We are rapidly approaching national greenhouse gas legislation, either through a congressionally-led cap-and-trade bill or an EPA-led amendment to the Clean Air Act. However passed, these regulations will then immediately face a practical problem: how do you enforce a law that is in conflict with itself?
This problem arises because of the Clean Air Act’s core failing: It compels businesses to increase their CO2 emissions. The moment we compel businesses to reduce those same emissions is the moment we expose this flaw and invite waves of litigation that will not only delay the implementation of CO2 policy, but also invite compromise and negotiation that will likely be forced to sacrifice some of the Act’s environmental intent. How on earth did we get here? And what are we to do about it?
The clean air act mandates greenhouse gas pollution
Broadly characterized, the Clean Air Act does three things:
- It sets limits on the concentration of regulated pollutants at regulated point sources;
- It steadily tightens those limits over time, and;
- It requires any new pollution sources to meet the most current (stringent) pollution standards.
By any measure, the act has done a commendable job of reducing non-CO2 air pollution. But it has unwittingly increased CO2 pollution as well.
The first reason is the political tension in the act’s structure, which led to the concept of “grandfathering.” In essence, grandfathering says that if you get an air permit, you can always operate under that permit, regardless of future environmental rules. Many of us have direct experience with this concept in practice: when cars were forced to no longer burn leaded gasoline, we didn’t have to scrap our old Dodge Darts and buy new cars; we simply had to come into compliance once we bought a new car. Similarly, a coal plant permitted to release 200 parts-per-million of nitrogen oxide pollution can emit at those levels in perpetuity, even though new plants must comply with standards that are 10-times more stringent.
Seen from the perspective of the polluter, this makes a lot of sense. It would be hard to contemplate buying a car if you might be forced to buy a new one a year later because of tightening environmental regulations. However, for power plants and industrial facilities that generate pollution as a byproduct of selling a product (power, steel, etc.) grandfathering serves to give a decided economic advantage to the dirtiest and oldest sources, since they compete in a market that is set by the costs of pollution controls which they do not have to bear.
The perverse result is that rules designed to clean the air provide direct economic incentives to the dirtiest sources. Recognizing this potential, the Act has a built in trap-door in the form of “New Source Review.” NSR says, in essence, that your permit is revoked the moment you do a “major modification.” This line is not nearly as sharp as one might hope, but it has generally been interpreted to mean that while regular maintenance won’t jeopardize your permit, plant upgrades will.
That sounds reasonable, except for this awkward fact: the cheapest and most environmentally beneficial way to increase plant capacity is to increase fuel efficiency. Generate more power with the same amount of fuel combustion and associated pollution and the world is a better place, right? Wrong. Because that upgrade would constitute a major modification, revoking your air permit and taking away the economic advantage that your old, dirty plant has. The result is that our electric and industrial sector has, since the passage of the Clean Air Act, been incentivized to keep old, dirty facilities running rather than build new, clean ones. In the transportation sector, this largely hasn’t mattered: Dodge Darts weren’t built to last. But for the rest of the economy, we are intentionally driving 12-mpg, 1960s-vintage power plants, furnaces, and boilers, spewing needlessly high levels of CO2 into the atmosphere.
There are laws in process that would fix some parts of these problems and cause some of the dirtiest of the grandfathered coal facilities to be shut down. But even if the problems innate to grandfathering were fixed, the Act would still mandate increased CO2 emissions. This reason is mathematical.
Suppose you want your kids to eat healthier. Which is the more effective approach? (a) Tell them they can only have one scoop of ice cream with dinner, or; (b) Tell them their meal cannot exceed 10 percent ice cream?
Option A clearly limits their ice cream consumption. Option B most likely leads to fat kids, who quickly figure out that if they can scarf down a few more bites of spaghetti, they’ll get a pro rata increase in their ice cream allowance. The Clean Air Act takes the fat kid approach.
The overwhelming majority of the exhaust gas in a stack is CO2 and combustion air. Both of these are a direct function of the volume of fuel burned. The Clean Air Act sets pollution limits not based on total pollution release, but based on the concentration of pollutants in the stack exhaust. The perverse result is that if you increase the efficiency of your combustion process—e.g., you burn less fuel—you will very likely violate your air permit, even if your actual air pollution is unchanged. Thus, like the kid who tempers his desire to eat less pasta with the pain of less ice cream, our power plants and industrials are forced to temper their desire to save money on fuel purchases with the pain of losing their operating permit. The result is massive, needlessly inefficient combustion of fossil fuels, raising the cost and pollution of US goods and services.
