New Rule Compels US Coal-Fired Power Plants To Capture Emissions - or Shut Down (theguardian.com) 92
Coal-fired power plants would be forced to capture smokestack emissions or shut down under a rule issued on Thursday by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). From a report: New limits on greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel-fired electric plants are the Biden administration's most ambitious effort yet to roll back planet-warming pollution from the power sector, the nation's second-largest contributor to the climate crisis. The rules are a key part of Joe Biden's pledge to eliminate carbon pollution from the electricity sector by 2035 and economy-wide by 2050.
The rule was among four separate measures targeting coal and natural gas plants that the EPA said would provide "regular certainty" to the power industry and encourage them to make investments to transition "to a clean energy economy." They also include requirements to reduce toxic wastewater pollutants from coal-fired plants and to safely manage so-called coal ash in unlined storage ponds. The new rules "reduce pollution from fossil fuel-fired power plants, protect communities from pollution and improve public health -- all while supporting the long-term, reliable supply of the electricity needed to power America forward," the EPA administrator, Michael Regan, told reporters at a White House briefing.
The rule was among four separate measures targeting coal and natural gas plants that the EPA said would provide "regular certainty" to the power industry and encourage them to make investments to transition "to a clean energy economy." They also include requirements to reduce toxic wastewater pollutants from coal-fired plants and to safely manage so-called coal ash in unlined storage ponds. The new rules "reduce pollution from fossil fuel-fired power plants, protect communities from pollution and improve public health -- all while supporting the long-term, reliable supply of the electricity needed to power America forward," the EPA administrator, Michael Regan, told reporters at a White House briefing.
No wonder (Score:1, Insightful)
republicans want to gut the EPA. It puts a dent in donor profits. Yes, that woke EPA signed into power by noted left winger Richard Nixon, and only now half a century later is unconstitutional.
Re:No wonder (Score:5, Informative)
The lawsuits against the EPA haven't been to destroy or remove it...BUT, to curtail the overreach by the EPA and other Executive offices have been guilty of in the past couple decades especially.
I forgot the exact cases, but essentially someone bought some land that had areas on the property that during heavy rain times would have a pond...or maybe it was within spitting distance of a small body of water....and the EPA was acting like this was a major body of water needing protections from pollution, etc...and basically disallowed the new property owners from building on the property, etc.
The recent SCOTUS rulings basically slapped the EPA's hand and said "No"...this is beyond the powers that congress gave you and you are essentially making new law.
It's basically efforts to keep the EPA and other govt offices from running roughshod over the common citizen....
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The lawsuits against the EPA haven't been to destroy or remove it...BUT, to curtail the overreach by the EPA and other Executive offices have been guilty of in the past couple decades especially.
Can you cite some examples of overreach besides vague recollections?
Re:No wonder (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.supremecourt.gov/o... [supremecourt.gov]
Also worth noting the SCOTUS ruling against the EPA was unanimous. Even the liberals on the court found it ridiculous.
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VERY much so...
Kagen, Jackson and Sotomayor....I dunno if I got the spelling right on those...
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Re:No wonder (Score:4, Informative)
Sackett vs EPA [npr.org] is the one I was thinking of...easy to google my friend.
And I found one from NPR to satisfy your liberal bent...
This ruling arrowed the scope of the Clean Water Act and the agency's power to regulate waterways and wetlands.
There have been others, this is setting precedent in a number of unrelated cases of citizens vs govt agency overreach.
A number of pending 2A cases going before SCOTUS use this and other rulings to fight against the ATF in their recent rulings...some of which turn millions of every day citizens into felons overnight for buying weapons that the ATF expressly stated for years (in writing) that it was legal to buy and own....pistol braces for one, and even the bump stock case.
I'll leave those for you to google.
Re: No wonder (Score:2, Insightful)
Except that wasn't an example of overreach. Seasonal wetlands are still wetlands. Polluting them still affects both aquifers and the migratory waterfowl which use them.
Got any actual examples, not just more shitting on everything you don't care about, like other people?
Re: No wonder (Score:4, Informative)
Except that wasn't an example of overreach. Seasonal wetlands are still wetlands. Polluting them still affects both aquifers and the migratory waterfowl which use them.
Got any actual examples, not just more shitting on everything you don't care about, like other people?
