EPA: New rules limiting pollution will not cause power outages

The Environmental Protection Agency’s top clean-air official aggressively pushed back Wednesday against claims that upcoming pollution regulations will cause so many power plant closures that the country could face power outages.

“In the 40-year history of the Clean Air Act, EPA rules have not caused the lights to go out, and we won’t let it happen going forward,” Gina McCarthy, assistant administrator at EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, said during a technical conference at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

{mosads}McCarthy’s comments come as Republicans are increasingly making the case that EPA’s regulations — which require power plants to install technology to reduce emissions of harmful air toxics and mercury — will threaten power grid reliability.

Wednesday marked the second of a two-day technical conference on the issue. The conference included participation from EPA, as well as a range of power industry executives who have been critical of the agency’s clean-air regulations.

McCarthy acknowledged Wednesday that the two regulations that have raised the most concern — the cross-state air-pollution rule and the mercury and air toxics standards — will result in the shuttering of some power plants. But she insisted that the rules will not threaten reliability.

“We are paying careful attention to reliability issues,” she said, according to her written remarks. “EPA’s analysis projects that these clean air rules, combined, will result in only a modest level of retirements and will not have an adverse effect on generation resource adequacy in any region of the country.”

EPA finalized its cross-state air-pollution rule, which requires power plants in Eastern states to reduce air pollution that crosses state lines, in July. The agency is slated to finalize its mercury and air toxics standards, which require power plants to install technology to reduce harmful air pollution, on Dec. 16.

Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee are pressing FERC
and EPA for more information on the effects of the rules.

“We
need much better answers to these reliability concerns than we have
gotten thus far,” Rep. Ed Whitfield
(R-Ky.), chairman of the Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Energy and Power, said Tuesday in a news release.

McCarthy criticized recent studies that claim EPA regulations will cause reliability issues, arguing they are based on incorrect assumptions about the agency’s rules.

“Other studies do suggest that these rules will result in substantial power plant retirements that, in turn, will threaten reliability,” McCarthy said. “In general, these studies share a number of serious flaws.”

The studies, McCarthy said, are inaccurate because they assume the regulations are more expensive than they are, include plants that will be shut down regardless of the EPA rules because they are old or inefficient and don’t take into account other tools for ensuring reliability.

“These types of worst-case assumptions, when not clearly described as more stringent than EPA’s rules, can generate more confusion than insight,” she said.

“[M]any of these studies do not make it clear that they are looking at an extreme case that does not reflect EPA’s actual rules and, as a result, overstates potential impacts.”

McCarthy specifically criticized a study released this week by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), an industry group charged with developing reliability standards.

The study assumes “that every uncontrolled coal unit will install the most expensive controls available to meet the mercury and air toxics standards requirements,” McCarthy said. “I think we all know that this isn’t what will happen.”

The NERC study said EPA’s regulations “may significantly affect bulk power system reliability depending on the scope and timing of the rule implementation and the mechanisms in place to preserve reliability.”

More broadly, McCarthy said the regulations will prevent tens of thousands of premature deaths.

“These rules will achieve major public health benefits for Americans that significantly outweigh the costs,” she said. “They are affordable, technologically achievable and can be implemented while maintaining a robust and reliable electric system.”

Still, EPA faces major opposition to the regulations from Republicans, some centrist Democrats and industry groups.

They have mounted a massive opposition campaign to the mercury and air toxics standards, arguing that they will impose a huge burden on the economy.