For years, fossil fuel companies and utilities have touted carbon capture and storage, or CCS, as a way to cut climate pollution from the power sector. Now, federal regulators are asking them to walk the walk.<\/p>\n
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, on Thursday proposed a new rule<\/a> to nearly eliminate climate pollution from the nation\u2019s coal- and natural gas-fired power plants by 2040. In contrast to previously proposed regulations that required \u201cgeneration-shifting\u201d \u2014 forcing utility companies to replace their fossil fuel-fired power generators with renewables, a strategy that the Supreme Court shot down<\/a> last summer \u2014 the new proposal focuses on what\u2019s achievable using technologies like carbon capture and storage, or CCS.<\/p>\n At least, they focus on what\u2019s theoretically<\/em> achievable based on optimistic projections from CCS\u2019s proponents. Although the EPA says CCS technology is \u201cadequately demonstrated<\/a>\u201d and \u201chighly cost-effective,\u201d experts are deeply skeptical that it can deliver on its promised emissions reductions. In the end, some told Grist that fossil fuel power plants could find it more economical to shut down and switch to renewable energy.<\/p>\n \u201cThe EPA is calling the bluff on the power industry,\u201d said Charles Harvey, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. \u201cThere have been so many arguments that they\u2019ve made in favor of CCS as a mature technology. \u2026 Now the EPA is saying \u2018OK, you have to do it,\u2019 and I don\u2019t think they really can.\u201d<\/p>\n To be clear, EPA\u2019s proposed standards don\u2019t mandate a specific emissions reduction strategy, since that was deemed beyond the EPA\u2019s authority by the Supreme Court. Instead, the agency put forward overall pollution caps, with different limits depending on the fuel facilities use (e.g., coal or natural gas), how frequently they run, and how long they plan to remain in operation. Starting in 2030, the rule would require almost all fossil fuel power plants to begin driving down their emissions, with the most stringent requirements for coal-fired power plants and the most frequently used natural gas plants.<\/p>\n According to the EPA, its proposed rules would cut 617 million metric tons<\/a> of CO2 emissions through 2042 \u2014 an amount equal to about 40 percent of the power sector\u2019s emissions in 2022<\/a>. The agency highlights two technology-based \u201cpathways\u201d that power plants could choose: one based on CCS, which uses chemical reactions to strip carbon out of the emissions that come out of a facility\u2019s smokestacks, and the other involving hydrogen, which can be blended with natural gas to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.<\/p>\n Industry groups have promised much from CCS, saying that it can \u2014 or will \u2014 be capable of capturing 90 percent<\/a> of a power plant\u2019s greenhouse gas emissions, and the EPA\u2019s 680-page proposed rulemaking seems to take those promises at face value. The document cites a long history of research into the technology, as well as declining costs for its deployment, thanks to unprecedented funding for CCS included in the Biden administration\u2019s 2022 climate spending law<\/a>.<\/p>\n Read more from Joseph Winters<\/a><\/span><\/span> of Grist<\/em>:\u00a0 https:\/\/grist.org\/energy\/is-carbon-capture-viable-in-a-new-rule-the-epa-is-asking-power-plants-to-prove-it\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For years, fossil fuel companies and utilities have touted carbon capture and storage, or CCS, as a way to cut climate pollution from the power sector. Now, federal regulators are asking them to walk the walk. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, on Thursday proposed a new rule to nearly eliminate climate pollution from…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1865,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1865"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1421"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1426,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1421\/revisions\/1426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}