Corn Ethanol: The Next New Coke?
May 7th, 2012 by Jonathan Lewis, Senior Counsel - Climate Policy, and Conrad Schneider, Advocacy DirectorThis posting originally appeared in the National Journal’s Energy and Environment Experts blog.
How do you get Americans to pay for something they don’t really want in the first place? Most of the time – as in the case of New Coke, Harley Davidson Perfume, and the U.S. Football League – the answer is simple: you can’t.
But where the Edsel failed, corn ethanol has somehow succeeded. Despite its drawbacks (which are legion – a point we’ll get to later), more than 13 billion gallons of corn ethanol were sold in the United States last year.
How did it happen? Corn ethanol has outlived Pepsi AM and the Betamax because its backers hit upon a three-part recipe for success: a huge dose of federal subsidies mixed with high gas prices and untethered rhetoric.
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New Rules for Gas: Good Policy, Delayed
April 24th, 2012 by Darin Schroeder, Legal Fellow, Ann Weeks, Senior Counsel and Legal Director, and David McCabe, Atmospheric ScientistThis posting originally appeared in the National Journal’s Energy and Environment Expert Blog.
Last week, EPA announced New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) for the oil and natural gas industry. These new rules are an important and long-awaited step towards better control of the air pollution emitted by this rapidly expanding sector.
Notably, the standards include the first federal air pollution regulations for hydraulically fractured (fracked) natural gas wells. That, plus new regulation of other equipment in this industry, represents significant progress in combating air pollution, especially as forecasts project increasing reliance on natural gas for generating electricity. Without these rules, air pollution from new gas wells and equipment would continue to increase; now the industry must begin to clean up nationwide. Once the rule finally goes into full effect, VOC emissions, a precursor of ground-level smog, will be reduced by hundreds of thousands of tons per year; toxic chemicals like benzene will be reduced by 12,000 – 20,000 tons per year. And, as a co-benefit of the pollution control measures needed to achieve the new standards, emissions of methane will be reduced by 1.0 – 1.7 million tons a year. This rule therefore eventually will provide significant air quality and climate benefits.
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Memo To EPA: Stay Strong On Oil and Gas Standards
April 11th, 2012 by David McCabe, Atmospheric Scientist, and Ann Weeks, Senior Counsel and Legal DirectorNext week, EPA will issue final New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) for conventional air emissions from the oil and natural gas industry. The standards must require the capture of hundreds of thousands of tons of smog-forming emissions emitted annually by this industry, along with millions of tons of methane.
Methane – the primary component of natural gas – is both a valuable fuel and a potent pollutant, 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a driver of climate change over a 100-year period. The methane emissions from U.S. oil and gas operations warm global climate as much as 16% of all the CO2 from U.S. coal-fired power plants. With a strong rule, those emissions will be cut by a quarter, so EPA clearly has an excellent opportunity to begin to address this dangerous climate pollutant.
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At Last: A First Step on GHGs
April 5th, 2012 by Ann Weeks, Senior Counsel and Legal DirectorThis posting originally appeared in the National Journal’s Energy and Environment Expert Blog.
Last week, the Administration took a bold step forward to curb greenhouse gas emissions. In a long-anticipated action, EPA proposed new source performance standards (NSPS) for fossil-fueled power plants that would limit emissions from new plants to a rate of 1,000 lbs. of CO2 per megawatt-hour, averaged annually. This level is comparable to the annual average emissions rate of the existing fleet of U.S. natural gas power plants. The rule levels the playing field between coal and gas on greenhouse gas emissions, so new coal and gas plants will compete on price. When finalized, the rule will provide a much-needed and long-overdue step on the path towards full decarbonization of all domestic coal and gas power plants.
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GHG Regs Must Be Top Priority
January 9th, 2012 by Ann Weeks, Senior Counsel and Legal DirectorThis posting originally appeared in the National Journal’s Energy and Environment Expert Blog.
