Is EPA blocking clean coal technology?
Environmentalists have pushed the U.S. EPA to open a dialogue on whether coal gasification is the best available control technology.
The future of coal is at a crossroads: will utilities continue to burn it and capture pollutants at the end of the smokestack, or will they instead gasify it and remove pollutants earlier in the process? Environmentalists and many state officials say that coal gasification is the wave of the future but have been frustrated that the U.S. EPA has created barriers to the technology. Yet, the proponents of integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) coal plants recently were handed a small victory when EPA settled a lawsuit charging that it is discouraging gasification.
The IGCC process heats coal with steam and oxygen under high pressure to yield a “synthesis” gas of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. An EPA study released in July says IGCC plants can cut emissions of SO2 by roughly 60% compared with a traditional pulverized coal plant.
On December 13, 2005, EPA issued a memo stating that the Clean Air Act (CAA) does not require IGCC technology to be considered as part of an analysis of best available control technology (BACT) for coal-fired power plants. Companies planning to build new plants or expand existing ones must follow the BACT process, which requires them to evaluate the most effective pollution controls available.
Environmental groups led by Environmental Defense sued EPA over the December memo, saying it had a chilling effect on states that wished to require companies to consider IGCC as BACT. In the October 12 settlement published in the Federal Register, EPA states that the 2005 memo is not final agency policy and not legally binding, says John Millett, an EPA spokesperson. And EPA officials will not change their current stance that IGCC is not BACT, Millett adds.
“There’s hope here, because EPA has moved from a negative position to a neutral position on IGCC as BACT,” says Praveen Amar, director of science and policy for the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management (NESCAUM), an association of eight state governments. NESCAUM supports IGCC as BACT because coal gasification is much cleaner than traditional combustion and more cost-effective at cutting pollutants and greenhouse gases.
“It is extremely disappointing that EPA is not considering as BACT a strategy that is as effective as IGCC,” says Bill Becker, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies (formerly STAPPA-ALAPCO). CAA stipulates that the starting point of a BACT analysis should be the best technology at cutting pollution, and at present that is IGCC, he says.
If state agencies set the bar high for BACT, it can drive innovation, adds Mike Schneider, an environmental scientist with the New Mexico Environment Department. New Mexico requires coal-plant applicants to address IGCC technology in the BACT analysis, he says.
In 2004, American Electric Power (AEP), the biggest user of coal in the Western Hemisphere, concluded that IGCC is the best technology to minimize the risks associated with emissions of carbon and other pollutants, says Melissa McHenry, a spokesperson for AEP. Although AEP has filed permits to build two IGCC plants, in Ohio and West Virginia, the company doesn’t support IGCC as part of a BACT analysis, she says. The wet coals found in the western states don’t gasify as well as drier eastern coal, and IGCC technology providers can’t guarantee the performance of their equipment when western coal is used, she says.
Meanwhile, EPA is accepting comments on the settlement until November 20 and will consider them before finalizing the agreement. If EPA revises the agreement, then it’s back to court for the agency. “The pivotal question is whether EPA will see this agreement as an opportunity to convene a thoughtful national dialogue on advanced coal technologies or will continue to discourage innovation,” says Vickie Patton, a senior attorney with Environmental Defense.
