EPA emissions regulations would cause reliability problems

A report from the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) has warned of serious reliability problems for power supply – including power outages and blackouts – for 15 million people in nine states if the US Environmental Protection Agency continues its restricting CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants.

The report focuses on customers in Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas and concludes that these states face major blackouts and serious reliability problems due to the rapid pace of capacity reductions that will be forced by the EPA’s proposed rule to limit CO2 emissions from existing power plants.

According to the EPA’s model, under the Clean Power Plant (CPP) the SPP would lose about 9 GW of coal-fired and gas-fired generating capacity under state-specific carbon reduction goals – 6 GW more than SPP members anticipated.

"The EPA offers flexibility in how a state develops its plans to meet the goal, but it's important for the assigned goals to be achievable," Lanny Nickell, vice president of engineering at SPP, told TVH11 news. "If the CPP compliance period begins before generation and adequate infrastructure can be added, the SPP region will face a significant loss of load and violations of regulatory reliability standards."

"This is just another troubling trend in the harsh impacts we see developing as a result of EPA's proposed power plan,” said Dan Weber, president of the Association of Mature American Citizens. “These findings are particularly alarming for our nation's most vulnerable citizens – seniors and those on fixed incomes.

Written by Jonathan Rowland.

Read the article online at: https://www.worldcoal.com/power/28102014/world-coal-epa-emissions-regulations-would-cause-reliability-problems-coal1458/