Environmental

After three years of development, dozens of public workshops, and hundreds of meetings with stakeholders, the California Air Resources Board (ARB) on Oct. 20 adopted a final rule to cap California’s greenhouse gas emissions and put a price on carbon. The cap-and-trade program starts in 2013 for electric utilities and large industrial facilities.

ICF International, a consultancy group that earlier this year had predicted 68 GW of coal-fired power plants could retire by 2030 as a result of finalized and proposed regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), downgraded its retirement projections to 50 GW this fall.

Ditching the only project remaining in its £1 billion ($1.60 billion) carbon capture and storage (CCS) competition, the UK government declined to back the much-watched CCS project at the Longannet power station in Fife, Scotland, in October. The decision balances the UK’s low-carbon ambition with the need to ensure that taxpayer money is invested in “the most effective way,” the nation’s Department of Energy and Climate Change said. The funds are now expected be used to “pursue other projects” in both Scotland and England.

President Obama has scuttled the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) smog rule, saying that he had underscored the importance of reducing regulatory burdens and uncertainty. The decision has dealt a blow to environmental groups—which are contemplating legal action—and won the Democratic president praise from Republicans and industry groups.

Several states have already instituted mercury emission limits in expectation of tightening mercury emission rules that will require reductions of up to 91%. Coal-fired plants searching for an economical way to meet the new limits may need to look no further than replacing their baghouse filter elements.

Dallas-based Luminant, Texas’ largest power generator, on September 9 filed a legal challenge against the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Cross State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) but said the newly finalized rule that will require generators to dramatically reduce sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from power plants had forced it to idle two coal-fired units and reduce capacity at three other units. This decision follows a similar decision made by American Electric Power to shutter 6GW of coal-fired plants in June.

Few reasonable people can dispute that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is conducting a war against coal. If you doubt that conclusion, just look at the large number of new regulations affecting coal-fired power plants that have been proposed in rapid-fire succession by the EPA.

Just two weeks after the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) withdrew its smog rule, the agency confirmed it would not meet a Sept. 30, 2011, deadline for issuing proposed New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) to limit greenhouse gas emissions from new, modified, and existing power plants. The agency did not specify a new deadline for proposing the rule.

I examined the magnitude of electricity subsidies for renewables compared with conventional generation technologies in my May 2011 editorial, based on data from a 2008 report prepared by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). An updated EIA report released in July determined that federal government subsidies have risen substantially during the past three years. In fact, overall renewable energy subsidies have almost tripled, increasing from $5.1 billion to $14.7 billion. In my opinion, we aren’t getting value for the money spent.

Heat waves, droughts, and other weather and climate phenomena; economic woes; aging or inadequate infrastructure; fuel shortages. These are some of the most obvious causes that have led to record peaks in power demand or sudden drops in available capacity. The results have been sometimes debilitating load-shedding, brownouts, and blackouts around the globe this summer (and, in some cases, for much longer). Here’s an overview of which countries are affected by which difficulties. For a more detailed look at the extent of shortages and what’s causing them, visit Web Exclusives at https://www.powermag.com