Setting greenhouse gas performance standards for new and existing coal-fired power plants has to be THE environmental, energy, and climate policy priority for 2012. Given the carbon footprint of this industry, building a new coal fired power plant without some level of carbon dioxide control is simply not justifiable technically, politically, or even economically. Cleaning plants up later costs more than building them with clean technology now.
The first of these U.S. EPA rules is now under review at the Office of Management and Budget, and EPA must finalize the rule in the late spring, under a consent decree with environmental groups. This rule is critical because coal-fired power plants are the largest stationary sources of carbon dioxide air pollution – and there is now available control technology permitting deep reductions, as we are seeing with the first applications for plants that capture and sequester carbon dioxide.
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Methane from Oil and Gas: Low-hanging Fruit that EPA Must Pick
December 5th, 2011 by David McCabe, Atmospheric ScientistNovember 30th was the last day for public comments on EPA’s proposal to significantly update air emissions limits for most of the oil and natural gas industry. The proposal makes much-needed revisions to existing requirements, which in some cases are over 25 years old, and in expanding the coverage of these rules, recognizes the significant changes and expansion in the industry that has taken place since the rules were issued. The proposed rules make real progress in advancing cleanup for some of the biggest sources of pollution from the industry, but they do not go anywhere near far enough to curb the wholesale dumping of methane and other pollutants into the air.
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EPA Fiddles While Forests Burn
May 16th, 2011 by Ann Weeks, Senior Counsel and Legal DirectorEPA is fiddling while forests burn when it proposes to do nothing for the next three years to regulate “biogenic CO2” – including the CO2 emissions produced by burning forest biomass. Instead, it will convene a panel of experts to review whether or not there are carbon benefits to be gained from using wood and other biofuels for energy production. This decision is taken in response to complaints received from the National Alliance of Forest Owners (“NAFO”), and from its Senate and House champions, after intense lobbying.
NAFO claims that forest biomass is “carbon neutral:” the amount of CO2 emitted when forest biomass is burned is equal to the amount of CO2 taken up, or ‘sequestered’ by the biomass during its growth. Forest biomass sounds so harmless – humans have burned wood for centuries.
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It’s finally time to regulate air toxics
March 15th, 2011 by Ann Weeks, Senior Counsel and Legal DirectorThis posting originally appeared in the National Journal’s Energy and Environment Expert Blog.
Did you know that air emissions from coal- and oil-fired power plants — the largest industry emitter of mercury, dioxins, acid gases, and arsenic and nickel and other heavy metals — are not subject to national regulations to protect human health and the environment? Moreover, this surprising lapse in federal protection of human health and the environment has existed for a decade.
Whatever EPA’s rules will say – and we won’t know that for sure until they are announced – they will provide significant environmental and public health benefits beyond today’s intolerable situation. In fact, the new rules will provide even greater public health and environmental benefits than the EPA can yet quantify.
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Message to the EPA Administrator: Power Plant MACT Rules Must Meet Best In Breed Standard
March 7th, 2011 by Ann Weeks, Senior Counsel and Legal DirectorDear Ms. Jackson:
EPA’s recent industrial boiler air toxics regulations – even compared with the draft rules proposed last Spring – disappointed on several significant fronts. As we at Clean Air Task Force see it, EPA’s “Boiler MACT” rule:
- Weakened emission limits by transparently fiddling with and adding new boiler sub-categories;
- Manipulated emission floors so they clearly do not reflect the best performers; and
- Lets many boiler owner/operators off the hook from meeting technology- based standards for the carcinogenic pollutants they emit, and instead simply requires boiler “tune-ups.”
The Sky is Not Falling and The Lights Will Still Be On…
October 27th, 2010 by Jonathan Banks, Senior Climate Policy Advisor
This week, NERC, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation—an industry-funded group charged with keeping the lights on—released a long awaited and much anticipated report on the impact of a number of potential EPA regulations for the power sector. And guess what? Much to the chagrin of those who have said that we can’t keep the lights on and have clean air, today’s study puts to rest those fears, proving that implementing the Clean Air Act won’t be turning the lights out any time soon.
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