clean power plan

I don't think virginia has any problem, as I said I think the path is fairly easy for them. They simply need to close down plants built before 1970 if they want to add new capacity. The youngest of those plants will be 60 years old at the deadline, and the plan doesn't require that they close all of them. If they close 1MW for every 2 MW they build no problem.

The states with a problem are suing. 12 states sue the EPA over proposed power plant regulations - LA Times

Pennsylvania and Virgina are not on that list.

Which may be problematic. Coal's unhealthy pollutants seem to be regulated twice under house reading of the clean air act. These were included with ghg in this plan as to health benefits. It is really difficult to find any health benefits monitized with such a slight reduction in ghg. The court found problems with cost benefits in mercury with epa this year, but companies already were complying. It will be interesting to see if the epa must loosen coal rules but continue with ghg targets to satisfy the badly worded clean air act, which should have been revised by now.

 

Just like the SO2 cap and trade, there will be complainers, but its simply a matter of spending money. There is no technical problems with complying. German law would close all those grandfathered power plants in virgina and build a lot of wind in west virginia. Virginia and west virginina doesn't go there at all in the clean power plan. As the epa has said, half the changes required have already taken place or are planned

 

German laws can be looked at as a sucessful scenario to reduce ghg, unlike many countries. We can gage how well the experiment is doing. I don't think that just because congress passed a grandfather law in 1970, mean that the country should have to live with the heavily polluting unscrubb emissions from the 4 GW of virginia coal power built before than 1970 forever. I think that grandfathering for 60 years is enough, and the state either needs to put pollution control devices on this stuff or shut it down. The CPP doesn't even go that far, it just says if virginia wants to build new power it needs to shut some of the stinking stuff down. Virginia is actually allowed to keep all its power plants and increase ghg emissions by 2% 2030, shutting down no polluting plants. That's pretty damn easy. There are 9 other states that don't need to do anything either, and that includes California and New Jersey.

The people driving this bus is in Washington and California, not texas.
Since many of them live in northern Virginia, it looks like Virginia got a sweet heart deal, not having to do anything at all to comply. I assume virginia will take the mass based rule and have to do nearly nothing.

CPP is not written at all in the texas way, but that does not mean that some things aren't correct. The big thing is virginia has about 4 GW of pre-1970 coal power plants that probably should have been outfitted with pollution control devices or shut down years ago.

Texas has one major coal plant, big brown with 1.2 GW that is grandfatthered. Built in the early 70s it too should be shut down by 2030, and their are lawsuits now. Texas has much tougher regulations under this plan than the obama epa favored states of virginia, new jersey, and california. Perhaps you want to enact a tax to support the states like mine that will be doing heavy lifting. Shutiing down non-grandfathered younger plants, building a great deal of renewable. I still think the cpp is a good one, but it gave a sweatheart deal to 10 states, virginia being one of them, and 12 states that didn't get as good of a deal and favor more coal are suing.

 

They can choosse the mass targer which is to increase carbon dioxide. They can grow power under the mass target by closing down plants built before 1970. We will see what the plan is, but that mass target is a sweatheart deal, and is included in showing which states need to do nothing at all to comply.

Yep and under the clean power plan, some of those plants will likely be shut down, not by the CPP but because they are being sued for doing to much maintenance to comply with grandfathering. If they lose they either need to buy equipment, which is more expensive than a new ccgt gas plant, or shut down.

That is not what the clean power plan says. Virginia can chose 2 paths. On the mass path they only need to shut down those old plants when forced by lawsuit of violiating grandfathering. Lawsuits are in the courts. If they dhoose to close a 40 year old power plant they can build twice the capacity in ccgt to replace it and still be under the mass target.

Pretty easy to close down those old power plants, you know the ones without mercury crubbers and inadequate SO2 scrubbers and build ccgt under the mass plant.

Virginia has 4.2 GW of pre 1970 coal without adequate scrubbers. I think your argument is it is too expensive to replace in th enext 15 years and because it is so hard, they should be allowed to continue to pollute. I'm not really buying that argument.

These plants typically put out 1.4 tons co2/MWH versus 0.36 tons/MWH which means you could replace those 4.2 smelly polluting plants with over 11 GW of gas ccgt and still stay under the mass cap growting the fossil That's big growth in energy. That would mean the current 6.4 GW of coal in virginia would be reduced to the 2.2 GW plants built in the last 40 years, and 11 GW of new natural gas could be built under the cap, making the total 13.2 GW or more than double the existing coal. That should satisfy growth projections.

Virginia reacts to EPA's final Clean Power Plan - Daily Press

They are a big winner in the plan. They can now stop fighting the EPA and Green Piece in court and plan a slow retirement of their dirtiet plants, with plenty of time to build new cleaner ones.

As we conduct a detailed analysis, I look forward to working with stakeholders to accomplish the objectives of reducing carbon emissions, creating the next generation of clean-energy jobs and building the new Virginia economy," McAuliffe announced.

Doesn't sound like those in charge or the utilities in virginia think its difficult.

Yep it will close a good number of plants that were built in the 50s and 60s, that should have been closed years ago, but since everyone but the plant owner pays for pollution, hey why not make some extra cash and pump out unscrubbed emissions.

 

Texas may need to close down newer coal, not virginia. That was pretty clear in the plan. 66% of virginia's coal is that heavily poluting stuff, built before 1970. The utilities will run it as long as they don't need to install pollution control equipment as maintenance is cheaper than building a new plant that has modern pollution control.

I am not defending everything in the plan, and even the president said he would ahve rather had congress write something. Well polosi and Reid wrote someghing much worse with lost of give aways to big coal in their cap and tax plan. This may be a little too anti-new coal, but I absolutely support the decomissioning of plants that should have had a 40 year use full life, that are kept up simply because the utilities would have had to pay for pollution control on anything newer.

Fight the good fight. Tell us how virginia is going to apply the plan. My guess is they will go with mass targets, hitting them fairly easily by closing down some of the old plants that are under lawsuit.

If virginia closes those older plants, reduces risk of natural gas prices by buying some west virginia wind, and builds some shiny new ccgt plants (say 8GW for $9B for a levelized cost of around $0.04/kwh to pay for capical fuel and maintenance 50% utilization 30 year useful life) virginia's price for electricity might actually go down depending on the price of natural gas in 2030. We don't really know. It will cost jobs at the coal plants, and the natural gas and wind turbines don't need as many workers, but there will be temperorary construction jobs building the grid, natural gas infrastructure, new plants and turbines. My guss is you lose more jobs than you gain, but have cleaner air to breath.