Letter to EPA Objecting to Loopholes in Carbon Pollution Standards for New Power Plants

[In May 2013, over 500 grass­roots activists sent in this sign-on let­ter to EPA about their inad­e­quate Car­bon Pol­lu­tion Stan­dards for New Pow­er Plants.]

Dear EPA Admin­is­tra­tor McCarthy:

Your pro­posed CO2 rule for new elec­tric gen­er­at­ing units falls short in sev­er­al ways and must be strength­ened so that it does not wors­en glob­al warm­ing and pol­lute impact­ed com­mu­ni­ties with oth­er harm­ful emis­sions.

The rule must:

1. address envi­ron­men­tal justice
2. apply to nat­ur­al gas pow­er plants
3. apply to bio­mass and waste incin­er­a­tion, whose CO2 emis­sions are worse than coal
4. reject car­bon seques­tra­tion and enhanced oil recovery

With­out cor­rect­ing the flaws out­lined below, this is a “do noth­ing” rule that will not apply to any actu­al facilities.[1]  It only applies to new con­ven­tion­al coal pow­er plant pro­pos­als.  Of the cou­ple-hun­dred pro­pos­als in the past decade, about 85% were already defeat­ed by envi­ron­men­tal oppo­si­tion and the rest were already built, so the rule will not apply to them.  The rule exempts the three pro­pos­als that the rule could have applied to (which are unlike­ly to be built, any­way).

Fail­ure to address envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice

This rule dis­miss­es impact on low-income com­mu­ni­ties and com­mu­ni­ties of col­or in a sin­gle para­graph, argu­ing that the rule pro­tects all com­mu­ni­ties.  This is not true.

The rule — because it is not ade­quate­ly strict — fails to pro­tect com­mu­ni­ties from hun­dreds of pro­pos­als for gas-fired pow­er plants, bio­mass and waste incin­er­a­tors which fall through the cracks in this rule.  The rule also pro­motes coal gasi­fi­ca­tion pow­er plants.  These pro­posed facil­i­ties tend to be locat­ed in com­mu­ni­ties of col­or and low-income com­mu­ni­ties.  If the rule will green light these tech­nolo­gies, it must ana­lyze the cumu­la­tive impact on envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice com­mu­ni­ties.

Apply the rule to nat­ur­al gas pow­er plants

The rule gives a green light to pow­er plants burn­ing nat­ur­al gas.  By set­ting the emis­sion lim­its at 1,000 to 1,200 lbs of CO2/MWh, just above what gas-fired pow­er plants emit, it ensures that CO2 from gas-fired pow­er plants will go unreg­u­lat­ed.

There are hun­dreds of pro­pos­als around the nation for new gas-fired pow­er plants, gas-fired expan­sions of exist­ing pow­er plants, con­ver­sions of exist­ing pow­er plants to nat­ur­al gas, and refir­ing of shut­tered gas-fired pow­er plants.  This is where the elec­tric pow­er indus­try is going already — not toward new coal pow­er plants — and the rule delib­er­ate­ly avoids reg­u­lat­ing them.  This may fit with your admin­is­tra­tion’s sup­port for hydraulic frac­tur­ing (frack­ing), but it is unac­cept­able.

Fracked gas GHG emis­sions far worse than coal: This rule is espe­cial­ly unac­cept­able in light of the fact that numer­ous stud­ies have found that exten­sive leak­age of methane from gas infra­struc­ture makes fracked nat­ur­al gas worse than coal for the climate.[2]  Nat­ur­al gas pow­er plant emis­sions are not lim­it­ed to what is mea­sured from the smoke­stack.  By exempt­ing gas-fired pow­er plants, this rule sup­ports frack­ing, pipelines and com­pres­sor sta­tions, and all of the leak­age through­out these sys­tems.  For too long, EPA has used out­dat­ed sci­ence that down­plays the grav­i­ty of methane’s glob­al warm­ing potential.[3]  The lat­est research shows that methane leak­age from gas drilling is actu­al­ly 100 to 1,000 times greater than EPA estimates.[4]

Apply the rule to bio­mass and waste incin­er­a­tion, whose CO2 emis­sions are also worse than coal

Trash incin­er­a­tors release 2.5 times as much CO2 as coal pow­er plants do per unit of ener­gy, accord­ing to EPA’s eGRID data.[5]  Bio­mass incin­er­a­tion releas­es 50% more CO2 than coal.[5]  Despite this phys­i­cal real­i­ty, EPA still exempts these incin­er­a­tors from the rule.