To date, this has been an egregious environmental failure, but it is about to become a legal issue as well. Stealing from Peter to pay Paul may be short-sighted, but only presents a legal problem at the point when both Peter and Paul have equal rights under the law. The moment CO2 becomes a regulated pollutant is the moment when Peter files his first lawsuit.
The easy fix
The solution is surprisingly simple. We ought not compromise our environmental principles—we simply need to fix the math. But EPA needs to make the fix now, before CO2 regulation is passed, when the changes can be made administratively, and on the the agency’s terms. If we instead wait until the inevitable litigation starts, those changes will be directed by the courts, the Congress, and any number of self-interested parties—not all of which will have the long-term health of the environment in mind.
Fixing the math requires only that we shift existing pollution standards to an output-basis. (Note that this need not initially address CO2—but it must address currently-regulated pollutants to avoid conflict.) Replace parts-per-million permits with parts-per-kilowatt-hour permits (or parts-per-Btu, in the case of many industrial processes. As is often the case, the states have led the way in this effort (See here [PPT] for an overview of Connecticut’s efforts, to pick just one example.) Moreover, the EPA already has a deep internal understanding of the issue and how to best implement.
This simple change would immediately convert energy efficiency from a permit-killer to a pollution control device on its own merits. Perhaps more significantly, it immediately would allow businesses to profitably meet their environmental requirements (after all, burning less fuel saves money). A world facing economic and environmental challenges inevitably asks which of those goals must be sacrificed in the name of the other. Output-based standards is that rare policy tool that succeeds on both fronts. But the moment for reform is now, before litigation forces us down a path that is only indirectly shaped by the broader public interest.
‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science
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View as Flat
JMG Posted 9:08 am
04 Feb 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
http://WWW.USDOJ.GOV
ENRD
(202) 514-2007
TDD (202) 514-1888
Coal-Fired Power Plant to Spend More Than $135 Million to Settle Clean Air Violations
WASHINGTON-Kentucky Utilities (KU), a coal-fired electric utility, has agreed to pay a $1.4 million civil penalty and spend approximately $135 million on pollution controls to resolve violations of the Clean Air Act, the Justice Department and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced today.
KU has agreed to install new pollution control equipment on its largest generating unit that will reduce combined emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides by more than 31,000 tons per year, which is 90 percent below the 2007 emission levels. KU will also install controls to reduce particulate matter emissions by approximately 1,000 tons per year.
The company will spend approximately $3 million on projects to benefit the environment and mitigate the adverse effects of the alleged violations including:
Contribute $1.8 million to a pilot project on the effectiveness of storing compressed carbon dioxide gas, a by-product of coal combustion, in deep injection wells;
Spend $1 million to retrofit school buses with filters or other controls to reduce emissions of particulate matter; and
Pay $200,000 to the National Park Service to help restore Mammoth Cave National Park, located in Kentucky.
KU has agreed to surrender the excess nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide allowances it will have after installing the pollution controls. Coal-fired power plants are allowed to emit sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides as allowances, which are granted under federal or state acid rain permits. Once surrendered, these allowances cannot be used again, thus removing the emissions from the environment permanently.
"This settlement will result in the substantial reduction of harmful emissions, and will benefit air quality in Kentucky and downwind areas," said John C. Cruden, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division. "The Justice Department will spare no effort in its pursuit of emission reductions from power plants across the country to achieve the benefits envisioned by the Clean Air Act."
"Today's settlement sets the most stringent limit for nitrogen oxide emissions ever imposed in a federal settlement with a coal-fired power plant," said Catherine McCabe, Acting Assistant Administrator for EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. "EPA is committed to ensuring our nation's coal-fired power plants comply with the Clean Air Act. Pollutants from these facilities can cause severe respiratory problems, contribute to childhood asthma, and contribute to smog and haze."
In a complaint filed in March of 2007, the government alleged that KU modified the largest coal-fired electrical generating unit at the E. W. Brown Generating Station in Mercer County, Ky., without installing required pollution control equipment or complying with applicable emission limits, in violation of the Clean Air Act. The unit has been operating since 1971, and the modifications made in 1997 allowed the unit to increase the amount of coal it burned and increase the amount and rate of emissions for sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and particulate matter. The government discovered the violations through an information request issued to KU.
The settlement is part of the EPA's enforcement initiative to control harmful emissions from coal-fired power plants under the Clean Air Act's New Source Review requirements. The total combined sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emission reductions secured from these settlements will exceed more than 1.8 million tons each year once all the required pollution controls have been installed and implemented.
