Clean Power Plan: Power Plant Compliance and State Goals
EPA’s historic Clean Power Plan, is a first-of-its-kind step to cut the harmful carbon pollution fueling climate change from our nation’s power plants based on more than two years of extensive outreach, plus the 4.3 million public comments we received. Compared with last year’s proposal, our final plan cuts over 70 million more tons of carbon pollution, making it more ambitious, more achievable and more affordable, too.
There are two key reasons our final rule works: 1) it follows a more traditional Clean Air Act approach to reduce air pollution, and 2) it gives states and utilities even more options and more time to reach their pollution reduction goals than our proposal did.
Uniform Performance Rates
At the heart of our plan are its uniform emission rates – one for fossil steam units (coal, oil, and gas) and one for natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) units. The standards limit the amount of carbon pollution released for every power plant covered by the rule – and they are the same standards for every coal plant and for every NGCC plant in every state.
The rates are achievable because no power plant has to meet the rates on its own. It can use the fact that it operates on an interconnected grid to access a range of low- or zero-emitting energy resources to come into compliance.
The important point to keep in mind is that power plants do not operate in isolation. Utilities have bought, sold and transmitted electricity across state lines for decades, and regional power grids are a major reason electricity is affordable and reliable. Pollution doesn’t stop at state lines either. With the Clean Power Plan, we’re cutting pollution in the same way we generate and distribute electricity—through an interconnected grid.
In fact, relying on the performance rates is one way that a state can put its power plants in a position to use emissions trading between and among power plants in different states to access those clean energy resources – and to integrate emissions reduction strategies with the way the grid moves electricity back and forth across broad multi-state regions.
State Goals
Each state’s goal represents a blend of the performance rate for coal and the performance rate for gas weighted by the number of coal and gas plants in the state. States can choose to comply simply by applying the performance rates to each unit operating within their respective borders, especially if they include emissions trading as a compliance option for their units. States can also comply with the law by using their overall emissions goals and adopting a portfolio of measures that result in emissions reductions.
While the utilities are responsible for reducing emissions, the state plans are the means of accounting for and ensuring that the reductions take place in line with the national standards and timing established by the Clean Power Plan. And the state rate- and mass-based goals are a way of giving states additional options and flexibility for implementing the two performance standards.
Emissions Trading
When we hold power plants of the same type to the same standards, it means that their reductions are interchangeable – creating a system that’s ready for trading. The built-in ability to trade emissions gives states even more flexibility in how they achieve their carbon pollution reduction goals.
A Glide Path
Further ensuring that the standards are achievable is that the final rule does not require any power plant to meet the standards – or whatever equivalent measure the state imposes – all at once. Instead, states can determine their own emissions reduction trajectories over the period between 2022 and 2029, provided that overall they meet their interim targets “on average” over that period. The final rule ensured this important flexibility by initiating the mandatory compliance period in 2022, rather than 2020 as at proposal, and phasing in the two performance standards and the accompanying state goals. This phase-in is reflected in the performance rates and in the state goals that correspond to those rates, again calculated as a weighted blend
Final Goals in 2030
Ultimately, by 2030, power plants across the country must meet the performance standards using the tools and methods available and within the context of the interconnected grid. Because some states’ power plant fleet includes more coal plants, some states 2030 goals appear more stringent than others. Some states have adopted policies or seen changes in their energy markets that have already put them on a path to lower emissions in 2030. These states’ reduction requirements are relatively smaller. Either way, every state will be achieving emissions reductions along the timeline between 2012 and 2030. States that have already seen their emissions decline thanks to either policy choices or market shifts will have to take action to make sure that those trends continue.
These two tables tell the Clean Power Plan’s story on a state by state basis, and they provide a good sense of what states and the power system will accomplish by 2030 under the program.
- Table 1 shows the difference between where states were in 2012 (their adjusted baseline) compared to their 2030 emissions rate goal.
- Table 2 compares a forecast of where states’ emissions rates would be in the future with and without the Clean Power Plan.
