In addition to its negative impact on human health, the EPA indicates the eventual settling of particulate matter creates general environmental concerns:
Based on the new regulation brought forth from EPA, Obama Administration has set certain standards to follow through on requiring new coal-fired power plants to be limited to emissions of 1,100 pounds of CO2 per megawatt hour. In order to meet those levels, new plants would have to implement still-developing carbon capture technology.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is making the coal industry nervous with a proposed rule that would impose new regulations on greenhouse gas emissions from newly constructed power plants. This would permit new coal plants to emit no more than 1,300-1,400 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour.
That’s because to meet the standard, new coal-fired power plants would need to install expensive technology to capture carbon dioxide and bury it underground. No coal-fired power plant has done that yet, in large part because of the cost. And those plants that the EPA points to as potential models, such as a coal plant being built in Kemper County, Miss., by Southern Co., have received hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants and tax credits.
“There’s no single techno-fix, there’s no silver bullet, but there is ‘silver birdshot’ — what we can do in industry, what we can do in buildings, what we can do in transport,” Kartha says. “And moreover, it is an opportunity for employment. Making efficient things and making them efficiently generally creates more jobs than digging resources out of the ground and burning them.”
Sivan Kartha, a senior scientist with the Stockholm Environment Institute’s US Center in Somerville, Massachusetts.
Sivan Kartha
“If developers want to build new coal plants, which account responsible for about a quarter of U.S carbon emissions, they’ll have to develop new technology to pass the EPA’s muster.”
Josh Dzieza From “The Daily Beast”