Coal-fired plants release sulfur dioxides and nitrogen oxides, which are a primary cause of acid rain that harms trees and lakes and impairs visibility. These pollutants cause severe respiratory problems, contribute to childhood asthma, and contribute to smog and haze. Air pollution from power plants can drift significant distances downwind and degrade air quality in nearby areas.
Kentucky Utilities, based in Lexington, Ky., generates and distributes electricity to more than 500,000 customers in Kentucky and Virginia. It owns and operates five coal-fired electrical generating stations in Kentucky. The settlement applies to the largest boiler unit at the E.W. Brown Generating Station located on Lake Herrington in Mercer County, Ky.
The settlement was lodged in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky in Lexington and is subject to a 30-day public comment period and final court approval. A copy of the consent decree is available on the Department of Justice Web site at http://www.usdoj.gov/enrd/Consent_Decrees.html.
The 5% Project
Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay.
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Sean Casten Posted 11:23 am
04 Feb 2009
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jestbill Posted 5:31 am
05 Feb 2009
You said that the current rules require you to use the best pollution control equipment. Apparently, the rules to decide which is "best" are not adequate. Why not change those rules?
You allege that the current rules mandate an increase in CO2 production but give no quote from the law concerning that. I'm guessing that you meant to say that if a plant increases production it will have to produce more CO2, not that that production or the associated CO2 is mandated.
If my guess is correct, there's no conflict. If a new law places a cap on CO2 production, then it will also place a cap on energy production at certain (grandfathered) plants. Is that so bad?
Where have all the horses gone?
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David Roberts Posted 5:44 am
05 Feb 2009
grist.org
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Sean Casten Posted 5:51 am
05 Feb 2009
If you comply with the CAA and install pollution controls that lower your ppm, you invariably burn more fuel to comply. From baghouses (particulate control) to scrubbers (SO2 control) to SCR (NOx control) you have a host of technologies that lower the ppm pollution of the plant at the cost of increased parasitic energy demands. For example, a bag house requires electricity to blow air, and to pull and shake out the bags. This is electricity that would otherwise be sold, so you are now burning more fuel per MWh and emitting more CO2 per MWh in the name of SOx/NOx/particulate reduction.
On the flip side, suppose you invest in efficiency anyway and do it in a way that is environmentally good all around: a 10% reduction in fuel combustion and a 5% reduction in criteria pollutant exhaust. That's environmentally good. But in a ppm standard, it's bad. Your total exhaust falls by 10% (since it scales with fuel) which is faster than your pollutant, thereby giving you a more concentrated pollutant stream. Mathematically, 95/90 = 1.05, so your measured pollution is now 5% above it's previous point, jeopardizing your permit. Industrials and power plants that I have worked with have figured this out a long time ago and taken conscious choices not to increase their efficiency as a result.
Note though that these problems are purely mathematical - it's not a question of redefining which control technology is the best, but of redefining the way we evaluate control technologies. An output standard does both in a technology-agnostic way.
But in all cases, note that the second problem with respect to NSR still would trump if it is not fixed at the same time. A plant with a 200 ppm permit simply won't do anything to increase their efficiency if it forces them to come into compliance with modern, 10 ppm standards (even if those standards are corrected to an output basis).
Hope that clarifies.
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Pompey Road Posted 8:14 am
05 Feb 2009
10 to 12 years to meet standsrd. Benchmarks to meet every 2 years with ever increasing fines until you hit peak fine in 12 years.
Reduce or offset fine prorated to the amount of wind and solar they use, or other source such as hydro.
They can either use natural gas which is more expensive for the short term while they start getting themselves some alternative fuel that will meet the natural gas standard.
Hell, if the coal industry can come up with an environmentally friendly way to do coal gasification more power to them. They have just had over 30 years to do it.
As long as they have to clean up their mining techniques.
Thing is why sweat the details or get caught up in the what if's. Set the standard to natural gas allow what ever the right time is to meet the standard and let the utility companies worry about how they are going to meet it.
Will never get anything done on co2 as long as we chase every rabbit or what if.
Set a straight forward standard with no loopholes or complicated trading schemes and lets go on to something else.
The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.
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jestbill Posted 7:11 am
11 Feb 2009
1. Sequestration.
Under current rules, a CO2 limit would require sequestration. So what's the problem?
Grandfathering is like time travel. We don't have to grandfather anyone in and wait 30 years, that's already been done. Plants were grandfathered in, time has passed so they can be safely shut down now that we are in this new regime where GHG concentrations are so dangerously high.
The whole idea that plant improvements to reduce pollution are governed by the "major improvement" tripwire is the kind of silliness that makes passionately interested people write like chaotic trolls.
Where have all the horses gone?
