SMRs and AMRs

Friday, September 20, 2013

Administration to Press Ahead With Carbon Limits

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR, NYT

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Friday announced that it was not backing down from a confrontation with the coal industry and that it would press ahead with enacting the first federal carbon limits on the nation’s power companies.

The proposed regulations, announced at the National Press Club by Gina McCarthy, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, are an aggressive move by Mr. Obama to bypass Congress on climate change with executive actions he promised in his inaugural address this year. The regulations are certain to be denounced by House Republicans and the industry as part of what they call the president’s “war on coal.”

In her speech, Ms. McCarthy unveiled the agency’s proposal to limit new gas-fired power plants to 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per megawatt-hour and new coal plants to 1,100 pounds of carbon dioxide. Industry officials say the average advanced coal plant currently emits about 1,800 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour.

“The president’s Climate Action Plan calls on federal agencies to take steady, sensible, and pragmatic steps to cut the harmful carbon pollution that fuels our changing climate, to prepare our communities for its unavoidable impacts, while continuing to provide affordable and reliable energy for all,” Ms. McCarthy said.

(More here.)

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