| Efforts to slash greenhouse gas emissions from power plants used to be overwhelmingly about coal. Now, regulators are turning a lot more attention to natural gas. Yet a last-minute White House effort to include existing gas-burning power plants in a draft carbon regulation released this month forced the Environmental Protection Agency to scramble to broaden the proposal, writes Jean Chemnick. The lack of a detailed analysis of existing gas plants in EPA’s proposal exposes the eleventh-hour push to shoehorn gas into the plan for cutting power-sector emissions. Over the past decade, electricity generated from natural gas has replaced a lot of coal, and that’s increased the emphasis among environmental advocates on the role gas plays as a contributor to climate change. Adding existing gas-fired power to EPA’s proposal is a key component to helping meet the Biden administration’s target of cutting power plant pollution 80 percent by 2030. Natural gas accounts for 43 percent of the heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions tied to electricity generation. Last-minute scramble: EPA’s rushed decision to include existing gas plants can be seen through the agency’s 182-page examination of compliance costs, pollution outcomes and other variables. It employed a peer-reviewed energy economy model to see how the rule could interact with the electric grid, energy markets and recent laws. Ultimately, EPA’s language on gas will change again as it winds its way toward a final regulation — and then on to court. Republicans have already pledged to challenge the EPA rule. “I don’t think that’s their biggest legal problem,” said Jeff Holmstead, a former EPA air chief and a partner at Bracewell LLP, referring to the modeling part. If this looks anything like EPA’s previous efforts to regulate carbon, then attorneys general from red states like West Virginia will carry the torch for killing the regulation. And if the rule survives, it would be the country’s first federal standard for curbing greenhouse gas emissions from electricity producers.
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