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Sean Casten Posted 7:47 am
11 Feb 2009
Not precisely true, since there are no current rules with respect to CO2. I am not personally aware of anyone recommending a CO2 regulatory approach that would mandate specific control technologies (as we have implicitly done for criteria pollutants with some elements of BACT/MACT guidelines). As such, I don't think I would characterize any current or contemplated CO2 regulatory regime as one that mandates sequestration (or any other technology for that matter.) Note though that the point of my post is not that CO2 regs need to be changed - after all, they don't exist. It's that once you have CO2 regs of any flavor, you need to modify other, non-CO2 emissions regs to avoid legal conflict.
In theory, yes. In practice, that's damned near politically impossible, and go back to my Dodge Dart example to explain why. It is one thing to tell people that all new cars must have catalytic converters and run on unleaded gasoline, but it is something else entirely to tell everyone with a leaded, catalyst-free exhaust system that they have to buy a new car or start walking to work. That said, there is some precedent for a middle ground that doesn't shut the plant down, but does say that starting X years from now, you must come into compliance with new regs or else shut down. (In other words, you've got a couple years to save up and buy that catalytic converter.) That is essentially what the CAIR/CAMR rules passed under Bush would have done, and Jim Rogers of Duke is on record as saying that this would likely lead him to shut down any coal plant in his fleet under 500 MW and upgrade the rest. But ultimately, this is a question of politics, separable into two separate categories: (a) should future regulations include any form of grandfathering? (The hopeful answer: I certainly hope not); (b) should existing regulations that included grandfathered pollution rights be gradually phased out? (The hopeful answer: I certainly hope so.)
Indeed.
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jestbill Posted 5:07 pm
11 Feb 2009
What I mean is that there really is no logical or arithmetic conflict. There may be a techno-logical conflict.
At bottom, what you are saying is that in order to limit CO2 concentration, a plant will have to increase CO2 concentration.
If CO2 rules are put in place, they will require that some measure of CO2 production decrease. That can not happen by mixing in a larger amount of CO2 as is (in effect) done to deal with SOx. Some will have to be removed and when it is removed, your logical argument goes away even for SOx.
2. That is the advantage of having power generation done by public utilities: you can do things by fiat when they really need to get done. In any case, power plant operators are a minority--it's not as if every voter will have to buy a new power plant and then vow to throw his representatives to the wolves.
Where have all the horses gone?
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Pangolin Posted 6:13 pm
11 Feb 2009
Taxing the snot out of coal at the mine head would do just fine. Charge double or triple fees for high-weight trains on tracks and coal barges on rives would also help.
Put the Carbon Back
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Sean Casten Posted 11:05 pm
11 Feb 2009
I'm not saying that in order to lower CO2 emissions they will have to increase CO2 emissions. I'm saying that in order to lower current regulated emissions (e.g., pollutants other than CO2), the compliance metrics cause you to increase more CO2. In a very narrow technical sense you are correct that mandating CO2 sequestration in addition to current criteria pollutant clean up would lower both. But that is a massively bad idea, on just about every level. (It only works to the degree that CO2 sequestration works, forces one single approach to CO2 red'n at the expense of all others, is massively expensive even if it does work, and exacerbates every other upstream environmental problem since it would serve to accelerate the rate of fossil resource extraction - a plant with CO2 sequestration on the back is, after all, a much less fuel efficient plant.)
As with the prior, the logic doesn't quite flow. The fact that you can mandate good behavior on a public utility doesn't necessarily imply that the best way to get things done is with a public utility. (And indeed, the folks at APPA and NRECA - the lobbying arms for our nation's public and rural non-profit utilities would make a compelling case that you cannot simply mandate them to do things without their buy-in.) Speaking of lobbying, I wouldn't make too much of the number of power plant operators in the country - it is the size of their lobbying budget that matters. There's only some ~80,000 people in this country employed by the coal industry, but they have a lobbying clout well in excess of that total. That's not to say that one couldn't find good reasons to make more of the public utility model - simply that we do not need to have an environmental regulatory framework that forces all environmental compliance to be economically painful. It just so happens to be the way we do it right now, but there is nothing innate to environmentalism that makes it thus. So long as we remain stuck in the current paradigm we are compelled to talk mandates and pain and fight lobbyists. But if we go to a system that severs that link - like output-based standards, although that's certainly not the only approach - we get everyone's economic interests aligned with the environments, so that even the private utilities have an economic interest in CO2 reduction.
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jestbill Posted 2:54 am
13 Feb 2009
The reason it hasn't caused lawsuits yet is that ways have been found to decrease both at the expense of increased CO2 release.
