EPA: Carbon Rules Could Ensure Nuclear Power’s Survival

[Anoth­er rea­son why the dirty ener­gy resis­tance needs to band togeth­er. ‑Josh]

- by Julie Wer­nau, June 18, 2014, Chica­go Tribune

Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency Admin­is­tra­tor Gina McCarthy said Tues­day that the fed­er­al agen­cy’s pro­posed car­bon rules are designed to boost nuclear plants that are strug­gling to compete.

“There are a hand­ful of nuclear facil­i­ties that because they are hav­ing trou­ble remain­ing com­pet­i­tive, they haven’t yet looked at re-licens­ing (to extend their oper­at­ing lives). We were sim­ply high­light­ing that fact,” McCarthy said at a round-table dis­cus­sion with busi­ness lead­ers in Chicago.

The com­ments by the high­est-rank­ing offi­cial charged with car­ry­ing out the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion’s envi­ron­men­tal poli­cies firm­ly posi­tions the U.S. as a sup­port­er of nuclear pow­er, which does­n’t emit car­bon. Those views run counter to Ger­many, which is phas­ing out nuclear pow­er over health and envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns after Japan’s nuclear dis­as­ter in 2011.

Illi­nois’ reduc­tion tar­gets also reward the state if it choos­es to help prop up the 6 per­cent of nuclear pow­er in the U.S. that the agency has deter­mined is under threat of extinc­tion. It’s not clear what por­tion of that total is in Illinois.

How­ev­er, Chica­go-based Exelon Corp., which owns six nuclear plants in Illi­nois, has sig­naled that as many as three of those plants could close if poli­cies at the state and fed­er­al lev­el don’t help it increase profitability.

Last month Exelon lob­bied Illi­nois leg­is­la­tors to adopt a res­o­lu­tion in favor of pro-nuclear poli­cies that go beyond the car­bon rule. The res­o­lu­tion asks state reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies to pre­pare reports that explain the “soci­etal cost” of increased green­house gas emis­sions in the state if nuclear plants close, and the Depart­ment of Com­merce and Eco­nom­ic Oppor­tu­ni­ty to out­line job loss­es that would come from clos­ing nuclear plants.

McCarthy was in Chica­go to field ques­tions from reporters and busi­ness lead­ers and help clar­i­fy expec­ta­tions the EPA has for states.

She acknowl­edged that the EPA’s man­date to try to prop up the 6 per­cent of nuclear pow­er that is threat­ened with clo­sure was­n’t bro­ken down by state.

“Many have point­ed out that it was an inel­e­gant way to do it, so we have asked them to com­ment on it,” McCarthy said.

She said “hours and hours of dis­cus­sion” led the admin­is­tra­tion to allow ener­gy effi­cien­cy and renew­able ener­gy to count toward car­bon reduc­tion goals. While states ulti­mate­ly would decide how to meet tar­gets, McCarthy warned that if nuclear capac­i­ty goes away, “it’s a lot of car­bon reduc­tion that needs to be made up for a long peri­od of time.”

Each state would select how to meet its goal and sub­mit an imple­men­ta­tion plan to the EPA in 2016.

McCarthy said the pro­posed car­bon rules are not a “stretch” and that states should not com­pare their tar­gets against one anoth­er based on per­cent­age of reduc­tion. Instead, she said, they should look at the tons of car­bon that are being reduced. She said state goals were designed to work with what states are already doing to reduce car­bon emissions.

“Peo­ple are look­ing at this as a per­cent­age reduc­tion, which real­ly don’t make a whole heck of a lot of sense, but it’s a com­mon way that peo­ple look at it,” she said.

For instance, Wash­ing­ton state is being asked to reduce by 84 per­cent the amount of fos­sil fuel it burns. But that’s because it is clos­ing its one remain­ing coal-fired pow­er plant; the EPA’s tar­get was based on that knowledge.

“If you go back and trans­late those per­cent­ages into ton­nage reduc­tions, it may make a lit­tle more sense,” she said.

For exam­ple, in 2012, Wash­ing­ton emit­ted 1,370 pounds of car­bon to pro­duce a megawatt-hour of elec­tric­i­ty. In Illi­nois, 2,189 pounds of car­bon were dis­charged to pro­duce a megawatt-hour.

The Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion’s vision of a low­er car­bon future goes beyond prop­ping up nuclear pow­er. Com­pa­nies push­ing ener­gy effi­cien­cy, wind pow­er, solar pow­er and trans­mis­sion projects told McCarthy that their projects were cru­cial to mak­ing that vision a reality.

Pol­i­cy experts have been scratch­ing their heads since pro­posed rules were announced this month to low­er green­house gas­es from pow­er plants.

For instance, while nation­wide the rules aim to cut car­bon emis­sions by 30 per­cent by 2030 from 2005 lev­els, Illi­nois received a goal to low­er emis­sions by 33 per­cent from 2012 levels.

The goal is con­found­ing to some because Illi­nois received a whop­ping 49 per­cent of its pow­er from nuclear plants in 2012. It also means that Illi­nois does­n’t get cred­it for car­bon cuts that result­ed from clos­ing sev­er­al coal-fired pow­er plants from 2005 to 2012.

The pro­pos­al to lim­it emis­sions is sub­ject to a 120-day com­ment peri­od and pub­lic hear­ings. The rules are expect­ed to be final­ized June 1. The com­ment peri­od begins after the draft rules are post­ed in the fed­er­al register.