The Environmental Protection Agency issued a new rule on Thursday mandating that coal-fired plants capture smokestack emissions or else shut down in a move that, according to industry leaders, would dismantle “the reliability of the U.S. electric grid.”
By 2032, coal plants that expect to stay open beyond 2039 must cut or capture 90% of their carbon dioxide emissions. The move is just one step in President Joe Biden‘s goal to eliminate carbon pollution from the electricity sector by 2035. This is the first time the federal government has mandated rules restricting carbon dioxide emissions from existing coal-fired power plants.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said the move by the Biden administration isn’t about reducing emissions and is an ineffective solution.
“Their goal is simple: Death by a thousand cuts to America’s fossil fuel industry, especially coal,” Manchin said. “If the goal was truly to reduce emissions, the Administration would be doing everything it can to deploy carbon capture and hydrogen and help the fossil industry continue to produce cleaner energy. But instead, the radical climate advisors at the White House and EPA have allowed over 120 permits for carbon sequestration wells to sit idle and put up roadblocks to deploying clean hydrogen which can help plants reduce emissions.”
The new regulation posed by the Biden administration undermines the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling, according to Jim Matheson, CEO of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, which limited the EPA’s ability to regulate carbon pollution under the Clean Air Act.
“This barrage of new EPA rules ignores our nation’s ongoing electric reliability challenges and is the wrong approach at a critical time for our nation’s energy future,” Matheson told the Associated Press.
Last year, coal provided 16% of U.S. electricity. But in West Virginia, coal-fired electric power plants accounted for 89% of the state’s total electricity in 2022.
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“This approach comes at the expense of ratepayers across the country and energy communities, like those in West Virginia that have powered our nation for generations,” Manchin said. “Let me be clear: American taxpayers will be forced to pay for these rules by purchasing unaffordable and unreliable energy. That makes no sense at all when America is producing record amounts of energy cleaner than ever.”
The EPA is being sued by 25 states over its regulations targeting cars and light trucks.