It was overreach to regulate a seasonal puddle like it was a "navigable water"
Re: No wonder (Score:4, Informative)
It's overreach to prevent them from regulation of anything but navigable waterways.
As per the EPA: https://www.epa.gov/cwa-404/de... [epa.gov]
'The 1972 amendments to the Clean Water Act established federal jurisdiction over “navigable waters,” defined in the Act as the “waters of the United States” (CWA Section 502(7))'
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Yes, that's my point. That limitation is crippling, and there was no good reason for the law to restrict their authority to navigable waterways, only a bad and corporatism-serving reason.
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Just so we're clear, the ruling in that case is not so much "overreach" since it explicitly acknowledges the threats of pollution spreading between surface waters and affirms the EPA's role in protecting those waters, but rather is entirely hinged on a technicality in the definition not being strict enough. The EPA has jurisdiction, and therefore it's not overreach, but the wording defining what qualifies as protected wetlands isn't lawyer-y enough for SCOTUS.
THIS is the best argument you have?
=Smidge=
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They were making assumptions, the type which can often go against the average citizen and it should not be such.
Re:No wonder (Score:5, Interesting)
It falls under the "Major Questions Doctrine [wikipedia.org]" of administrative law. The recent rulings, which mostly I disagree with, are along the lines of:
Congress: Yo, Administrative Body! You are empowered by law to regulate X according to a regular rule-making process.
Administrative Body: Cool brah! As I read the law about regulating X, I think the rules should be A, B, and C. Time passes...
Administrative Body: Oh, and also rule D, because turns out the harms are wider-reaching, and the cost-benefit ratings support D. Industry in X: You muthafuckers! Y'all can't do that.
Congress: Shrug.
Administrative Body: The rules comply with the powers delegated to us in the law as written by Congress. They told us to regulate X; we're doing it.
Lower Courts in Favorable Districts: No way, man. Even if that's what Congress said in the law, they clearly couldn't have meant it, because that's a Major Question. And if Congress wanted you to act on such a Major Question, they would have been clearer about it.
Administrative Body: But Congress doesn't know shit about X or rule D; they told us to handle it. Also, the original legislation was written decades before rule D became necessary.
SCOTUS: Denied, bitches! Take it up with Congress if it's so important.
Congress: We cannot legislate our way out of a paper bag. Also, half of us are paid by Industry in X.
Industry in X: Ka-ching!
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++Insightful
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In reality, delegated powers are dangerous because of this kind of blank check mentality, where unelected entities can effectively invent law on the fly that was never even
Re:No wonder (Score:4, Insightful)
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I would like to think the ascendant wing of the GOP is the Goldwatter wing.
Nixon was were things started to go wrong and we are going to put it right; by moving to the right.
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And? That was 50 years ago. Do you expect people to believe that opinions about whether the EPA is a good thing would never change over time?
Time to get off the pot? (Score:2, Troll)
Fossil fuel companies have been claiming carbon capture is just about nearly almost here for years. It's long past time they were required to put up or shut up.
Re:Time to get off the pot? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, turning everything off before replacements are online is a bit foolish, no....?
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I'm guessing there's no provisions in this new legislation/regulation to take into consideration whether there are viable replacement "green" or renewable energy sources available AND online before shutting down any of these existing and functional coal powered plants....?
I mean, turning everything off before replacements are online is a bit foolish, no....?
There are. Practically everything on the market is verifiably better than coal, including nuclear and natural gas.
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Where does it state anything will be shutdown? This about cleaning up their act which might cut into the constant record quarterly profits.
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Well, to start with, it is expressly mentioned in the title of this thread:
"New Rule Compels US Coal-Fired Power Plants To Capture Emissions - or Shut Down"
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You can't expect him to read the title. Come on man.