With our final rule, we are setting smart, uniform targets for power plants across the country, but that’s nothing new. It’s a proven approach that EPA has used to reduce air pollution under the Clean Air Act for decades. We’re following long-standing legal precedent to create smart, achievable standards and facilitate trading among plants so the cheapest reductions come first.
More information about how and why goals changed is available at http://www.epa.gov/airquality/cpp/fs-cpp-key-changes.pdf.
Dec 16, 2015 @ 20:11:43
Mrs director, what is being done about the nuclear superfund sites? Answer not enough! Tell me how the doe,epa,military spend 630+billion a year and Savannah river,oak ridge and hannford and St Louis are left to mutate children in the womb and generally poison entire areas.
Feb 10, 2016 @ 21:03:20
Dear Madam Mc Cabe,
this must be a dark day for you, I hope I can help you envisage new solutions to lower CO2 levels for all US citizens.
My father did a lot of research in commuter transportation in Germany after the first oil crisis in the seventies.
He gave me an inspiration which I send to Mr Arnold Schwarzenegger’s blog. I am sure he will appreciate if I send you now a copy of this, since my idea is not so much a technical solution but maybe the best way to “sell this endeavour to millions of americans who arrive each morning in their office already tired and “in need to be nasty to some one”, but not really fit enough to compete with those everfit asians.
I “sold” enviromental protection concepts to the German citycens in 1986 on behalf of our federal research ministry – doing so I nearly fell from the dome of cologne, when I survived I promised to god to contribute a little bit to keeping his lovely church “alive”, it had been heavily corroded by air pollution!
So here I am trying humbly to give you one little idea how to “sell air protection to commuters”:
I will now paste here the text which I wrote to Mr Schwarzenegger:
Hi Arnold,
you will never ever believe what I will tell you now: I must be the world’s biggest ignorant:
For months I had a plan ready for original CO2 reduction approaches, that use
the creativity of Hollywood and european Designers, and focus on Luxury and comfort, while reducing energy consumption in the most agreeable and welcome way.
I began developing these ideas during my work for the German Ministry of Technology.
I wanted to present them to EPA, but after the VW-Scandal I hesitated.
One of these different approaches to energy saving, is focused on getting commuters to their office as fit and happy as possible, and back home too.
Basically the entire concept is about an luxury bus that offers plenty of space but is designed to accomodate just 15 passengers, who are picked up at their homes in the morning, and at their offices in the evening.
In the meantime the bus just remains where they work. Only 15 commuters use it. It is safe, hygienic. Comfortable. You can sleep in it, prepare your work, discuss with other passengers, use a toilet, sorry to mention this, but I often got stuck in a traffic jam, after 3 cups of coffee.
A couple of weeks after refreshing my old concepts, I thought if Arnold, the former Governor of California, THE PRO ENVIRONMENT STATE would only be interested in environment issues … Maybe he would like such ideas … No one could resist the Terminator!
I DID NOT EVEN KNOW YOU WERE ON THE SAME CRUSADE, though some of my relatives live in California.
SORRY! Call me superdumby!
I am happy!
You are godsend. I mean it!
My CO2-solution was developed as simple as can be.
I ruled out everything “real people” dislike about CO2 reduction.
And asked myself: Well how actually do commuters drive to work? Why don’t they use more trains or buses.
ANSWER: they are dangerous because of criminals, not so much in the bus or train, but you have to walk to get there, … , the hygiene is low, you come close to people who smell, cough, vomit…, and the buses do not take you directly to work, nor back right to your home.
SOLUTION: I once rode on a luxury caravan bus: plenty of space, but built for just 15 passengers, excellent cold & hot beverages, good food, nice service, interesting passengers, and even beds to get some real sleep while you drive back home.
NO NEED TO BE ASHAMED ABOUT RIDING ON THAT …
IT COST 1,5 million Euros. It looked great, and it brought me right back from the conference to my hotel.