EPA needs to stop pre­tend­ing that “bio­genic” CO2 in the atmos­phere does not count.  EPA’s own Sci­ence Advi­so­ry Board has found this “car­bon neu­tral” assump­tion to be deeply flawed.[6]  Numer­ous stud­ies have debunked bio­mass car­bon neu­tral­i­ty claims and have shown that, even if new and addi­tion­al tree growth is made to hap­pen, it takes decades to bring lev­els down to that of coal, and cen­turies for “car­bon neu­tral­i­ty” to be reached, if ever.[7]  We don’t have that long to address glob­al warm­ing, and bio­mass can­not be a solu­tion to its own exces­sive car­bon emis­sions with­in a mean­ing­ful time frame.  We can­not address glob­al warm­ing by burn­ing the very car­bon-stor­ing forests we need to be pre­serv­ing.

In July 2013, the U.S. Court of Appeals struck down EPA’s exemp­tion for bio­genic CO2 sources.[8]  The court agreed with the sci­ence that the atmos­phere does not dis­tin­guish between a ton of CO2 from bio­mass and a ton of CO2 from fos­sil fuels.

Rather than defy this fed­er­al court rul­ing, EPA must start apply­ing CO2 reg­u­la­tions to these high­ly-pol­lut­ing sources.  Most of the CO2 emit­ted from trash incin­er­a­tion is fos­sil-derived (such as plas­tics), and is not “bio­genic,” yet the rule fails to even cov­er these emis­sions, which are enough to make CO2 emis­sions from trash incin­er­a­tors 50% worse than coal (and 2.5 times as bad when the “bio­genic” frac­tion is counted).[5]

Of course, CO2 is not the only pol­lu­tant emit­ted from incin­er­a­tors.  By giv­ing a green light to trash incin­er­a­tors, EPA is sup­port­ing emis­sion sources that releas­es 28 times as much diox­in than coal per unit of ener­gy pro­duced, twice as much car­bon monox­ide, three times as much nitro­gen oxides (NOx), 6–14 times as much mer­cury, near­ly six times as much lead and 70% more sul­fur dioxides.[9]  Bio­mass incin­er­a­tion, depend­ing on the type, is also on par with coal emis­sions for many pol­lu­tants, includ­ing par­tic­u­late mat­ter, NOx and car­bon monox­ide.

EPA’s Office of Sol­id Waste is push­ing for­ward with a rad­i­cal rede­f­i­n­i­tion of waste, which would allow unreg­u­lat­ed waste burn­ing in hun­dreds of thou­sands of boil­ers around the coun­try, by redefin­ing many wastes as fuels.[10]  This mis­guid­ed pro-incin­er­a­tion approach must stop, and accu­rate­ly account­ing for CO2 emis­sions from waste burn­ing is one good place to start.

Reject car­bon seques­tra­tion and enhanced oil recov­ery

Car­bon cap­ture and seques­tra­tion (CCS) is unproven, risky, ener­gy inef­fi­cient, and eco­nom­i­cal­ly unvi­able with­out gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies.  It risks con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of ground water sources, and leak­age over time.  It’s even more mis­guid­ed where this alleged CO2 “seques­tra­tion” is used for enhanced oil recov­ery (EOR) — allow­ing oil to be extract­ed that would oth­er­wise have stayed in the ground.

When CO2 is pumped into the ground to pro­duce extra oil, the CO2 released from the ulti­mate burn­ing of that oil can eas­i­ly exceed the amount “sequestered” by this process.[11]

EPA needs to just admit that com­bus­tion-based elec­tric gen­er­a­tion is no longer nec­es­sary and is unavoid­ably dam­ag­ing to the cli­mate.  There is no way to use com­bus­tion-based sys­tems and tru­ly “con­trol” for CO2 emis­sions.  The only “con­trol” is to end burn­ing in all forms.

