Utah may join lawsuit against EPA coal plant rules with the help of new legislation

The Lake Side natural gas power plant in Vineyard is pictured on Sunday, Feb. 4, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)

After the Environmental Protection Agency released stricter standards for existing coal power plants and new gas facilities’ carbon pollution, their wastewater, coal ash residuals, and mercury and air toxics on Thursday, a lawsuit may be on the horizon to keep Utah’s four coal plants running past the 2032 deadline.

Under the EPA’s changes, power plants that are planning on operating in the long-term are required to control 90% of their carbon pollution by 2032, or close down. The federal agency also tightened emissions standards for toxic metals by 67% and approved a 70% reduction in the emissions parameters for mercury from existing lignite-fired sources, according to the EPA. 

The package also includes a policy to “reduce pollutants discharged through wastewater from coal-fired power plants by more than 660 million pounds per year,” and federal regulations for the safe management of coal ash disposal. Overall, an EPA regulatory impact analysis estimates the regulations would reduce 1.38 billion metric tons of carbon pollution through 2047, equivalent to the annual emissions of 328 million gasoline cars.

Though Utah environmental advocates celebrated the approval of the rules, anticipating substantial improvements in their communities’ health conditions, some believe their implementation won’t be possible.

“The power companies will certainly sue and the state will join in that,” said Rep. Colin Jack, R-St. George, who sponsored three of the most prominent energy bills last legislative session. “We passed a law this last year that said that the Attorney General was to monitor upcoming actions, including those by the EPA. If they infringed on the state of Utah, they were to sue.”

Utah has approved and signed the tools it needs to legally challenge the federal government on the rulings, Jack said, as they could represent a death sentence for coal plants and compromise Utah’s energy security. 

These EPA rules, which were drafts when the Utah Legislature passed its latest energy bills, were in Jack’s mind when shaping HB48, Utah Energy Act Amendments, which draws a path to fund “legal effort to combat federal overreach and unreasonable delays regarding energy and environmental permitting.” 

Especially, he said, because the proposed technology to mitigate the pollution is not quite ready at a utility scale.

Power transmission lines in Vineyard are pictured on Sunday, Feb. 4, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)

Carbon capture and sequestration worries

Under the ruling, the state should develop a plan for its coal-fired power plants. Based on their anticipated closure date, the facilities should install measures to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in phases. Those planning to operate past 2039 should have carbon capture and sequestration systems — a process that captures and stores carbon dioxide in underground geologic formations — to control their carbon dioxide emissions by at least 90% by 2032. 

“Their alternative doesn’t exist,” Jack said. “They’re saying you either have to retire or install this carbon capture and sequestration, which has not yet been invented. It only exists on paper.” 

The use of carbon capture and storage is still rare in the country, according to a 2023 report from the Congressional Budget Office. “Only 15 facilities are currently capturing and transporting CO2 for permanent storage as part of an ongoing commercial operation,” the document reads. Those facilities mostly process natural gas, ammonia for fertilizer, and ethanol for vehicle fuel and other uses. None of them are coal plants. 

Closing the plants isn’t an option either, Jack said, as without electricity, there’s “nothing in modern life.”

Nationwide, 60% of utility-scale electricity is generated by fossil fuels, according to 2023 figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. About 16% of that is from coal and 43% from natural gas. 

“Whether it’s the CO2 (rule), or the ash, or the mercury, if you put a rule that can’t be met, then the goal of that rule must be to just kill the technology (coal) but without providing any replacement,” Jack said.

Let us know what you think...

Jack lobbied against the rule in Washington, D.C., earlier this week representing Dixie Power, an electric cooperative that serves southern Utah and northern Arizona where he’s chief operating officer. He also warned federal officials about potential future actions.

“(I let) them know that as a state legislator, the state of Utah is planning to file a lawsuit if they issued that rule,” he said. “Well, and now they have.”

The Utah Department of Environmental Quality is still reviewing the final rule, but the office issued comments with the same concerns as Jack’s as it followed the drafting process of the standards, said Bryce Bird, director of the Division of Air Quality. 

“We don’t have the permitting, the geology work, to understand how to store the carbon underground,” Bird said. 

