Activist Suit Challenges Virginia Psd Permit Over Carbon Concerns

摘要

A coalition of environmental groups on July 25 appealed a Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) permit for a proposed coal-fired power plant on the basis that the facility will have no means to capture carbon emissions. An environmental attorney involved in the case, which includes the Sierra Club and is represented by the Southern Environmental Law Center, says that following the Supreme Court holding in Massachusetts v. EPA, carbon dioxide is a Clean Air Act pollutant and the project developers should never have been issued a permit without conducting a best available control technology analysis for carbon dioxide emissions. The argument reflects those environmentalists are making in a host of permit challenges across the country on new and modified industrial facilities. The Dominion-led consortium of companies proposing the development says in a May 11 statement that the facility's advanced circulating fluidized bed technology, combined with "modern post-combustion controls," emits only low levels of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, particulate matter and mercury.