Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
2/27/2015
Several states, including Kentucky and Maryland are beginning to plan for the implementation of the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed carbon emissions regulations for existing coal fired power plants, dubbed the Clean Power Plan. The proposed rule, which is due to be finalized sometime this summer, requires states to develop action plans to meet carbon emission reduction goals set by the EPA. Under the proposed rule, states would have to submit their plans in 2016, but many states are already involved in the early stages of developing their plans. “We’ve already started the process of looking at what might a compliance plan look like,” Len Peters, Secretary of Kentucky’s Energy & Environment Cabinet, said this week at the Climate Leadership Conference. “We’re taking it, I don’t want to say on faith, but we know roughly what the outline of the proposal is going to be. Obviously there are going to be some changes, but I believe the construct as it currently sits [is pretty set] and we have started that process.”
Kentucky faces unique legislative challenges in developing a compliance plan as the state passed legislation last year which would bar the state from implementing a plan which uses three of the four “building blocks” included in the EPA’s Best System of Emissions Reduction. These “building blocks” within the proposed rule are efficiency improvements at the plants, switching to lower emitting energy sources, building additional zero emission generation and demand side energy efficiency. Under the Kentucky law, only improvements made at the plant can be included in the state’s action plan. “We looked at some of the legislative constraints that we have in the state, so we’ve started that process,” Peters said. “We didn’t want to be sitting here for six or eight months not doing anything.”
Kelly Speakes-Backman, Commissioner with the Public Service Commission of Maryland and chair of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, stated at the event that RGGI states have also come to a conclusion concerning what to do to comply with the proposed regulation. RGGI is a northeastern multistate cap-and-trade program designed to cut CO2 emissions. The proposed rule allows membership in such multi-state programs as a form of compliance. “We will not be submitting individual state plans,” Speakes-Backman said. “We will look at this from a mass-based perspective and a regional perspective. Basically, each of the state’s allowances or caps that they’ve given, we’re going to add those all up and between ourselves we’re going to figure this out because we’ve been doing this now successfully since 2008. … We basically expect to do business as usual.”
