EPA Ruling Over Climate Jeopardizes US Coal Plants
US: November 17, 2008
NEW YORK - US environment regulators late Thursday rejected a permit for a
new coal-fired power plant in Utah over the issue of its greenhouse gas
pollution, putting in question the future of new coal plants that do not to
curb their emissions.
The Environmental Protection Agency's appeals panel rejected the permit
issued by its Denver office, saying it had failed to support a decision to
grant the plant a permit without requiring the best available controls to
limit carbon dioxide, the main gas blamed for warming the planet.
It ruled Denver would have to reconsider why it did not require the plant to
have the CO2 controls.
Deseret Power, a group of six cooperatives that wants to build the 110
megawatt plant on the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation near Bonanza, was
not immediately available for comment.
Lawyers for an environmental group that had sought the review of the
regional permit said the decision puts into question the fate of dozens of
planned coal-fired power plants.
"The bottom line is this leads to delays for coal plants," David Bookbinder,
a lawyer for environmental group the Sierra Club.
Delays could be bad news for the industry especially as the United States
may soon regulate greenhouse gases as President-elect Barack Obama has
promised to do, he added.
A section of the EPA ruling said, "The Board recognizes that this is an
issue of national scope that has implications far beyond this individual
permitting proceeding."
Environmentalists said the wording opens up the EPA to reconsidering permits
in other states.
In a landmark ruling in 2007, the Supreme Court found that carbon dioxide
can be regulated as a pollutant under the US Clean Air Act.
Coal plants generate about half of US power. But they emit about a third of
the country's carbon dioxide pollution, about the same amount as vehicles
spew.
About 25 coal plants are under construction across the United States, more
than in the past two decades. Another 20 projects have been permitted or are
near construction and more than 60 have been announced or are in the early
stages of development.
None of the commercial-scale plants plan to include equipment to capture and
sock away carbon emissions underground. The coal industry says the equipment
is unproven and too expensive to invest in without certainty over when and
how greenhouse emissions would be regulated.
Kevin Holewinski, who heads the environmental litigation practice at
corporate law firm Jones Day said the Sierra Club had "oversimplified and
overstated" the ruling. He called the ruling a "punt" by the federal EPA,
meaning it was a delay in making a more forceful decision.
He said, however, it was possible the ruling could serve to delay the
building of other coal plants by inviting lawsuits seeking to stop them.
(Reporting by Timothy Gardner, editing by Marguerita Choy)
Story by Timothy Gardner
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
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