REPUBLICANTS CHARGE EPA WITH ‘MUZZLING SCIENTISTS’ ON NSPS

Karen Frantz
GHG Monitor
12/20/13

Republican members of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee accused the Environmental Protection Agency of “muzzling scientists” in a letter sent to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy this week. The letter raised questions about storing captured CO2 through carbon capture and sequestration under the agency’s New Source Performance Standards for coal-fired power plants. It also pointed to recent findings of the EPA’s Science Advisory Board’s Working Group that the science underlying the proposed NSPS may not have been adequately peer-reviewed and that the EPA went ahead with the proposal without waiting for advice from its independent science advisors.

In their letter, the lawmakers wrote, “These discoveries raised serious questions about EPA’s proposed rule and clearly merited further review.” It adds, “However, when these concerns were raised, a senior official in the EPA Air Office sought to distance the Agency from the criticisms leveled by the SAB Work Group. Specifically, the EPA claimed that the NSPS is not ‘setting any requirements on sequestration and not providing any analysis as such because we don’t speak to the sequestration.’ The claim that the rule doesn’t need to address storage concerns highlights your Agency’s continued lack of transparency and consistent attempts to avoid accountability.”  The EPA did not respond to calls for comment as of press time this week. 

Did EPA Avoid Questions Over Long-Term Storage?

The EPA released a retooled version of the proposed NSPS rule in September, which would limit CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants and would essentially mandate partial CCS as the “best system of emission reduction.” The SAB’s Working Group recently recommended that the EPA review the science behind the NSPS due to the aforementioned concerns. In their letter, the committee members charged that the EPA tried to avoid questions regarding long-term geologic storage raised by its science advisors by saying that the charges of inadequate peer-review “relates to studies beyond the scope of the NSPS proposal.” They wrote, “In other words, EPA wants people to believe that the rule’s regulatory footprint only covers carbon capture, without addressing what happens to the captured carbon.”

The lawmakers went on to write that the new mandates in the NSPS rule “will create regulatory burdens and litigation risks that could make carbon dioxide from power plants no longer economically viable for use in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) operations. But since EOR is currently the only way to comply with the new power plant rule, this would impede both the practical operation of the rule and erect unnecessary barriers to the use of EOR.” The letter pointed to requirements in the proposal that would “require EOR operators to meet new reporting obligations under Subpart RR of the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) reporting rules,” which would obligate operators to draft and obtain EPA approval for monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) plants.

More than 20 Republicans on the committee signed the letter, including Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), Reps. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.), Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), Paul Broun (R-Ga.), Larry Bucshon (R-Ind.), Chris Collins (R-N.Y.), Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), Ralph M. Hall (R-Texas), Randy Hultgren (R-Ill.), Frank D. Lucas (R-Okla.), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), Michael T. McCaul (R-Texas), Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas), Steven Palazzo (R-Miss.), Bill Posey (R-Fla.), Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), Steve Stockman (R-Texas) and Randy Weber (R-Texas).