Now that someone has decided that we need to control CO2, there might be a problem because CO2 is essential to the process, not an added pollutant.
I still do not see the problem.
Are you saying that the only fuels that burn more efficiently also contain more of the other controlled pollutants? If not, then switching to such a fuel will not cause trouble. If so, then the other mitigation technology will have to be improved.
If you are talking about some technology that uses energy to reduce CO2 production without sequestering it, I see your point but I don't understand it. If that technology is just to burn the fuel in a way that reduces CO2 while increasing the formation of other pollutants, there still is no lawsuit, just a mandate to improve the other technology to sequester the other pollutant.
One way or another, these pollutants will have to be taken out of the exhaust stream completely. The possibility of new CO2 regulations just makes that point clear.
Where have all the horses gone?
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Sean Casten Posted 7:21 am
13 Feb 2009
The reason why compliance with current, non-CO2 regulation leads to increases in CO2 emissions is because those regulations compel you to install devices that themselves require energy to operate - energy which causes you to burn more fuel and release more CO2 solely to remove those pollutants.
Thus, a coal plant that doesn't have to comply with the Clean Air Act is substantially more fuel efficient than one that does - by about 5%. That means that the CAA-compliant plant (while a wonderful improvement from an acid rain / smog / soot perspective) is actually accelerating our global warming problem by burning more fuel per MWh of electricity delivered to the grid. Such is the nature of end-of-pipe controls: it takes energy to separate, collect and dispose of pollutants that are a dilute fraction of a larger air stream. (CO2 sequestration merely takes this logic to an extreme - fully retrofitting a coal plant with carbon sequestration would increase fuel combustion by about 20%, meaning that even if it does get the CO2 removed, it accelerates all the upstream environmental problems, since we just lop of mountaintops that much faster. It also means that a world dominated by coal CCS plants has to build 20% more power plants to meet the same demand - foreshadowing NIMBY battles to come...)
So it's not a question of certain fuels being innately more efficient to burn, but rather that input-based pollution standards have forced people to favor the use of fuel-inefficient technologies, both by mandate (e.g., "best available control technology" regs) and by algebra (e.g., the way in which efficiency is discouraged because of its tendency to reduce the denominator of a parts/million fraction.) In both cases, that means that a plant that is permitted in the current regime has a compelling argument to make the day after CO2 regulation is passed that they are being legally forced to increase their CO2 emissions and therefore cannot be penalized for doing so.
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jestbill Posted 8:47 am
14 Feb 2009
Arithmetic:
Suppose you have a power plant that is running flat out. You put in some equipment to reduce the output of some pollutant.
The equipment takes out the pollutant and uses some energy. It does not increase CO2 output since you're already running at maximum. It does not reduce production of some other pollutant.
Now, whether you measure the production of another pollutant in the output stream by ppm or ppm/MWh or tons/MWh or whatever, you have left the numerator alone while decreasing the denominator. So your "fix" has no effect on the argument itself. Were they going to sue, they would have done so when they had to reduce production of two pollutants instead of one.
Policy:
Your assumption is that more energy will be required, my assumption is that the more expensive energy will reduce demand. Neither will lead to lawsuits.
You actually know something about practices and technology, I just assume that people will eventually figure out how to do what's required.
What's required:
Since CO2 pollution causes trouble not by local concentration as does SO2 but by total global volume, it needs to be handled differently no matter what kind of arithmetic is used.
I fear that it could be found that a reduction in your measure of pollution could be effected by just building a bigger plant. That might even reduce CO2 pollution as it might be measured currently. Unfortunately, any measure that allows more tons of CO2 to be produced per year would be wrong and harmful.
Where have all the horses gone?
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Sean Casten Posted 11:39 pm
14 Feb 2009
(More broadly, a modern power plant, built since the CAA was passed plans for those parasitic loads and overbuilds accordingly.)
The key is arithmetic, but it is an arithmetic that recognizes that total MWh demand varies independently of the CO2/MWh released from our fleet of power plants, such that our CO2 release varies more or less directly with that ratio. The CAA act raises the ratio, thereby raising CO2 emissions.
This comes to your second point as to whether the price curtails demand, and it's far from clear that it does. At the extreme case, yes. But electricity isn't fungible, and therefore is highly inelastic. If the price of bananas goes up, I might eat more peaches. But the price of power has to go up a long way before I go back to mule-power (or more likely, move my plant to China where the power is cheaper - in which case I've cut off my nose to spite my face from a CO2 perspective anyway). So be careful what you wish for on that front, and even more careful about what you assume. (Do you watch less TV because your power prices go up?)
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