Architects of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal to cut carbon-dioxide emissions from power plants have no intention of stopping with coal.
A June 6 blog post by Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, takes explicit aim at the light hydrocarbon once valued politically for its ability to ease the transition to carbon-free energy. And it takes general aim at oil.
Concerning EPA’s June 2 proposal, Beinecke wrote: “These standards are not a green light for increasing gas use in the power sector….These standards can and should help reduce our country’s dependence on all fossil fuels.”
Her comments must not be dismissed as emanations from the political fringe. NRDC designed EPA’s proposal.
The agency calls for a 30% nationwide reduction in power-plant emissions of carbon dioxide by 2030 from 2005 levels. It sets state targets on the basis of formulas relating generation-fuel mixes to emission rates. And it leaves compliance strategies to state governments.
The NRDC recommended this approach in a March 2013 report that also suggested the legal rationale EPA adopted.
In her blog, the NRDC president rejected assumptions about gas benefiting from diminished coal use, pointing out, “According to EPA’s own initial proposal—which uses conservative assumptions about what efficiency and renewables can do—gas use in the power sector would be 5% less in 2030 with the standards than without them.”
Given the needs of wind and solar for back-up generation, that assertion is questionable. But most important now for the gas industry are next moves.
Beinecke said NRDC wants EPA to “strengthen” its assumptions about emission improvements from renewable energy and consumption efficiency. The group also will press utilities and states to “ensure their implementation plans to meet the carbon pollution standards maximize investment in efficiency and renewables and do not increase reliance on natural gas.”
In further emphasis of motive, Beinecke declared, “It’s time to end our nation’s untenable dependence on fossil fuels.”
From this extreme agenda emerge EPA’s regulatory blueprints.
(From the subscription area of www.ogj.com, posted June 6, 2014; author’s e-mail: [email protected])