Myopic regulatory approach foisted on the Lone Star state
Posted July 8, 2010 at 8:25 am 
Filed in: Economic Security, Electric Utilities, Electricity, Energy Security An unfortunate decision that should remind us all how the implementation of policy and regulations can imperil our energy security is reported this morning in the Energy Daily (http://www.theenergydaily.com/publications/ed/EPA-Rejects-Texas-Flexible-Permits-For-Refineries-Coal-Plants_4661.html).
Under the headline, “EPA Rejects Texas’ ‘Flexible Permits’ For Refineries, Coal Plants,” Jonathan Rickman describes how the US EPA recently “quashed” a decades-old flexible permit program. The program was designed to bring old coal plants and refineries into compliance with requirements of the federal Clean Air Act, by allowing them to aggregate emissions from multiple units under a single cap and then control the entire cap.
EPA Region 6 disapproved the program, which was first proposed under the Clinton Administration, because it would allow “companies to avoid certain federal clean air requirements by lumping emissions from multiple units under a single ‘cap’ rather than setting specific emission limits for individual pollution sources at their plants.”
Well, yes, that is the trade-off: cap emissions from a collection of units and then reduce them through the most economically efficient measures available. The goal: to hold down electricity costs and ensure reliability. This was the type of “reform” that then-Administrator Carol Browner pioneered at EPA in the 1990s, through programs like “Project XL” that allowed companies to propose innovative ways of reducing pollution that differed from the rigid command-and-control options available to them under existing regulations.
As Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) Chairman Bryan Shaw lamented, EPA’s rejection of the program — which has resulted in a 22% decline in the states ozone levels in the last decade – “Texas air quality ‘could actually suffer’ as a result of EPA’s final decision.”
“The flexible permitting program has contributed to improved air quality in Texas, and if the state is prevented from using the program, air quality could actually suffer,” reports Energy Daily, quoting Chairman Shaw.
Rejecting an economically-efficient, tailored regulatory approach that reduced ozone levels. Maybe EPA needs to be reminded of the old saying: “Don’t mess with Texas!”
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