A 2012 Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware study has shown that, by 2030, wind, solar and ener­gy stor­age can meet all of the elec­tric­i­ty needs of a util­i­ty-scale grid with 99.9% reli­a­bil­i­ty at costs com­pa­ra­ble to what we pay today and with­out gov­ern­ment subsidies.[12]  Numer­ous oth­er stud­ies have shown sim­i­lar poten­tial to meet our elec­tric­i­ty needs with­out com­bus­tion sources.[13]

Sin­cere­ly,

[Signed by over 500 peo­ple]


Sources:

[1] U.S. EPA, “Reg­u­la­to­ry Impact Analy­sis for the Pro­posed Stan­dards of Per­for­mance for Green­house Gas Emis­sions for New Sta­tion­ary Sources: Elec­tric Util­i­ty Gen­er­at­ing Units,” Sept 2013.  http://www2.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2013–09/documents/20130920proposalria.pdf Page 1–1 states: “Today’s pro­pos­al applies to new sources, which are sources that ‘com­mence con­struc­tion’ after pub­li­ca­tion of the pro­pos­al.   Based on cur­rent infor­ma­tion, the Wolver­ine project in Rogers City, Michi­gan appears to be the only fos­sil fuel-fired boil­er or inte­grat­ed gasi­fi­ca­tion com­bined cycle (IGCC) EGU project present­ly under devel­op­ment with­out car­bon cap­ture and stor­age (CCS) with an air per­mit that has not already com­menced con­struc­tion.”  How­ev­er, the Wolver­ine project has since been can­celed, leav­ing no cur­rent or expect­ed coal pow­er plant pro­pos­als like­ly to be cov­ered by this rule.
[2] Some of these stud­ies are cit­ed here: http://www.energyjustice.net/naturalgas/
[3] EPA has used out­dat­ed sci­ence from the 1990s to assume a glob­al warm­ing poten­tial (GWP) for methane of 21 times that of CO2, updat­ed this year (using 2007 sci­ence) to a GWP of 25.  The lat­est sci­ence from IPCC shows that methane’s GWP is 34 times that of CO2.  This is over a 100-year time frame.  It’s more appro­pri­ate to mea­sure it over a 20-year time frame, since methane is short-lived (12 years) in the atmos­phere and since we need to address glob­al warm­ing pol­lu­tion in this short­er time frame.  Over 20 years, the lat­est IPCC data shows that it’s 86 times as potent as CO2, and 2009 NASA sci­ence shows it could be as high as 105 times.  See this infor­ma­tion com­piled at http://www.energyjustice.net/naturalgas/
[4] Caulton, et. al, “Toward a bet­ter under­stand­ing and quan­tifi­ca­tion of methane emis­sions from shale gas devel­op­ment,” Pro­ceed­ings of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences, April 14, 2014.  http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/04/10/1316546111.abstract
[5] EPA eGRID v.9 Data­base (2010 data for U.S. elec­tric gen­er­a­tors).  Analy­sis by Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work.  Charts and data tables doc­u­ment­ed at http://www.energyjustice.net/egrid
[6] EPA Sci­ence Advi­so­ry Board, “SAB Review of EPA’s Account­ing Frame­work for Bio­genic CO2 Emis­sions from Sta­tion­ary Sources,” Sept 28, 2012. http://yosemite.epa.gov/sab/sabproduct.nsf/0/57B7A4F1987D7F7385257A87007977F6/$File/EPA-SAB-12–011-unsigned.pdf Relat­ed doc­u­ments at: http://yosemite.epa.gov/sab/sabproduct.nsf/0/2F9B572C712AC52E8525783100704886
[7] Stud­ies debunk­ing bio­mass car­bon neu­tral­i­ty are com­piled here: http://www.energyjustice.net/content/biomass-library-scientific-reports#climate
[8] Cen­ter for Bio­log­i­cal Diver­si­ty v. EPA, 722 F.3d 401 (D.C. Cir. 2013). http://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/F523FF1F29C06ECA85257BA6005397B5/$file/11–1101-1446222.pdf
[9] “Trash Incin­er­a­tion More Pol­lut­ing than Coal,” Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work. http://www.energyjustice.net/incineration/worsethancoal
[10] Non-haz­ardous sec­ondary mate­ri­als (NHSM) Rule described in “Out of the Fry­ing Pan, Into the Fire,” Glob­al Alliance for Incin­er­a­tor Alter­na­tives (GAIA), Nov. 2013.  http://www.no-burn.org/downloads/Out%20of%20the%20frying%20pan%20Nov%2018.pdf
[11] “Enhanced Oil Recov­ery is NOT Car­bon Seques­tra­tion,” Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work.  http://www.energyjustice.net/coal/eor
[12] Bud­is­chak, et. al., “Cost-min­i­mized com­bi­na­tions of wind pow­er, solar pow­er and elec­tro­chem­i­cal stor­age, pow­er­ing the grid up to 99.9% of the time,” Jour­nal of Pow­er Sources 225 (2013) 60–74.  http://www.energyjustice.net/files/solutions/2012udel.pdf
[13] Reports on clean ener­gy solu­tions avail­able at http://www.energyjustice.net/solutions/