Published: May 2, 2024 |

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has released a suite of final rules to reduce pollution from fossil fuel-fired power plants. These rules, finalized under separate authorities including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, will significantly reduce climate, air, water, and land pollution from the power sector.

By releasing these final rules at the same time, EPA is following through on the commitment to provide regulatory certainty as the power sector makes long-term investments in the transition to a clean energy economy. The standards are designed to work with the power sector’s planning processes and provide compliance timelines that enable power companies to plan in advance to meet electricity demand.

THE SUITE OF FINAL RULES INCLUDES:

• A final rule for existing coal-fired and new natural gas-fired power plants that would ensure that all coal-fired plants that plan to run in the long-term and all new baseload gas-fired plants control 90 percent of their carbon pollution. 

• A final rule strengthening and updating the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) for coal-fired power plants, tightening the emissions standard for toxic metals by 67 percent and finalizing a 70 percent reduction in the emissions standard for mercury from existing lignite-fired sources.

• A final rule to reduce pollutants discharged through wastewater from coal-fired power plants by more than 660 million pounds per year, ensuring cleaner water for affected communities, including communities with environmental justice concerns that are disproportionately impacted.

• A final rule that will require the safe management of coal ash that is placed in areas that were unregulated at the federal level until now, including at previously used disposal areas that may leak and contaminate groundwater.

EPA is providing a predictable regulatory outlook for power companies, including opportunities to reduce compliance complexity, and clear signals to create market and price stability.

EPA conducted regulatory impact analyses for each rule, showing that this suite of standards will deliver hundreds of billions of dollars in net benefits. EPA also performed a sensitivity analysis exploring the combined effect on the power sector of the carbon pollution, air toxics, and water rules, as well as EPA’s recent rules for the transportation sector.

The projections regarding changes in electricity supply and demand align with recent reports from the Department of Energy (DOE) and National Renewable Energy Laboratory and peer-reviewed research in showing that the sector can meet growing demand for electricity and provide reliable, affordable electricity at the same time as it reduces pollution in accordance with these rules.

STRONGER CARBON POLLUTION STANDARDS FOR NEW GAS AND COAL POWER PLANTS

EPA’s final Clean Air Act standards for existing coal-fired and new natural gas-fired power plants limit the amount of carbon pollution covered sources can emit.

The regulatory impact analysis projects reductions of 1.38 billion metric tons of carbon pollution overall through 2047, which is equivalent to preventing the annual emissions of 328 million gasoline cars, or to nearly an entire year of emissions from the entire U.S. electric power sector. It also projects up to $370 billion in climate and public health net benefits over the next two decades.

The rule addresses existing coal-fired power plants and ensures that new natural gas combustion turbines are designed using modern technologies to reduce pollution.

The final emission standards and guidelines will achieve substantial reductions in carbon pollution at reasonable cost. The best system of emission reduction for the longest-running existing coal units and most heavily utilized new gas turbines is based on carbon capture and sequestration/storage (CCS) — an available and cost-reasonable emission control technology that can be applied directly to power plants and can reduce 90 percent of carbon dioxide emissions from the plants.

Lower costs and continued improvements in CCS technology, alongside tax incentives the Inflation Reduction Act that allow companies to largely offset the cost of CCS, represent recent developments in emissions controls that informed EPA’s determination of what is technically feasible and cost-reasonable.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law also includes billions of dollars to advance and deploy CCS technology and infrastructure. EPA projects that the sector can comply with the standards with negligible impact on electricity prices. EPA analysis also finds that power companies can comply with the standards while meeting grid reliability, even when considering increased load growth.

The final rule includes requirements to help ensure meaningful engagement with affected stakeholders, including communities with environmental justice concerns, as well as the energy communities and workers who have powered our nation for generations. The standard also requires states to provide transparent data on compliance pathways and timelines through the state planning process, ensuring that workers and communities have the best-available information to plan for changes in the sector.

The Interagency Working Group on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization has identified historic resources for energy communities to invest in infrastructure, deploy new technologies that can help clean up the electric power sector, support energy workers, and spur long-term economic revitalization. The final rule also follows guidance from the Council on Environmental Quality to ensure that deployment of CCS technologies is done in a responsible manner that incorporates the input of communities and reflects the best available science.

