Coal Wars Heat Up: Kansas, Utah Become Battlegrounds
The coal war, it seems, is heating up by the day. And the battlegrounds are not always in places commonly associated with aggressive environmentalism
Take Kansas and Utah, for instance.
The Kansas City star reports that lawmakers are trying to revive a modified version of a bill vetoed last week by Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius that would have allowed construction of two new coal-fired plants over the greenhouse gas-related opposition of a state regulator. Among her objections was the lack of support for wind power in the legislation (see text of vetoed bill and Sebelius press release with attached veto message).
Farther west, a dispute over a proposed new coal plant in Utah is creating a legal vortex drawing industry, environmentalists and other states, including California, into a debate over the extent of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate emissions blamed for climate change.
All of this comes against a background of work in Congress on greenhouse legislation that would establish a market system for reducing emissions (cited by Sebelius), and more coal-specific developments, including a recent decision by a federal agency to back away from funding such projects (see recent Climate Law Update story). Lawmakers are also working on other federal legislation that would allow new coal plants to move forward only if they can capture and store the vast majority of their carbon emissions (see press release and text of bill).
Backers of the Kansas bill had noted that it included other provisions that could have boosted other elements of the state’s renewable industry. Builders of the project also included plans for a bioenergy center that would capture some of the carbon dioxide and used it to grow algae for fuel.
But in her public statement and veto message, Sebelius cited not only the threat of climate change to her agricultural state but also the potential for federal legislation, which she did not specifically name, that would “have the net impact of taxing carbon.” That description could apply to proposals such as the Lieberman-Warner bill that would establish a cap-and-trade program for greenhouse emissions. Sebelius said the new plants permitted under the Kansas bill would have produced 11 million new tons of carbon every year. Building new coal plants “is likely to create a significant economic liability for Kansas in the future.”
She also had this to say about wind generation:
“I am encouraged that the Legislature made a modest attempt to address some of our alternative energy assets, but this bill fails to promote our wind assets and sends the wrong signal to potential investors for transmission lines and additional wind power.
“The new feature of net-metering does not include wind power which could have served as a powerful incentive to individuals and communities to embrace our most abundant natural resource.”
Sebelius also signed an executive order (see text) creating a new advisory group to explore strategies for reducing greenhouse emissions and protecting the economy. She named Jack Pelton, president of Cessna Aircraft Company, to head the group.
In a statement, Earl Watkins, president of Sunflower Electric Power Corporation, one of the companies that had hoped to build the 1,400-megawatt project, said the veto would “unnecessarily raise electric rates” for the state’s residents (see project description).
“We are experiencing significant growth on the Sunflower system, and we must add new coal generation to support our existing natural gas and wind generation assets,” Watkins said.
The Utah conflagration brewed up over the EPA's issuance last August of a permit allowing Deseret Power Electric Cooperative to add a 110-megawatt unit to its existing Bonanza power plant. Such "prevention of significant deterioration" permits are issued for larged stationary facilities. The decision came just months after the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on the issue of the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse emissions in its Massachusetts v. EPA decision. Although the court held that greenhouse gases could be regulated as air pollutants, the EPA has yet to decide what to do.
Citing that ruling, which came in the context of a dispute over automobile emissions, the environmentalists including the Sierra Club appealed the decision through the agency’s internal processes. Those groups claim the EPA must establish new controls on carbon dioxide emissions for the project. From the Sierra Club brief (see text here):
“On April 2, 2007, the Supreme Court held that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are ‘pollutants’ under the Clean Air Act. Massachusetts v. EPA, 127 S.Ct. at 1460. Now having been definitively ruled a pollutant, [carbon dioxide] is accordingly a regulated pollutant under the act and EPA is required to impose [carbon dioxide best available control technology] emission limits in the Bonanza [prevention of significant deterioration] permit.”
The EPA, however, has maintained that carbon dioxide “is not currently a pollutant regulated" under the federal Clean Air Act. In its response to the appeal, the agency cited a 1993 memorandum in which its attorneys concluded carbon dioxide was not subject to the EPA’s regulatory authority.
Last week, a coalition of trade groups representing a cross-section of energy and manufacturing, weighed in against the environmentalists’ position. In a brief (see text here) to the EPA the groups argued that the Supreme Court decision addressed only the government’s authority to regulate emissions from new motor vehicles. A finding requiring them to be covered for facilities such as Utah’s, they argued, would cause “a huge expansion of the number of sources and activities” that would require permits, which officials would not have the resources to process.
Quentin Riegel, deputy general counsel for the National Association of Manufacturers, one of the groups filing the brief, in a statement predicted “an impassable regulatory gridlock” would develop if the Sierra Club won.
But the environmental groups also had powerful allies. In another brief, eight states, including California, New York and Massachusetts, backed the environmental groups. They argued that the Supreme Court ruling “conclusively” established the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse emissions for the project and that the 1993 interpretation “did not survive” the court ruling.
See the EPA’s docket, with links to all the filings in the matter, here.
(Official press photo: Gov. Kathleen Sebelius)
Even during a period of scary economic headlines, some experts see efforts to control climate change through market mechanisms as a green light at the end of a dark tunnel.