Natural Gas

EPA is facing starkly different interpretations of the legality of its plan to ease the threshold for triggering strict new source review (NSR) air permits for coal plants complying with its proposed utility climate rule, reviving a decades-old debate with pro-coal industry groups backing the changes and environmentalists strongly opposed.

Environmentalists are seeking to use the Trump EPA's restrictive interpretation of its Clean Air Act authority against it in comments on the proposed Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) greenhouse gas rule for coal-fired power plants, arguing that the narrow legal interpretation -- which EPA says is limited to what can be done to boost efficiency within a facility's fenceline -- means that carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) must be included when setting GHG limits and that co-firing coal with biomass must be barred.

A sharp and mostly partisan divide is emerging between states over the legality of EPA's proposal to replace the Obama-era Clean Power Plan (CPP) utility greenhouse gas rule, with Democratic-led states urging the agency to drop its “unlawful” plan, while Republican state officials are broadly supporting it.

EPA's Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) is rejecting conservation groups' novel challenge that aimed to establish battery power storage as the Clean Air Act-mandated best available control technology (BACT) for a gas-fired power plant, saying the groups failed to show that any other similar facility used the storage technology.