In addition to finalizing these rules, EPA has opened a non-regulatory docket and issued framing questions to gather input about a comprehensive approach to reduce GHG emissions from the entire fleet of existing gas combustion turbines in the power sector. EPA is committed to expeditiously proposing GHG emission guidelines for these units.

View the fact sheet for this rulemaking HERE.

STRENGTHENING MERCURY AND AIR TOXIC STANDARDS

EPA is strengthening and updating the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) for coal-fired power plants. This final rule under the Clean Air Act is the most significant update since MATS was first issued in February 2012, building on highly successful and cost-effective protections.

EPA projects the final rule will reduce emissions of mercury and non-mercury metal HAPs, such as nickel, arsenic, and lead. The final rule will also result in substantial co-benefits, including reductions in emissions of fine particulate matter (soot), sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and carbon dioxide nationwide.

The final rule reduces the mercury emissions limit by 70 percent for lignite-fired units and reduces the emissions limit that controls for toxic metals by 67 percent for all coal plants — while also requiring the use of continuous emission monitoring systems to provide real-time, accurate data to regulators, facility operators, and the public to ensure that plants are meeting these lower limits.

EPA’s final rule projects $300 million in health benefits and $130 million in climate benefits over the 10-year period from 2028-2037. Reductions in non-mercury HAP metal emissions are expected to reduce exposure to carcinogens such as nickel, arsenic, and hexavalent chromium, for residents living in the vicinity of these facilities.

View the fact sheet for this rulemaking HERE.

STRONGER LIMITS ON WATER POLLUTION FROM POWER PLANTS

EPA is strengthening wastewater discharge standards that apply to coal-fired power plants under the Clean Water Act to reduce discharges of toxic metals and other pollutants from these power plants into lakes, streams, and other waterbodies. When implemented, this action will annually prevent more than 660 million pounds of pollution per year from being discharged to our nation’s waters.

The agency’s final rule includes implementation flexibilities for power plants. For example, the final rule creates a new compliance path for electricity generating units that permanently stop burning coal by 2034. These units will be able to continue meeting existing requirements instead of the requirements contained in this final regulation. In a separate action finalized last year, EPA updated but maintained an existing provision allowing units to comply with less stringent standards if they will permanently stop burning coal by 2028.

Following rigorous analysis, EPA has determined that this final rule will have minimal effects on electricity prices. EPA’s analysis shows that the final rule will provide billions of dollars in health and environmental benefits each year.

View the fact sheet for this rulemaking HERE.

LATEST ACTION ON COAL ASH CONTAMINATION

Under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, EPA is finalizing a rule for the disposal of coal combustion residuals (CCR or coal ash). The agency is finalizing regulations that require the safe management of coal ash at inactive surface impoundments at inactive power plants and historical coal ash disposal areas.

EPA’s final rule expands protections for the communities and ecosystems near active and inactive coal burning power plants, ensuring that groundwater contamination, surface water contamination, fugitive dust, floods and impoundment overflows, and threats to wildlife are all addressed.

Inactive coal ash surface impoundments at inactive facilities, referred to as “legacy CCR surface impoundments,” are more likely to be unlined and unmonitored, making them more prone to leaks and structural problems than units at facilities that are currently in service. To address these concerns, EPA established safeguards for legacy coal ash surface impoundments that largely mirror those for inactive impoundments at active facilities, including requiring the proper closure of the impoundments and remediating coal ash contamination in groundwater.

In addition, through implementation of the 2015 CCR rule, EPA found “historic” disposal units that are leaking and contaminating groundwater at currently regulated power plants, but which were exempt under the original 2015 regulations. These are areas where coal ash was placed directly on the land, such as coal ash in surface impoundments and landfills that closed prior to the effective date of the 2015 CCR Rule and inactive CCR landfills. This final rule extends a subset of EPA’s existing CCR requirements to these historic disposal units that will ensure any contamination from these areas is remediated, and will prevent further contamination. These requirements will apply to all active CCR facilities and inactive facilities with legacy CCR surface impoundments.

EPA does not expect this rule to affect the current operations of power plants, and therefore anticipates no impacts to electricity generation or grid reliability.

View the fact sheet for this rulemaking HERE.

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