Existing coal plants exempt from EPA carbon capture rules

Fuel Fix:

Existing coal-fired power plants won’t be required to install equipment to capture and store the carbon dioxide they emit under new Environmental Protection Agency rules, the regulator’s top EPA official said.

Gina McCarthy, the agency’s administrator, told a Christian Science Monitor breakfast in Washington today that EPA will issue guidelines for states that allow the use of energy efficiency, clean-energy installations or demand cuts to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions. The EPA issued a proposal for new coal-burning power plants on Sept. 20 that would require the expensive capture technology, called CCS.

“CCS is really effective as a tool to reduce emissions when it’s designed with the facility itself,” McCarthy said today. Instead of rules limiting emissions at particular plants, the EPA must use “an extremely different process, and one that requires that EPA has a broader discussion about how states can reduce carbon.”
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Since the rules are just a PR move to begin with, it makes sense to not totally destroy the existing infrastructure.  The EPA cannot show that any of these rules it has put in place quantifiable reduce global temperatures.  McCarthy has admitted to Congress that the rules are an attempt to persuade other countries to make similar requirements for their industry.  They have not been effective in that regard either.  So we are just hurting our jobs and competitiveness for very little effect.