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Well, when we have headlines from last week like this, I'm ready to give coal a hard deadline and fuck 'em if they can't meet it:
West Virginia says no to Biden's solar panel push: State's billionaire coal magnate governor vetoes renewable energy bill - claiming it would've "put miners out of work"
https://www.msn.com/en-sg/news/other/west-virginia-says-no-to-biden-s-solar-panel-push-state-s-billionaire-coal-magnate-governor-vetoes-renewable-energy-bill-claiming-it-would-ve-put-miners-out-of-work/ar-BB1kE1oo [msn.com]
There is currenlty enough solar and wind projects queued up to more than double the entire US grid capacity, they're just waiting on interconnections. The processes used
Re:Time to get off the pot? (Score:4, Insightful)
There is currenlty enough solar and wind projects queued up to more than double the entire US grid capacity
That's ones of those things that is technically true but doesn't mean what you think it means. Capacity in this sense just means what power sources can make at some point in time under ideal conditions. That doesn't mean you get an equal amount of power in practice from 2 grids with the same capacity. Depending on the type of power generation you do, you can get up to 9x more power from some grids than others (although in practice its more like 6-7x if one grid is all renewables and the other is a typical grid). Or to put it another way, that 2x capacity only provides a small fraction of what is needed just to replace coal plants. And it wouldn't even work in practice due to the lack energy of storage. But sure, go ahead and mess with other people's lives because you don't understand how the grid works.
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You need offshore wind. Capacity factor in Europe is already over 50%, and increasing. Prototypes of very large deep sea windmills are up in the 70% range.
The US has massive amounts of offshore wind just waiting to be tapped. That can replace coal because it is consistent - the output varies within a range, but never stops. Combine with long distance transmission lines to areas where those coal plants are.
It's purely a political issue that it doesn't get done. Europe isn't immune to that either, we could do
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If there aren't then fixing the coal plant and raising its prices is the cost effective approach; why would the owners shut it down instead?
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Thankfully, they've got 15 years to figure it out. That seems ample time to get the replacements in place. (Unless you're nuclear, in which case you're already 10 years too late.)
Re:Time to get off the pot? (Score:5, Interesting)
Coal plants that plan to stay open beyond 2039 would have to cut or capture 90% of their carbon dioxide emissions by 2032
The Coal lobby has been promising "Clean Coal!" since George Bush's 2000 presidential campaign.
They've had 25 years to implement their solution, this rule gives them another 8 years to put up or shut up...errr down. Considering coal usage has dropped by about 30% in the last 15 years and is only 15% of the remainder it's not unreasonable to give 8 years to install this magical equipment that they've been promising or for utilities to replace the lying industry with a real working product.
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Coal is one of the most expensive sources of power now.
Nationally, financial analyst firm Lazard found in December 2016 unsubsidized wind projects costing between $32 and $62 per megawatt-hour while coal cost between $57 and $148 per megawatt-hour.
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So what's the unsubsidized figure for the various fossil fuels? If we're going to start talking about subsidies, let's be fair. Wind is still developing. Fossil fuels have had more than a century of sucking the government teat and living rent free in Uncle Sam's basement. Isn't it time they were forced to grow up and make it on their own?
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We should count all of the extra military spending in the Middle East as a subsidy for oil, too.
The only reason anyone cares about various tinpot dictators is because they have oil -- and the reason the Middle East is so prone to tinpot dictators in the first place is *because* they have oil.
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Thank you from the bottom of my heart. So few people include the military costs in oil subsidies, yet clearly they deserve to be included.
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We can go further than that and probably say that if the world had transitioned away from fossil fuels earlier, Putin would never have been in a position to invade Ukraine (torching hundreds of billions of dollars of value and killing a vast number of people).
Petrostates tend to be pretty shitty.
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Right because of the regulations, that already exist.
Anyone actually responsible for engineering at a coal fired generating station will tell you they are running a "flue gas remediation facility" that happens to generate a little electricity as it is.
Progress as of 2020 (Score:2)
From the wiki hive mind "According to the Global CCS Institute, in 2020 there was about 40 million tons CO2 per year capacity of CCS in operation and 50 million tons per year in development.[90] In contrast, the world emits about 38 billion tonnes of CO2 every year,[91] so CCS captured about one thousandth of the 2020 CO2 emissions. "
So plenty of opportunity. Most projects fail to get into hardware, and most that do, do not meet their claimed performance (% of CO2 removed).
Need stats on percent of pollution captured (Score:2)
Need stats on the percent of pollution captured by coal power plants broken down by technology used and estimated cost to put that technology in place.
Would help instead of just quoting, "coal plants emit X tons of pollution A, pollution B, ..."
The EPA releasing a press release essentially with "You need to do more!" makes this into just a political point pushing effort.
