(Bloomberg) — The Obama administration’s plan to cut
carbon emissions may force many coal plants to run only when
energy demand peaks, making them less cost-effective, the group
that oversees the U.S. electric system said.
The North American Electric Reliability Corp., a nonprofit
that assures adequate voltage and power reserves, in an
assessment Tuesday asked the Environmental Protection Agency to
delay the 2020 deadline to start implementing the Clean Power
Plan, saying pipelines, transmission lines and plants are needed
to prevent the cuts from disrupting electric service.
“The generation mix in the North American power market is
going through a fundamental change,” Thomas Burgess, vice
president of the group, said on a conference call. “The Clean
Power Plan is expected to accelerate some of those changes.”
President Barack Obama’s plan to combat global warming is
built around the EPA’s carbon proposal, which would require a 30
percent cut in emissions by 2030. The plan is designed to
replace coal as the main source to generate electricity with
increased use of natural gas, renewable power and efficiency
measures.
The emissions plan will have wide-ranging effects on
utilities, forcing changes that will upend models used for a
century for generation and distribution of electricity. The EPA
has said 40 years of clean-air actions have never caused power
outages, and other analysts have said cheap alternatives such as
natural gas and renewable energy will mean the decline in coal
won’t cause major disruptions.
State ‘Flexibility’
The EPA said the power-plant proposal is designed to
protect domestic power supplies.
“The agency’s plan will provide states and utilities the
time and flexibility needed to continue their current and
ongoing planning and investing to modernize and upgrade the
power system,” the EPA said in a statement. “We have a long-standing commitment to safeguard not only public health and the
environment but also a reliable and affordable supply of
electricity for all Americans.”
To meet the outlines of the EPA’s proposed plan, the
industry would need to build natural-gas power plants producing
an additional 46 gigawatts by 2020, said John Moura, the group’s
reliability director. Those would replace shuttering coal
plants.
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Jon Morgan at
Steve Geimann, Romaine Bostick