EPA Accused of Underestimating Impact of Power Plant Regulations, Says Global Energy Institute
The Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is accused of using overly optimistic assumptions in its internal analysis for its proposed power plant enforcement.
The EPA published a significant new regulation (pdf) last month with the goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.
According to a June 27 report (pdf) released this week by the Chamber of Commerce Global Energy Institute, the administration grossly understated how the regulations are projected to impact power grid reliability and costs.
As part of the administration’s broader climate agenda, the EPA unveiled in May regulations for fossil fuel-fired power plant emissions.
In its announcement, the agency stated that the plan would “avoid” 617 million metric tons of carbon pollution by 2042 by mandating carbon capture technology or the closure of power facilities.
It added, however, that the regulations would have “negligible cost.”
The Global Energy Institute report on the EPA guidelines asserts that the agency’s regulatory impact analysis (RIA) of its power plant plan results in a “remarkable underestimation” of actual impacts.
The group’s response also says the EPA created a questionable baseline scenario, failed to account for the projected growth of electric vehicles, and exaggerated the development of carbon capture technology.
The EPA packed the overwhelming majority of the plan’s projected emission reductions into a “baseline scenario” in the RIA released alongside the regulations.
According to the analysis, this means that the agency’s emissions reductions and the associated costs would occur even without the EPA’s plan.
Energy Prices For Consumers
The new EPA proposed law primarily targets power produced in America using coal and natural gas, which now accounts for 60 percent of the nation’s electrical output.
The analysis focused on the agency’s assertions that the proposal will have minimal effect on the energy market or emissions since, in its view, the majority of reductions will take place even in the absence of the powerplant regulation.
It also attempts to prove how the EPA has chosen to ignore the effects of other major rulings that are currently in the works.
According to the RIA, without the EPA’s proposed regulations power sector emissions are projected to fall by 80 percent below 2005 levels by 2040. However, the EPA assumes that emissions will decline by 81 percent as a result of the regulations, a difference of only 1 percent compared to the baseline scenario.
Global Energy Institute’s report also takes on how the RIA claims the EPA’s plan would affect energy prices for consumers. The analysis says the rules wouldn’t cause prices to go up.
But industry groups and experts cited in the Global Energy Institute report have strongly disagreed with the idea that these kinds of pollution cuts could be made without causing big costs.
Also, the baseline situation claimed by the RIA is very different from what the neutral Energy Information Administration, which is part of the Department of Energy, predicted.
The Inflation Reduction Act is taken into account in the EIA’s 2023 estimate, which says that the price of natural gas will rise to $3.94 per million Btu in 2040. This is 97 percent more than what the EPA says the price will be in its baseline.
Reducing Pollution From Fossil Fuels
The EPA said in its overview of the new rule that it hopes to use the regulation to help reduce pollution from power plants that burn fossil fuels like coal and natural gas.
These rules are aimed at cutting emissions of greenhouse gases, which the agency asserted are a contributing factor in climate change.
The proposed regulations would require both new and existing power plants to use technologies that can lower their greenhouse gas emissions. This includes using more efficient methods of generating electricity and finding ways to capture and store carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas.
The EPA also wants to update the guidelines for existing power plants to encourage the use of cleaner fuels like natural gas and to make it easier for them to adopt carbon capture and storage technologies.
If these new rules are implemented, power plants will have to find cost-effective ways to reduce their emissions, in an effort to adhere to EPA standards of human health and environmental protection.
The EPA says it wants to make sure that these rules don’t interfere with the reliable supply of affordable electricity that the country needs.
The agency is currently seeking feedback and comments from the public on these proposed rules.
The EPA did not immediately respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.