It's so we can have a reasoned discussion of how to reduce pollution while having electricity generation capacity to handle the base electr
It wont survive a court challenge (Score:4, Interesting)
The Supreme Court already ruled that they can't regulate carbon emissions like this.
Re:It wont survive a court challenge (Score:5, Insightful)
The Supreme Court already ruled that they can't regulate carbon emissions like this.
Yup. Essentially, the Supreme Court has ruled that the EPA has zero authority here. This is a grandstanding effort to make it look like something is happening, when really it's just going to once again load up a slew of court cases, flung far and wide. Which makes me wonder. Is there a lawyer lobby that pushes this sort of thing? Because those are the only people that stand to gain anything from this type of nonsense.
Maybe it's time to get congress to actually do something and create a law to regula...? No, wait, sorry. Forgot what timeline we live in.
Re:It wont survive a court challenge (Score:4, Insightful)
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The Supreme Court already ruled that they can't regulate carbon emissions like this.
They also ruled that student loan forgiveness was (mostly) unconstitutional as well, and yet the President does it anyway.
We are entering "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it" territory again.
Re: It wont survive a court challenge (Score:2, Troll)
They ruled that how he was doing it was unconstitutional, not doing it at all. Got any facts to work with, or only things you don't understand and therefore shouldn't be pointing around?
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They also ruled that student loan forgiveness was (mostly) unconstitutional as well, and yet the President does it anyway.
They ruled that the particular way they wanted to do loan forgiveness was unconstitutional. There were numerous other programs in place for loan forgiveness that were not part of that ruling.
In other words, loan forgiveness is not in and of itself unconstitutional. Method A was struck down, but that doesn't apply to methods B, C, and D.
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Now let's see the court enforce it.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Marshals_Service [wikipedia.org]
Unaccountable bureaucrats (Score:2)
I might be in favor of an effort to scrub coal plant emissions...but the fact that un-elected, loosely accountable bureaucrats with essentially life time jobs are even close to having as much power as they claim is terrifying to me. If this was implemented by a law passed by Congress vice an edict by bureaucrats I'd have an open mind, but as it stands this is clearly unconstitutional, wrong and extrordinarily dangerous.
Or, maybe they are all 100% good people who would never, ever use such power for their o
Re: Unaccountable bureaucrats (Score:2)
Oh noes politicians might have the power to prevent people from profiting from polluting our nation and planet unnecessarily, HOW TERRIBLE.
Re: Unaccountable bureaucrats (Score:1)
Re: Unaccountable bureaucrats (Score:5, Insightful)
"I await their decision on EV producers and the huge quantity of dangerous particulates EV's spew into the atmosphere."
The only particulates that EVs spew into the atmosphere are tire dust, and not much more than other vehicles - or if LRR tires are used, less than most.
If you mean during production, or pollution from generating power to charge the vehicle, even if charged purely with coal the lifecycle emissions are lower by the time an EV hits 70k miles.
TL;DR: Bullshit.
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I await their decision on EV producers and the huge quantity of dangerous particulates EV's spew into the atmosphere. Maybe they should have to capture all that stuff, or close down EV production.
That's more than enough Fox News for you for one day. Turn off the TV.
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Well my point is they are not politicians. They never ran for office. They were never elected. They were never vetted by the citizens. They are appointed unaccountable bureaucrats that have over time accumulated incredible power that is not enumerated in the Constitution. The other part of my point is that I might even be in favor of the effort itself, but I really have a problem of the inevitable result of giving such power to unaccountable humans.
Smooth Boolean Operators (Score:2)
A better headline might be "New Rule Compels US Coal-Fired Power Plants to Capture Emissions AND THEREFORE Shut Down".
I'm all for it, personally. Let all the externalities be internalized, though the heavens fall, let God sort them out, etc. But the resulting increase in electricity prices will be pretty easy for climate change skeptics (i.e. rich idiots) to spin into more votes from their electoral base (i.e. poor idiots).
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And that, I suppose I should say explicitly, will lead to the new administration not only rolling back those same rules but also, in all likelihood, give them the momentum to replace those rules with something intended to far outweigh any good they might have done with new harms, just to SHOW 'EM.
