Clean Power Plan

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Re: Car­bon Pol­lu­tion Emis­sion Guide­lines for Exist­ing Sta­tion­ary Sources: Elec­tric Util­i­ty Gen­er­at­ing Units, Dock­et ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2013–0602

Dear Admin­is­tra­tor McCarthy:

EPA action on cli­mate change is wel­come and over­due, but must rise to the scale of the chal­lenge, and must be done in a way that is just, sci­ence-based and not rid­dled with loopholes.

The Clean Pow­er Plan 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. Set more aggres­sive targets
2. Com­ply with the Civ­il Rights Act and address envi­ron­men­tal justice
3. Reg­u­late pow­er plants (not states) and dis­al­low pol­lu­tion trad­ing and offsets
4. Close the methane loop­hole and not bless the move from coal to gas, which is worse for the cli­mate than coal
5. Close the bio­genic CO2 loop­hole, and dis­al­low a shift from coal to bio­mass and waste incin­er­a­tion, whose CO2 emis­sions are also worse than coal
6. Dis­al­low nuclear pow­er subsidies
7. Dis­al­low new invest­ment in old coal plants
8. Reject car­bon cap­ture and seques­tra­tion and enhanced oil recovery

Set more aggres­sive targets

The sci­ence demands deep­er emis­sions reduc­tions than the pro­posed 30% reduc­tion in pow­er plant CO2 by 2030 from 2005 lev­els.  2005 was the sec­ond high­est year and is an inap­pro­pri­ate base­line.  CO2 emis­sions have already dropped 15% as of 2013.  If we’re already half-way there with­out any pol­i­cy, clear­ly we can be more ambi­tious.  Sci­ence demands an 80–95% reduc­tion below 1990 lev­els by 2050, and 25–40% reduc­tion by 2020, if we’re to sta­bi­lize CO2 con­cen­tra­tions at 450 ppm, yet we’re already see­ing con­se­quences at 400 ppm, and glob­al equi­ty demands even quick­er and more aggres­sive targets.

Com­ply with the Civ­il Rights Act and address envi­ron­men­tal justice

EPA and the states are legal­ly bound to com­ply with Title VI of the Civ­il Right Act of 1964 which pro­hibits racial dis­crim­i­na­tion by recip­i­ents of fed­er­al funds.  EPA must devel­op a process to ana­lyze state pro­grams and, pri­or to approval, ensure that there will not be dis­crim­i­na­to­ry effects when imple­ment­ed.  EPA should require that impact­ed com­mu­ni­ties are cen­tral­ly involved in the devel­op­ment of state imple­men­ta­tion plans in an open and trans­par­ent pub­lic involve­ment process.

Reg­u­late pow­er plants (not states) and dis­al­low pol­lu­tion trad­ing and offsets

The Clean Air Act reg­u­lates facil­i­ties, not states.  The respon­si­bil­i­ty for meet­ing stan­dards of per­for­mance must placed on the pow­er plant own­ers.  Only by putting the respon­si­bil­i­ty where it belongs will the rule avoid inap­pro­pri­ate and unjust pol­lu­tion trad­ing schemes, off­sets and oth­er meth­ods that skirt the oblig­a­tion to reduce emis­sions direct­ly.  As the Cen­ter for Race, Pover­ty and the Envi­ron­ment elo­quent­ly points out in their com­ments, Sec­tion 111 of the Clean Air Act does not per­mit pol­lu­tion trad­ing.  It’s ille­gal and must be not be per­mit­ted in state plans.  Pol­lu­tion trad­ing allows emis­sions reduc­tions in one com­mu­ni­ty to jus­ti­fy con­tin­ued pol­lu­tion in anoth­er, which tends to have a dis­parate impact where com­mu­ni­ties of col­or and low-income com­mu­ni­ties are the ones that remain most pol­lut­ed.  Off­sets schemes (often from out­side of the pow­er sec­tor) cre­ate sim­i­lar prob­lems and are hard to track, ver­i­fy and enforce.  State plans and per­for­mance stan­dards must be fed­er­al­ly enforce­able by EPA and citizens.

Close the methane loop­hole and not bless the move from coal to gas, which is worse for the cli­mate than coal

Nat­ur­al gas is worse than coal for the cli­mate, when methane gas leak­age is account­ed for.  By ignor­ing methane, the rule encour­ages the cur­rent major shift from coal to gas, as hun­dreds of new gas-fired units are pro­posed, replac­ing coal units across the U.S.

