By Michael Brooks
Utilities and independent power producers said the Environmental Protection Agency should delay or eliminate the interim goals in its proposed carbon emission plan.
The EPA’s plan calls for a two-part goal structure for each state: an “interim” average goal over 10 years beginning in 2020, and a final goal that must be met by 2030.
Some companies and trade groups, while supportive of the general effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, criticized the goal schedule as inflexible. The plan calls for the majority of the overall cuts in its first years, forcing states to make decisions without “thoughtful implementation,” NRG Energy said in its comments.
“The EPA’s proposed rule provides great flexibility for how states can achieve the required CO2 reductions,” NRG said. “However, it offers hardly any flexibility on when to achieve them.”
The company said this would create the unintended consequence of hastily built natural gas plants as states struggle to quickly meet the interim average, lowering emissions but deepening the country’s dependence on fossil fuels and making it difficult for renewable sources to break into the mix.
The Edison Electric Institute, which represents investor-owned utilities, echoed NRG’s criticism.
“In order to satisfy the 10-year average goal, many states must achieve more than 50% of their 2030 emission-reduction goals by 2020; and 11 states — including Arizona, Arkansas, Florida and Minnesota — must achieve more than 75% of their 2030 goals by 2020,” the association said. “This effectively turns the 2030 goal into a 2020 goal for these states.”
“There is not sufficient time between now and 2020 for utilities and states to develop, plan, design and complete the infrastructure required to meet the interim goals as proposed,” EEI president Tom Kuhn said in a statement.
NRG suggested the EPA maintain its “strong” 2030 goal, but that the agency allow states to move toward that goal at their own pace.
Alternatively, the company suggested modifying the interim goal “so that states must meet one-half of the interim goal, on average, in each of the 10 years from 2020 to 2029, while also meeting the 2030 goal. This would allow each state to set a straight diagonal line glide path from 2020 to 2030, or a number of other trajectories that might better suit the state — including dramatic early reductions in any state that deems them prudent.”
Dominion Resources, while also signaling its support for reducing emissions, also urged the EPA to eliminate the 2020 interim goal but suggested allowing states to meet an interim 2025 target before fulfilling its 2030 obligations.
EEI, while questioning the plan’s legality, echoed these suggestions. “Eliminating the interim compliance goal and allowing states to determine their own reduction glide paths and milestones to achieve the 2030, or the early-action alternative 2025, goals as part of their compliance plans would provide states with real flexibility to preserve reliability and minimize costs to electricity customers.”
Regional Approach rather than State-by-State
Companies and groups also criticized the use of state boundaries as a means of setting compliance targets, noting that many utility service territories and RTO and NERC regions do not coincide with state lines.
EEI questioned the legality of state-wide goals.
“Nothing in section 111(d) [of the Clean Air Act] clearly authorizes EPA to set emission goals based upon a large, heterogeneous set of units aggregated across a state,” the EEI said. “Instead, for EPA to regulate CO2 emissions (or emissions of any other type of pollutant) from existing sources, the regulations should be based on the sources themselves — and on a standard of performance attainable by implementing measures at those sources — rather than an aggregation of sources that happen to be within a particular state.”
