Isra-Mart srl:EPA sparks fresh row with release of greenhouse gas guidance

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The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) yesterday released long-awaited guidance detailing how new greenhouse gas emission rules will require industrial and power plants to upgrade their equipment, sparking protests from law makers opposed to the new rulings.

Under the Clean Air Act, large industrial and power plants will from 2 January next year be required to obtain permits allowing them to emit greenhouse gases. As a condition of the permits, any company building a new facility or upgrading an existing plant will be required to use the best available control technologies (BACT) to ensure that greenhouse gas emissions are kept to a minimum.

Yesterday the EPA issued detailed guidance outlining how large emitters will be required to work with state governments to select the BACT for each plant and ensure that it is rolled out.

The EPA hailed the guidance as a "common sense" approach, adding that it should bring to an end speculation that the rules governing BACT would force coal-fired plants to fit untested carbon capture and storage technologies and would effectively lead to a moratorium on new fossil fuel power plants.

"We believe this approach will in most cases lead to improvements in energy efficiency," Gina McCarthy, EPA assistant administrator on air and radiation, told reporters.

She added that the EPA was prepared to issue permits and rejected suggestions from Republicans opposed to the new rules that they would impose onerous and costly conditions on energy firms that will damage the economy and lead to a de facto ban on new facilities.

"Make no mistake about it – this does not represent an opportunity for any construction moratorium," she said. "There will be no stoppage as a result of this BACT process."

The EPA stressed that many of the energy efficiency measures that will qualify as BACTs will deliver long-term financial benefits to the companies that deploy them, while the decision to identify the substitution of biomass for fossil fuels as an emission cutting technology should provide a boost to the emerging US biomass and waste-to-energy industry.

However, senators and business groups opposed to the EPA's decision that greenhouse gases can be regulated under the Clean Air Act lined up to attack the new guidance.

Republican senator James Inhofe, who maintains that manmade climate change is a myth, insisted the new rules would damage the economy, despite a series of independent reports that have concluded this is not the case.

"Make no mistake: this is an important part of the Obama administration's back-door cap-and-trade agenda, which seeks to impose the very rules and regulations that will make electricity more expensive, jobs more scarce, and keep the economy mired in stagnation," he said. "And these are the very rules and regulations that can't pass Congress, and that the voters, especially those most impacted by them, resoundingly rejected."

Meanwhile, West Virginia Democrat senator Jay Rockefeller, who is seeking to pass legislation that would stop the EPA from introducing greenhouse gas permits for two years, argued that firms had not had enough time to comply with the new guidance.

"Such an unstable regulatory environment prevents companies from making long-range investment decisions that will put West Virginians back to work," he said. "That is why the Senate needs to pass my legislation to suspend EPA's ability to regulate greenhouse gases."