If gas leak­age exceeds 3.2%, it becomes worse than coal for the cli­mate.  Leak­age rates have been found to be far high­er at frack­ing sites alone, not to men­tion sub­stan­tial leak­age in pipelines, com­pres­sor sta­tions and dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tems.  EPA has vast­ly under­es­ti­mat­ed gas leak­age, and indus­try researchers know that the leak­age rate can­not be brought low enough to be less bad than coal.

EPA has also vast­ly under­es­ti­mat­ed the poten­cy of methane, oper­at­ing on out­dat­ed sci­ence.  In 2013, EPA updat­ed its glob­al warm­ing poten­tial for methane from being 21 times as potent as CO2 to 25 times.  The same year, the Inter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change adopt­ed the lat­est sci­ence show­ing that methane is 34 times as potent as CO2 over 100 years, and 86 times as potent over a 20-year time frame.  EPA ought to use the 20-year time hori­zon, as it fits with­in the 2030 goal of this pol­i­cy and this short­er-term time hori­zon is appro­pri­ate to use to avoid glob­al warm­ing tip­ping points by appro­pri­ate­ly pri­or­i­tiz­ing methane.

No cli­mate plan should aim to replace one fos­sil fuel with anoth­er, when stud­ies show that we can move to con­ser­va­tion, effi­cien­cy, solar, wind and ener­gy stor­age in the same time frame, meet­ing our ener­gy needs with 99.9% reli­a­bil­i­ty and at no increased cost.

Close the bio­genic CO2 loop­hole, and dis­al­low a shift from coal to bio­mass and waste incin­er­a­tion, whose CO2 emis­sions are also worse than coal

Accord­ing to EPA’s eGRID data­base, trash incin­er­a­tors release 2.5 times as much CO2 as coal pow­er plants do per unit of ener­gy, and bio­mass incin­er­a­tors releas­es 50% more CO2 than coal.  Despite this real­i­ty, EPA is deter­mined to ignore CO2 emis­sions from all waste-based “bio­mass” and most oth­er bio­mass incin­er­a­tion, as affirmed in the revised bio­genic CO2 account­ing frame­work, just released two weeks pri­or to the Clean Pow­er Plan com­ment deadline.

We can­not address glob­al warm­ing by burn­ing the very car­bon-stor­ing forests we need to be pre­serv­ing.  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 4–5 decades to bring lev­els down to that of coal, and cen­turies for “car­bon neu­tral­i­ty” to be reached, if ever.  Car­bon emis­sions are not reduced by regrowth with­in the time frame for com­pli­ance with this rule.  EPA must stop pre­tend­ing that “bio­genic” CO2 in the atmos­phere does not count.

Switch­ing from coal to bio­mass fuels or wastes that release more CO2 per unit of ener­gy is not a reduc­tion.  Sec­tion 111(d) of the Clean Air Act requires on-site emis­sions reduc­tions.  EPA’s slight-of-hand used to ignore bio­genic CO2 relies on look­ing at life-cycle impacts of bio­mass growth and spec­u­lates on what would hap­pen if these fuels or wastes were not burned, pre­fer­ring to assume even more dam­ag­ing alter­na­tives in order to make bio­mass burn­ing look like an improve­ment.  This spec­u­la­tion is inap­pro­pri­ate, as less-emit­ting alter­na­tives are pos­si­ble and ought to be pro­mot­ed instead.

If bio­mass can be eval­u­at­ed by look­ing at life-cycle impacts, so should nat­ur­al gas.  EPA can­not have it both ways.  Either look at methane leak­age from nat­ur­al gas, or look only at the smoke­stacks and dis­al­low bio­mass or waste incin­er­a­tion from being con­sid­ered a low-CO2 alter­na­tive to coal.

On trash incin­er­a­tion specif­i­cal­ly, EPA cal­cu­lates that 47% of the CO2 emit­ted from trash incin­er­a­tion is fos­sil-derived (such as plas­tics), and is not “bio­genic.”  How­ev­er, the plan would still allow waste incin­er­a­tion CO2 emis­sions to be ignored, even though the fos­sil/­plas­tics-burn­ing por­tion is enough to make CO2 emis­sions from trash incin­er­a­tors 50% worse than coal.

CO2 is not the only pol­lu­tant emit­ted from incin­er­a­tors.  By giv­ing a green light to trash incin­er­a­tors, EPA is sup­port­ing emis­sion sources dirt­i­er than coal, which release 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.