The technology isn’t commercially available either, Bird added. “And the cost information is probably a little bit suspect because it hasn’t been done in a particular area where a power plant is located, especially in the state of Utah.” 

The EPA, however, said in a news release that carbon capture and sequestration technology may be advanced with billions in funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

The department is still uncertain on whether the plants would be forced to retire because of the new policies, Bird said. Those who want to continue operating from 2032 to 2039 could also modify its units to add natural gas to its coal generators. The state has two years to analyze and develop those plans with the power companies. 

Though the new standards are expected to have major impacts on greenhouse gas emissions nationwide, the impact in Utah would be very small on the environmental side, Bird said.

Rep. John Curtis, R-Utah, also warned about “demonizing” fossil fuels in favor of clean sources. Other countries have seen an increase in energy prices and left them vulnerable to foreign adversaries, he said in a statement on Friday. In his view, the rules would lead the country to those consequences.

“Coal and natural gas plants provide the baseload power for the majority of Americans, including many in Utah. Shutting these plants down early will have drastic effects on Americans’ energy costs,” Curtis said. “The United States has reduced more emissions than the next twelve countries combined while becoming the largest energy producer. This rule is nothing but virtue signaling from the Biden Administration.”

Substantial health impacts

According to the EPA, “the climate and health benefits of this rule substantially outweigh the compliance costs,” the agency wrote in a news release. A regulatory impact analysis estimates that in 2035 alone, the rule may avoid up to 1,200 premature deaths, 870 hospital and emergency room visits, 1,900 cases of asthma onset, 360,000 cases of asthma symptoms, 48,000 school absence days and 57,000 lost workdays.

For communities that have asked for tighter pollution controls to improve their quality of life, the changes represent an “existential meaning.” That’s how Stan Holmes, a Salt Lake City retired educator, described the potential impact on Utah’s hazy air quality at a Sierra Club news conference on Tuesday.

“Thank goodness we still have the United States Environmental Protection Agency and America’s Clean Air Act as defense against retrograde state governments,” Holmes, also a volunteer with the Sierra Club, said, “our defense against monopoly utilities aligned with the fossil fuel industry, rather than with public interest.”

He referred to the package of bills the Utah Legislature approved during this year’s general session that protect coal-fueled energy generators. 

Holmes said that while lawmakers may argue that the energy will remain cheap under the bills, they should consider the cost of extended wildfire seasons and rising health care costs.

“Utilities’ greenhouse gas emissions intensify impacts of climate change that make our weather hotter and drier. Wildfire smoke increasingly fills our valleys, our lungs, our hospitals. A 20-year drought has diminished the Great Salt Lake to crisis stage,” Holmes said. “But Utah policymakers continue to ignore what coal is doing to people in Utah and beyond.” 

Nationwide, there are 148 coal power plants without plans to retire before 2030, Holly Bender, chief energy officer at the Sierra Club, said on Tuesday. Most of them lack modern pollution controls, she said, and use loopholes to avoid installing those pollution mitigation systems. 

The new EPA rules would help close those loopholes and advance cost-effective clean energy technologies that would diminish pollution around the energy plants. 

Bender highlighted that one of the rules would tackle coal ash waste ponds, a major achievement for neighboring communities that are affected by the pollution.

“Ninety percent of rural Americans get their drinking water from wells that can be impacted by this pollution, and 90% of the existing ash ponds out there have been shown to be leaking and creating significant risk to communities across the country,” Bender said.

The change of rules together represent “a monumental achievement,” she said, and send a strong message to the U.S. electric power industry that contributing substantially to public health harms is no longer acceptable.

“There is now a clear imperative to consider cleaner options to coal and gas for making electricity including, of course, clean energy and energy efficiency as we think about how to provide low cost reliable power to our communities across the country in a way that also addresses the public health harms of our past practices,” Bender said.

Coal ash ponds at Dominion Energy’s Chesterfield power station in Chesterfield, Virginia. (Ryan Kelly/ For the Virginia Mercury)

The post Utah may join lawsuit against EPA coal plant rules with the help of new legislation appeared first on Utah News Dispatch.