I think the only thing that might save us from such a fate is the fact that removing mountaintops, grinding them up, dumping them in an overgrown barbecue, and setting an overgrown coffeepot on top is increasingly
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or people like you who can't do math and realize the carbon contribution from U.S. coal plants is now negligible
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Compare US coal emission to global carbon emission, it's nothing.
So, you majored in basket weaving?
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Compared to what? Natural Gas? Both derived from seas of dead plankton, though Natty Gas is 50% cleaner. But, Natty Gas generation in MWh now surpasses coal, and soon will have equal emissions just by volume of generation.
Agree with OP, scrubbed coal at the volume we burn it isn't a pressing issue....
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It's not about the environment (Score:2, Interesting)
This isn't about coal emissions or clean anything. It's about killing the coal industry before the cryptocurrency industry can buy in to make their own electricity. As and our government does NOT want cryptocurrency. Unless it's theirs.
Oh, and our government does NOT like us citizens. None of us. Some more than others, yes, but our government is against us. You want to be in the good side of the government? Read history. Only the leadership escapes this.
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This isn't about coal emissions or clean anything. It's about killing the coal industry before the cryptocurrency industry can buy in to make their own electricity.
Bit late for that now, innit?
January 2022: https://abcnews.go.com/US/bitc... [go.com]
February 2022: https://www.theguardian.com/te... [theguardian.com]
December 2023: https://www.indystar.com/story... [indystar.com]
Re: It's not about the environment (Score:2)
Never too late to punish your enemies, if you can.
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This isn't about coal emissions or clean anything. It's about killing the coal industry before the cryptocurrency industry can buy in to make their own electricity. As and our government does NOT want cryptocurrency. Unless it's theirs.
Cryptocurrency miners can buy land in a catbox state and put in a solar array. It's going to be cheaper than coal. Then they can mine while the sun shines. This isn't a move to stop cryptocurrency. This is a move to force coal plant operators to do what they claimed they were doing all along. We can find coal plants emitting more than they are legally allowed as fast as we can pay people to sample their emissions.
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Daylight crypto mining isn't very useful, it reduces the work by 40-60%. Buying land in a catbox state to build use-specific solar would face the same level of opposition I think, but why buy land when you have the existing plants? Economics.
It does seem, though, the rule imposes a somewhat grreater restriction on coal plant emissions, responding to the illegal emissions with a total ban. Hey, it's rule, and can be changed again if they do not achieve their desired outcome.
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ps, FTFS: "New limits on greenhouse gas emissions..."
Epic (Score:3)
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Now what's California going to do to appear clean and green?
Paint and a bucket of soap & water ?
Cool. Next step... (Score:3)
...let's apply similar regulations to cement manufacturing, battery production, natural gas power plants, and all other industries which emit copious CO2. It's totally unfair to single out coal power plants. For that matter, let's include home appliances, water heaters, and furnaces which burn fossil fuels.
As written, it's almost as if the regulation is specifically targeting coal for non-environmental reasons.
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We already have a lot of that stuff in Europe, but need more. Some of the things you list emit soot and other non-greenhouse but still damaging pollution. Wood burning is a good example, it degrades air quality in an entire village or neighbourhood.
We do regulate emissions from home appliances, like we regulate them from cars.
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And certain sides will just claim it as a great big new tax on everything.
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It obviously is targeting coal. A fair policy would simply tax carbon and let the various industries compete after accounting for their carbon imprint. But that wouldn't leave infinite opportunity for bureaucracy to pull the puppet strings for eternity, and might also prove them unnecessary.
All true. If you want less of something, tax it. If you want more, subsidize it. If we want less CO2 in the air, tax emissions and subsidize removal. The more directly you do this, the less room for shenanigans and the more transparent the policy. Naturally, politicians, cronies, lobbyists, and busybodies think those are bugs, not features.
Perfect Storm (Score:1)
It looks like the perfect storm. The government will do extreme things like shutting down existing power generation causing shortages, while the advent of EV's, AI, and bitcoin mining stress the grid beyond breaking and are then blamed, when the real culprit will be, as always, the government with too much power not well used. Just can't wait for July - Sept here with 105 degrees every day and no electricity for air conditioning. Certain folks in charge will be lucky not to swing from the light poles
good. (Score:2)
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Atlas shrugs is juvenile fantasy at BEST and the fountainhead is not far from a juvenile tantrum.
Far far from adult philosophy.