Columnists Examine Possible Impact of EPA Ruling on GHGs

In a Dow Jones Newswires "Emission Critical" column, Siobhan Hughes and Cassandra Sweet said that if EPA decides to regulate GHGs, companies that use natural gas to fuel their power plants and firms that operate natural gas wells could do well financially, while generators and utilities planning plants that rely on coal "might have to go back to the drawing board." They explained that the primary "issue is what counts as 'best available control technology' to reduce emissions from power generation.



Other methods under consideration are carbon capture and sequestration and energy efficiency measures. The EPA is working on that guidance as it finalizes rules requiring power plants and other stationary emissions sources to hold permits to emit greenhouse gases. States would implement the rules and approve permits that have the best available technology to control greenhouse-gas emissions."


Although EPA has yet to rule, the agency said it would supply state regulators with control-technology guidance "in a timely way," according to Janet McCabe, principal deputy assistant administrator in the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation. The column noted that EPA in December had impeded development of a power plant in Kentucky that wanted to convert coal into gas for fuel. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said Kentucky regulators had not "provided a reasoned explanation that demonstrates why the option of using exclusively natural gas is 'not available' for this facility."



McCabe said, however, that EPA "would not anticipate that states would require an existing coal-fired plant that is seeking a permit for a major modification to switch to natural gas" because analysis about what counts as best available control technology "requires that costs be taken into consideration as part of the decision-making process."


Jeff Holmstead, a former assistant EPA administrator who now works for the law firm Bracewell & Giuliani but is also a member of the EPA advisory committee, was quoted as saying: "In the past, the EPA and the courts have always taken the position that the Clean Air Act cannot be used to force someone to switch from a coal plant to a natural-gas plant, but Administrator Jackson seems to want to change that rule."