Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future by Jeff Goodell

Author:Jeff Goodell [Goodell, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2007-04-03T04:00:00+00:00

New Source Review is an artifact of political compromise. Its roots go back to 1972, when the Sierra Club filed suit against the EPA, charging that the national air quality standards established in the Clean Air Act of 1970 were not working as planned. These standards had set limits not on emissions from power plants and other sources, but on the total pollution level in the air. One of the unforeseen consequences of this law was that power plant operators, instead of installing pollution controls, were complying either by running their plants intermittently (shutting them down when the air got too bad) or by building or retrofitting the plants with taller stacks, which pumped the pollution higher into the air, effectively spreading it over a wider area. Worst of all, the Sierra Club contended, instead of installing pollution controls on power plants in polluted areas, the companies simply built new plants in areas where the air was cleaner and there was, in effect, more room to pollute. The Sierra Club won a decision on the case from a U.S. district court judge, which was subsequently upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. As a result, in 1974 the EPA issued new rules governing “the prevention of serious deterioration of air quality,” which essentially required that all new coal plants be equipped with pollution control devices such as scrubbers. When the Clean Air Act was amended by Congress in 1977, these rule changes, with minor modifications, were written into the law and make up what is commonly referred to as New Source Review.

But what about the hundreds of dirty coal plants that are already chugging away? During the negotiations that led up to the 1977 amendments, power companies complained that it would be too expensive and complicated to install pollution controls on existing plants and argued that control requirements should apply only to new plants. It seemed sensible enough: over the coming years, the old plants would be gradually retired and replaced by newer, cleaner, more up-to-date power plants. By 2005 or so (given the thirty-five-year life expectancy of most power plants), the dirty old coal burners would be gone. It was not exactly an overnight solution, but it was one that both the electricity industry and environmentalists could live with, and a deal was struck. However, the compromise also included the requirement that if an older plant made a major modification, as opposed to performing routine maintenance, it would have to come into compliance with New Source Review at the time of making the modification. The thinking was that as long as the plant was shut down, it might as well install modern pollution control equipment at the same time.

But then a funny thing happened. Instead of retiring the old plants, the power companies decided to keep fixing them up. The reasoning was simple: these old power plants, most of which were paid off and all of which did not have to meet modern pollution control standards, were tremendous profit centers for the power companies, and it made good business sense to extend their lives as long as possible.

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