EPA Proposes Rules To Limit New Power Plant CO2 Emissions

On March 27, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) under Section 111 of the Clean Air Act to limit carbon dioxide emissions from new fossil fuel-fired electric generating plants. EPA's proposal follows the Supreme Court's 2007 decision that CO2 is a "pollutant" under the Clean Air Act in Massachusetts v. EPA ( see previous Perkins Coie update) and was almost certainly legally required after EPA's 2010 finding that CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles endanger human health and welfare.

Breaking with past precedent, EPA proposed one limit for both coal- and gas-fired units, 1,000 pounds of CO2 for each megawatt hour of power produced. Modern combined-cycle natural gas plants easily meet this standard. However, coal-fired power plants would not meet the standard unless they incorporated carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), an expensive, energy-intensive technology that has not yet been