Coal

Is the U.S. Coal Fleet “Under Threat?”

The nation’s coal fleet is under threat, alleged Dr. Larry S. Monroe, chief environmental officer and senior vice president for research and environmental affairs with Southern Co. during the keynote plenary session at the Power Plant Pollutant Control “MEGA” Symposium on Aug. 19 in Baltimore, Md.

Monroe was part of a four-member panel, which included Janet McCabe, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) acting assistant administrator of its Office of Air and Radiation. Other members of the panel were Regis Conrad, director of the Crosscutting Research division with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and Jackson Morris, senior energy and climate analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

“Due to the mercury and air toxics standards (MATS), about 54,000 MW—about 15% of the U.S. coal fleet—has announced retirement in the next two to three years,” Monroe said during his presentation. “The EPA and some of their modeling have estimated that about another 50,000 MW of coal-fired generation over the next five years will be retired due to [the Clean Power Plan]. And so, we’re faced with—as a U.S. economy—about half of the coal fleet under threat because of environmental regulations. Go beyond air, beyond MATS, beyond CO2, we’ve got water rules, whether it’s 316(b), or steam effluent guidelines, and also ash rules.”

A Focus on the Clean Power Plan

But aside from all the other regulations, the Clean Power Plan took center stage during the session. McCabe noted that EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy signed the proposed plan on June 2, “exactly on time.”

“This was an unusual rule—it continues to be—in a couple of respects. One of them is the amount of outreach that the EPA has done, and will continue to do, for this program. You may know that Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act, which is the section that we’re talking about here, has a very clear role for both state and federal government. The federal government sets the targets, or the expectations, in what are called 111(d) guidelines, but then it’s up to the states to develop plans,” McCabe said.

“So in light of that, and in light of the importance of this program to the entire country—all the people who live in this country—and to the economy, before we even sat down with our pens or our laptops or our Blackberries or whatever we were using, we started talking to people.”

McCabe said the EPA held hundreds of meetings with utilities, individual companies, utility groups, labor, environmental groups, and state partners to get their input on how to approach the regulation. She said people were overwhelmingly supportive of the need to address climate change, but they also wanted the EPA to pay attention to the reliability and affordability of electricity in this country—something that even President Obama has told the EPA to be mindful of.

“States were very clear that states are very different when it comes to how they produce power in their fossil fleets and we should not have a one-size-fits-all approach,” said McCabe.

Morris agreed. “This was not an arbitrary exercise. This was based on a lot of analysis of what each state had as its goal to pursue based on its existing fleet, based on regional renewables programs in place, et cetera,” he said. “[Reduction targets were] built up through extensive modeling and resulted in differences across the states.”

“Let me emphasize, this is not an energy plan,” said McCabe. “That’s not Administrator McCarthy’s job.  Administrator McCarthy’s job is to implement Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act by regulating appropriate industrial categories, and the industrial category that we’re talking about here is the fossil-fuel fired power sector—coal and gas primarily. Our job there is to determine something called the ‘best system of emission reduction,’ which requires us to look at what people are doing across the country and set standards based on that.”

Southern Co. views the proposal differently though. “We think it’s an overreach by the EPA. It may not be designed as an energy policy, or energy plan, in practice, it turns out to be that. We think it’s not workable for various reasons,” said Monroe.

“From NRDC’s perspective, the EPA proposal is a historic step forward. We strongly support the action by EPA, but we also think there are opportunities to actually strengthen the proposal,” said Morris. “In our modeling exercise that we conducted ourselves, we see that we could achieve greater reductions, sooner, at a reasonable cost, and a net benefit. The biggest focus that we see that can be expanded upon and pursued more quickly is the investments in energy efficiency and renewables.”

Technology Is a Key

While 111(d) was a hot topic, it was not the only item discussed. Conrad spoke at length about research the DOE is involved in to advance energy technology. He noted that improvements in metallurgy are needed to increase plant efficiency.

“If we’re going to do ultrasupercritical steam and supercritical steam, we’re not going to be able to do that unless we have high-temperature materials. And if we’re going to do supercritical CO2, we’re not going to be able to do that unless we have high-temperature materials,” said Conrad.

“We can’t wait 20 years for technology to get us ready to meet the new regulation standards. We have to figure out a way, how we can accelerate that, but in a manner that will reduce the risk in that the end user—the power company—will be able to accept that we have reduced the risk and identified that this can move forward.”

But Monroe noted that government funding is on the decline. “One thing of concern [is] diminishing national budgets for coal research,” he said. “We think coal is an essential part of the mix, and we need new technologies to do that.”

With the election drawing near, only time will tell if a new Congress will bring new priorities and more funding for industry research. In the meantime, the public comment period on the Clean Power Plan remains open until Oct. 16, but the debate is likely to last well beyond that deadline.

Aaron Larson, associate editor (@AaronL_Power, @POWERmagazine)

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