Manchin, Capito, Miller push back against EPA power plant emissions rules

CHARLESTON — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is considering new performance standards regulating the emissions at electric power plants fueled by natural gas, coal and other fossil fuels.

Some members of West Virginia’s congressional delegation are raising red flags.

The EPA issued a proposed rule on May 11 that would set new source performance standards for greenhouse gas emissions from new and existing power plants that use fossil fuels to generate electricity.

Section 111 of the Clean Air Act empowers the EPA to set federal standards for new and modified power plants, while states submit plans to the EPA for existing power plants based on federal guidelines. The new performance standards would be set based on the achievability of using new technologies to control emissions, such as carbon capture and sequestration, or using hydrogen to co-fire, with goals set for 2035 and 2038.

According to the EPA, the proposed rule would avoid up to 617 million metric tons of carbon dioxide through 2042 for new coal and natural gas plants, while the standard would avoid up to 407 million metric tons for existing natural gas plants. The plan’s climate and health benefits could be as much as $85 billion by 2042, with nearly $6 billion in annual financial benefits.

“By proposing new standards for fossil fuel-fired power plants, EPA is delivering on its mission to reduce harmful pollution that threatens people’s health and wellbeing,” said EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan in a statement in May.

“Alongside historic investment taking place across America in clean energy manufacturing and deployment, these proposals will help deliver tremendous benefits to the American people, cutting climate pollution and other harmful pollutants, protecting people’s health, and driving American innovation,” Regan said.

According to the EPA, electric power generation accounted for the second largest among greenhouse gas emissions in 2021. Electric power contributes 25% of the nation’s greenhouse gasses, second only to transportation (28%). Driving those emissions are the nation’s coal and natural gas-fired power plants.

Natural gas-fired power has increased from 10.7% in 1990 to 39.5% by 2020, while coal has decreased from 54.1% in 1990 to 19.9% in 2020. But combined, coal and natural gas produced nearly 60% of the nation’s electricity in 2020.

West Virginia has nine coal-fired power plants, four natural gas-fired plants, and one petroleum plant. Longview Power Plant is the youngest coal-fired plant, going online in 2011, while the oldest is the Fort Martin Power Plant with both of its units online by 1968, both located in Monongalia County. But there are no new coal-fired plants on the horizon with one plant, Pleasants Power near St. Marys, that is in mothballed status and not producing electricity.

Opponents believe that the proposed EPA rule could force the closure of other plants in the state because they will be unable to afford to make the technological changes necessary to comply. U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., and U.S. Rep. Carol Miller, R-W.Va., announced Monday they would introduce legislation, the Protect Our Power Plants Act, to block the EPA proposed rule.

The POPP Act would prohibit the EPA from finalizing its performance standard rule for fossil fuel power plants, citing the recent victory in the U.S. Supreme Court in West Virginia v. EPA where a majority of the justices determined last summer that Congress did not grant the EPA the authority in the Clean Air Act to come up with arbitrary emissions caps.

Both Capito and Miller criticized President Joe Biden, who set a goal during the first year of his presidency in 2021 of cutting greenhouse emissions in the U.S. by between 50% and 52% of 2005 levels by 2030.

“With its Clean Power Plan 2.0, the Biden administration has made it quite clear they intend to ignore the Supreme Court’s ruling in West Virginia v. EPA, put the people who help power our nation out of work, and increase energy costs for millions of Americans,” said Capito, the ranking Republican member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “In the face of this illegal overreach, Congresswoman Miller and I are standing up for workers and families in energy-producing communities across the country, including those in West Virginia.”

“The Environment Protection Agency has overstepped their role and is waging war on power plants across the United States,” Miller said. “The Biden administration and Washington Democrats continue to shut down domestic energy production in the name of their Green New Deal agenda while the United States should be focused on maintaining its energy dominance. West Virginia will not stand for this spineless, and frankly, ridiculous rule.”

Both Capito and U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., have both called for the EPA to extend the public comment period for the rule by 60-days. The proposed rule only has a 60-day public comment period, ending July 22. Manchin, the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, wrote a letter to the EPA Friday seeking an extension of the public comment period to Sept. 20 and asked for at least one public hearing in West Virginia.

“Despite neither the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law nor the Inflation Reduction Act providing the Environmental Protection Agency with any new rulemaking authority, the EPA continues to advance a radical climate agenda, much of it with insufficient opportunities for public comment and review,” Manchin wrote. “Government should work for the people, not the other way around. At the very least, the EPA owes the American people a fair and transparent process to ensure they understand the scope and scale of a new major federal regulation before it is thrust upon them.”