Washington Update From the US Oil and Gas Association - 4.26.2024

Let the Good Times Roll

April 26, 2024

The Regulatory onslaught continues—powerplant edition

This week the Biden Administration finalized carbon dioxide regulations on new natural gas and coal-fired power plants. If courts uphold the regulation, new natural gas power plants that operate at least 40 percent of the time would need to install carbon capture systems by 2032 and existing coal plants would also need to install carbon capture systems by 2032.  

Many parties are already preparing legal challenges to this regulation.  The Clean Air Act requires EPA to utilize the “best system of emission reduction” that has been “adequately demonstrated.” Obama’s Clean Power Plan was struck down by the courts because it took a ridiculously expansive view the term a “system of emissions reduction” to include measures far from the power plants being regulated.  

The Biden administration learned from the Obama Admin getting slapped down in court and this time states that CCS (carbon capture and sequestration) is the best system of emission reduction (along with co-firing green hydrogen). The problem for Biden’s EPA is the requirement that the emissions controls be “adequately demonstrated.”