Archive for the 'coal' Category
Late yesterday, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson issued a memo declaring that “[o]fficials weighing federal applications by utilities to build new coal-fired power plants cannot consider their greenhouse gas output.” “The current concerns over global climate change should not drive E.P.A. into adopting an unworkable policy of requiring emission controls” in these cases, Johnson said.
As you may know, last year The Supreme Court ruled that the EPA could regulate carbon dioxide, the most prevalent greenhouse gas, under existing law. Then last month, EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board, ruled that the EPA should consider CO2 in limiting permits for new coal-fired power plants, forcing new and proposed plants to address their carbon dioxide emissions. Well, that ruling has now been overruled. John Walke, lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council said, “It’s a marvel to behold an E.P.A. action that so utterly disdains global warming responsibility and disdains the law at the same time.”
Coal plant opponents list several in late stages of the approval process that could be affected by the decision. Vickie Patton, deputy general counsel of the Environmental Defense Fund, estimated that as much as 8,000 megawatts of new coal-fired power plants that could win swifter approval as a result of the ruling.
Lisa Jackson, whom Obama has nominated as Mr. Johnson’s successor, has the opportunity to go through a rule-making and see how to deal with the issue, but the ruling could also tie the hands of President-elect Barack Obama, who has indicated that he wants heat-trapping gases to be regulated.
This Is Reality
the This Is Reality – Come Clean on Clean Coal Campaign: There is no such thing as “clean”coal
This Is Reality|these are The Facts
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EPA approves mountaintop removal rule changes
By Noelle Straub via earthportal.org
Greenwire: U.S. EPA yesterday (12/2) approved changes to the rule governing mountaintop mining activity near bodies of water, the last step needed to finalize a measure that critics say will lead to irreparable harm to mountain waterways.
The Bush administration needed EPA’s approval to alter the 25-year-old rule because the agency must agree to any mining regulations that could affect air and water quality. The Office of Management and Budget also signed off on the changes earlier this week, and they are expected to take effect before President George W. Bush leaves office next month.
The administration and the mining industry say the rule change is necessary to end litigation over whether Congress intended to allow dumping of huge piles of debris, called “valley fills,” when it passed the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977, but critics say the move is a last-minute power grab for the coal industry.
Environmentalists and politicians who opposed the change — including the governors of Kentucky and Tennessee — had lobbied EPA in recent weeks, hoping it would refuse to agree to the changes. They now hope that the incoming Obama administration will decide to reconsider the rule.
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Amidst last Thursday’s EPA announcement, that it would not grant any new construction permits for coal-fired power plants until it could make sense of what is necessary to limit CO2 emissions, what does this mean for the future of coal?
In 2007, fossil sources accounted for 80% of US energy demand: Coal (25%), natural gas (21%), petroleum (34%), nuclear (6.5%), hydro (2.2%), and biomass and waste (11%). Only 0.4% of global energy demand is met by geothermal, solar and wind.
