Legal Battles Expected Over Proposed EPA Emissions Rule

摘要

Environmentalists and public-health advocates are lauding a plan to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from new electric powerplants, but electric utilities and other industry groups say the proposal would effectively kill new coal-fired generation plants in the U.S. "We do not expect to see a whole lot of new coal being proposed, and once this rule goes into effect, it's probably going to be even less, at least in the United States," says Andy Byers, associate vice president of energy business and director of environmental services for Black & Veatch. Because the new rule would require partial carbon capture and sequestration, "the economics of that, in addition to the auxiliary power requirements to run carbon-capture systems, [will] make it more difficult [for coal] to be competitive in the marketplace, assuming that we have continued low or competitive natural-gas prices," he adds.