Emission Impossible?

Knee jerk repartee: Democrats propose environmental regulations and Republicans retort these are job killing policies, often accompanied by a statement that there is no clear evidence that these environmental problems even exist. Others note that until the mega-polluters like coal-plant-building China get in line, what’s the point? Whether it is health-driven desires to reduce direct toxicity in air and water supplies, chemicals that often leach into the soil, a desire to halt property-damaging acid rain or the need to stem climate change with its weather-changing propensity to decimate entire regions rather dramatically, to most in the United States, we know something has to be done, but we fear the impact on competition.

Since an isolated commercial power plant or factory deciding to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up its act can be the equivalent of competitive suicide, voluntary clean-ups are exceptionally difficult to justify to shareholders and board members. But if everyone had to embrace these new clean-up technologies, the competitive playing field remains level. And that fact is precisely why voluntary compliance with modern clean air, water and soil standards is generally a non-starter. If the goal is a better environment, absent a hard reduction in operating costs from the new technologies, the only solution is government regulation. But then, if industrial users are in actually inflicting hard damage costs to the society around them, exactly why do they get to do this without cost? Either way, somebody has to pay. Is it worth it?

Emitters with older plants face higher compliance costs than newer facilities. And King Coal is filled with older power plants. Coal currently is the fuel source for about 40% of this nation’s electrical power generation, and even if the new standards proposed by the Obama administration are implemented as drafted – which require an overall 30% reduction in power plant emissions by 2030 – coal will still pump out 30% of our power needs by that date. The rules don’t won’t go into effect until next year, and you can expect massive GOP push-back in the meantime. The new EPA rules apply a set of complex measurement standards that do afford coal power plants a bit more leeway than required of other plants that use other fuels, particularly in states that are particularly coal-dependent.

“If Kentucky, for example, meets the new limits that the Obama administration proposed [June 2^nd], it would be allowed to release more heat-trapping carbon dioxide per unit of power in 2030 than plants in 34 states do now… That’s because the Environmental Protection Agency would only require Kentucky, which relies on coal for about 90 percent of its electricity needs, to improve its carbon dioxide emissions rate by 18 percent over the next 15 years. By 2030, Kentucky would be second only to North Dakota for having the most carbon-intensive power plants in the country.” WGGB.com (Massachusetts), June 3^rd.

The administration made a conscious effort not to give other states, where plentiful natural gas is increasingly becoming the go-to fossil fuel that is significantly more environmentally friendly than coal, too much of a competitive advantage. “The defensive posture of coal states comes as the resource struggles to compete with plentiful natural gas, the primary driver for coal’s diminishing share of the U.S. electricity market, and environmental regulations are not helping. Besides the carbon rule proposed [June 2^nd], the EPA also proposed that new plants capture a portion of their carbon pollution. The Obama administration has also cracked down for the first time on mercury and other toxic pollutants from the nation’s coal-fired power plants. And more regulations are in the pipeline to control coal ash waste ponds and other releases from coal-fired power plants into the environment…Together, it’s hard to predict what all these rules and the natural gas boom will do to coal-fired power.” WGGB.com.

Europe’s goals are even more ambitious, targeting a 43% overall power plant emissions reduction by 2030. “Economic disaster” scream those elected officials whose campaigns have been particularly enhanced by big business and SuperPac support. Recent history does not agree with that claim. “At least 10 states cut their emissions by [30%] or more between 2005 and 2012, and several other states were well on their way, almost two decades before Mr. Obama’s clock for the nation runs out.

“That does not mean these states are off the hook under the Obama plan unveiled [in early June] — they will probably be expected to cut more to help achieve the overall national goal — but their strides so far have not brought economic ruin. In New England, a region that has made some of the biggest cuts in emissions, residential electricity bills fell 7 percent from 2005 to 2012, adjusted for inflation. And economic growth in the region ran slightly ahead of the national average.” New York Times, June 6^th. In the end, we breathe the air, drink the water, eat the crops and live within the weather patterns around us. Nothing impacts us more personally than our immediate environment.

I’m Peter Dekom, and we really do need to focus on what exactly maximizes our individual and national health; the quality of our environment has to be at the top of our priority list.