Buses like that – I envisage them incredibly beautyful – HERE I TRUST THE CREATIVITY AND TASTE OF HOLLYWOOD DESIGNERS – more like mobile luxury restaurants, or luxury yachts on wheels, eventually styled like a renaissance palace, or like houses in Venice, the Alhambra in Spain, or glasswork from Lalique, …
LET US GIVE FREEDOM TO OUR PHANTASY! A bus can look like a long version of a royal coach – or from the inside: like a cathedral, or the cristal palace in Brighton.
Rockefeller invented the pullman Car. Let us invent this!!
HOLLYWOOD EXCELS EVERYONE IN THIS DOMAIN !!
We could create buses so gorgeous children and adults would dream of them, and take photos of themselves in front of them.
Now the CO2 advantage:
if only 15 people share a bus, which takes them door to door (that includes no fuel lost for searching for a parking lot) they only use as much fuel as 4 ordinary cars do. And that is according to my own interviews 4,5 commuters.
That would result in about 70% less fuel consumption!
MY CHALLENGE TO ANY EXPERT!
Find something better, and I will join you for free for one year.
I did PR for the German Ministry of Technology, when we were so good, that the “Japs” came weekly and took photos nonstop, and the american ambassador told President Reagan, that it was a shame, that such a small country as Germany turned more of its patents into goods people actually buy, than America.
Well this era is long bygone
But we should renew something that we both did then, we Germans and you Americans:
we were relyable partners, …, I adored you, we adored you,
Really!
Whatever has come in between Germany and some other of the leading european nations and the USA should be put aside
WHY:
In 1969 a very great Nation made it to the moon!
The bigggggest moment of my live.
And German and British and French and Italian, and Austrian, and Spanish engineers helped the mighty NASA to make it there before THE OTHERS would.
This world is once again facing a very dangerous enemy, worse than THE FOLKS FROM THE COLD, and that is
NO REAL TEAM SPIRIT among the leading western nations!
Let us help solve your problems, then you help us solve ours. There is so much we Germans are bad at, and so much you are great at.
And such buses would reduce ACCIDENT DANGERS since the driver is a professional, AND YOU CAN EVEN DRINK A LITTLE, I mention this because you mentioned car accidents above. And booze is often involved.
As to the costs: think for yourself, ask experts:
a super bus would cost between 300.000 and 1 million dollar. Divided by 15 that starts at 20.000 bucks.
Sounds like a lot of money!
But, buses last very long, so here also you get CO2 reduction, plus I learned that commuting costs a lot:
the car, the insurance, repairs, hospital after accidents, a parking lot,
So 20.000 bucks divide by using the bus during 20 years, means it starts at 1000 bucks per year (plus the driver, insurance, …,) In the end IT IS STILL NOT MORE EXPENSIVE THAN CLASSICAL INDIVIDUAL COMMUTING!
And there are two adittional winners: your boss gets a 100% fit employee (and he knows that Arnold is the king of fitness!!)
The second winner could be you!
Why?
Guess who gets the new job: the tired, angry guy who drove to the job interview in his own car, and got stuck in a traffic jam like you – or you: relaxed, happy, well prepared, since you had the time to refresh your ideas!
Take Car Folks!
Sorry! I meant take care!
Oh no I mean take bus!
P.S.: 15 cars equal 80 yards on the high way, plus the required space between the cars, the total space amounts to nearly 200 yards – that produces traffic jams and accidents.
A bus with 15 passengers would be just about 20 to 25 yards long! So you’ll be at your office quicker too.
And as to the american automobile makers?
They will love it, because americans who earn a good salary, will buy much more expensive cars for the weekend, and their holidays.
Tired, poor, exhausted, ill employees have no money for this.
Lets make america fit again !!
The text to his blog ended here.
I wish you Madam Mc Cabe all the luck you can get, because to me you feel like someone the early settlers would have liked a lot. When they came America must have looked and smelled like paradise.
Your’s sincerely Cornelius Schlotmann
( risk cameraman, cook, and european!)