EPA’s Office of Sol­id Waste is push­ing for­ward with a rad­i­cal rede­f­i­n­i­tion of waste, which allows unreg­u­lat­ed waste burn­ing in hun­dreds of thou­sands of boil­ers around the coun­try, by redefin­ing many wastes as fuels, avoid­ing incin­er­a­tor reg­u­la­tions.  This mis­guid­ed pro-incin­er­a­tion approach must stop, and accu­rate­ly account­ing for CO2 emis­sions from waste burn­ing is one good place to start, lest we turn the nation’s coal pow­er plants into unreg­u­lat­ed waste incin­er­a­tors, wors­en­ing cli­mate and com­mu­ni­ty health impacts.

Dis­al­low nuclear pow­er subsidies

Nuclear pow­er should not be pro­mot­ed by the Clean Pow­er Plan, for sev­er­al rea­sons.  It’s uneco­nom­i­cal, is mon­strous­ly expen­sive, and can­not exist with­out tremen­dous gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies and lia­bil­i­ty insur­ance caps.  Licens­ing and build­ing new nuclear reac­tors takes at least a decade and typ­i­cal­ly involves cost-over­runs.  Con­ser­va­tion, effi­cien­cy, wind and solar can be imple­ment­ed much faster for much less mon­ey.  The inflex­i­ble base­load pow­er from reac­tors is incom­pat­i­ble with future elec­tric grids run on decen­tral­ized and flex­i­ble inter­mit­tent sources.

The plan encour­ages states to keep open the six ail­ing nuclear pow­er plants that are seek­ing to close, and would have states sub­si­dize the five new reac­tors cur­rent­ly under con­struc­tion.  Four of the five are in major­i­ty black com­mu­ni­ties, which is a Title VI vio­la­tion.  Rou­tine radioac­tive releas­es from oper­at­ing reac­tors con­tribute to increas­es in thy­roid and breast can­cer, leukemia and infant mor­tal­i­ty in reac­tor com­mu­ni­ties.  There is still no solu­tion for con­tain­ing the radioac­tive waste.  Pol­lu­tion through­out the fuel chain, from ura­ni­um min­ing to milling to con­ver­sion to enrich­ment to fuel fab­ri­ca­tion is unac­count­ed for in the “Clean” Pow­er Plan, as are the green­house gas­es from all the fos­sil fuels used to make the fuel, build/operate the pow­er plants, then cool and iso­late the waste for cen­turies.  Ura­ni­um min­ing and waste dis­pos­al are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly in Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties, anoth­er Title VI violation.

Nuclear reac­tors also use huge amounts of water and due to cool­ing water needs, they’re an awful glob­al warm­ing solu­tion, as they increas­ing­ly have to shut down or cut back pow­er on the hottest sum­mer days when their pow­er is need­ed for high air con­di­tion­ing demand.  Acci­dent risk from increas­ing­ly dan­ger­ous aging reac­tors is also a mat­ter to be tak­en quite seri­ous­ly.  For all of these rea­sons, states should not be per­mit­ted to sub­si­dize exist­ing or new nuclear reac­tors for Clean Pow­er Plan compliance.

Dis­al­low new invest­ment in old coal plants

Spend­ing mon­ey on improv­ing effi­cien­cy at exist­ing coal pow­er plants is mis­guid­ed.  Ulti­mate­ly, coal has to go.  Geol­o­gy has a “war on coal” that will cause it to become more expen­sive over time, as the remain­ing reserves are much deep­er and more cost­ly to extract.  Invest­ment dol­lars ought to go direct­ly into con­ser­va­tion, effi­cien­cy, wind, solar and ener­gy stor­age, not into main­tain­ing coal burn­ing for a lim­it­ed num­ber of years until more mon­ey will need to be spent on the inevitable clean ener­gy transition.

Reject car­bon cap­ture and 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, it comes back out with the pro­duced oil, and the CO2 released from the ulti­mate burn­ing of that oil can eas­i­ly exceed the amount “sequestered” by this process.

The Clean Pow­er Plan is a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to move the nation away from com­bus­tion-based ener­gy tech­nolo­gies and toward reduced demand and 100% clean (non-nuclear) ener­gy pro­duc­tion.  Please work to close these var­i­ous loop­holes so that the plan brings us where sci­ence (not indus­try) says we need to go.

Sin­cere­ly,