulations to curb power plant emissions by about 70% over the next 20 years of nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and mercury. The NOx and SO2 rule is expected later this year while the mercury regulation is due in March 2005. Both rules are expected to involve regional emissions caps and a system to allow trading of emission credits to help utilities comply. EPA estimates that the regulations will cost utilities $50 billion. The NWF report "glosses over the complexities and realities of mercury control technologies," an EPA spokeswoman said. "If it was as easy as foregoing a cup of coffee every month, I'm sure the previous administration would have acted sooner to regulate mercury from coal-fired power plants." EPA's final rule on mercury "will be influenced by the availability of technology that has been adequately tested and available for industry-wide deployment," she said. In a recent letter to Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell (D), EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt said the state's desire for the federal regulator to demand 90-95% mercury reductions by 2008 "would cause significant disruptions in the nation's coal markets because the control technologies necessary to meet this level of reduction will not be adequately demonstrated on full-scale power plants burning every type of coal by 2010, much less 2008." |