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PACE Responds to State of the Union

In response to the president’s State of the Union address Tuesday evening, the Partnership for Affordable Clean Energy released an official statement detailing its concerns regarding energy affordability and reliability. An excerpt of that statement appears below.

“In his State of the Union preview, President Obama indicated his plans to lay out a ‘blueprint for an American economy that’s built to last.’ But unless that blueprint includes overturning recent regulations implemented by the Environmental Protection Agency, our economy will continue to suffer. While President Obama and the EPA continue to defend new rules – like Utility MACT – consumers can look forward to higher costs and less reliability.”

“Media reporting and commentary on environmental progress has overlooked glaring improvements in power sector emissions, leading the public to believe that American air is dirtier than ever when the exact opposite is true. If the president is truly serious about boosting the economy, his administration should reconsider implementing rules that will raise energy prices and cost millions of hard-working Americans their jobs.”

The president’s State of the Union address also included a number of soundbites on energy, including pledges to install renewable power on federal lands and to launch new initiatives to boost renewable power use in the military branch.

“Instead of focusing on common-sense initiatives that will lower the price of energy for Americans, the administration stubbornly continues to pursue renewable power experiments that make little sense in the current economic reality,” states PACE Executive Director Lance Brown. “If we’re going to move forward, we need energy policy based on reality rather than focus groups.”

Groups to Sue EPA Over Coal Ash

According to multiple sources, a number of environmental groups have announced plans to sue the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over standards for the treatment of coal ash. The lawsuit will be filed under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, or RCRA.

Coal ash, a natural byproduct of the combustion process for coal-fired power plants, today is typically stored onsite at power plants or sold on the open market for use in the production of concrete and other materials. In 2010, EPA proposed a pair of regulatory approaches for dealing with coal ash, one under RCRA Subtitle D that states could adopt at their discretion and another under the hazardous waste Subtitle C that would place coal ash under a federally enforceable permitting program.

“The type of lawsuit has become pattern in practice for environmental groups whose real goal is to shut down fossil power in the United States,” explains PACE Executive Director Lance Brown. “The most stringent coal ash proposals could endanger the very viability of half the nation’s power production capacity. The EPA, seemingly unconcerned with reliability or cost issues, welcomes such lawsuits.”

Groups reported to have announced their plans to file suit are Earthjustice, on behalf of Appalachian Voices; Chesapeake Climate Action Network; Environmental Integrity Project; French Broad Riverkeeper; Kentuckians For The Commonwealth; Moapa band of Paiutes; Montana Environmental Information Center; Physicians for Social Responsibility; Prairie Rivers Network; Sierra Club and Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

PACE has written extensively about coal ash regulation, citing a study published in June 2011 that found EPA’s regulatory proposals on coal ash could cause as many as 316,000 job losses and cost $110 billion over a 20-year period. A documentary released last year by PACE, entitled Unplugged, also deals with the coal ash issue, citing officials with TVA and elsewhere who fear that classification of coal ash as a hazardous waste would severely restrict options for coal ash storage, causing either the retirement of some coal-fired facilities altogether or a drastically higher cost for burning coal for electricity.

“The public needs to understand that half of the 130 million tons of coal ash being generated each year ends up in places like our roads and our carpet. The rest is being stored under close supervision,” says Brown. “There is a way to handle coal ash that protects the public while not taking half of America’s power generation off the grid. Let’s hope the courts and policymakers have the wisdom to acknowledge that fact.”

Tea Party Weighs in on EPA Greenhouse Gas Regs

In a letter sent last week to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, the Georgia Tea Party outlined its concerns over the agency’s move to regulate greenhouse gases. Specifically, the Tea Party argues that EPA proposals to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from utilities “exceed the authority of that agency and, in fact, are a misapplication of the Clean Air Act.” The letter was also sent to members of Georgia’s congressional delegation.

“If implemented, these regulations would impose compliance costs reaching hundreds of billions of dollars that utilities would have to pass on to the consumer,” explains Georgia Tea Party board member Patti Gettinger. “This would have a devastating affect on the economy and particularly on low income and fixed income families throughout the country.”
(Read the Georgia Tea Party’s full press release here.)

EPA’s move to regulate greenhouse gas emissions stems from a 2007 Supreme Court case in which twelve states, including California and New York, argued successfully that EPA should be forced to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as pollutants under the Clean Air Act. Having missed its original regulatory deadline of July 26, 2011, EPA is now aiming to implement such regulations by May 26, 2012.

“In combination with other EPA proposals such as Utility MACT, the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, and coal ash regulation,” the Tea Party’s letter explains, “the proposal to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from the utilities provides yet another piece of evidence that your agency has lost sight of environmental protection and is focused instead on eliminating coal from America’s energy mix.”

“The Georgia Tea Party has made a clear case that EPA’s action to regulate greenhouse gases will make energy in the U.S. less accessible and more expensive,” says PACE Executive Director Lance Brown. “We encourage others with similar concerns to make their voices heard while there is still time.”