Letter to Sylvia Matthews Burwell, Director of the Office of Management and Budget

Letter

Dear Director Burwell:

I write to express my adamant opposition to the pending New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) regulation aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions from future power plants and my deep concern about the forthcoming Greenhouse Gas (GHG) regulation for existing power plants. Believing that the agency has vastly underestimated the economic consequences of its proposal and vastly overstated the availability of carbon-reducing technologies on which its proposal hinges, I urge you to return the NSPS rule to the EPA.

Further, I urge the Administration to halt promulgation of the new regulation for GHG emissions from existing power plants, slated to be made public in the coming weeks. The consequences of such a rule for existing plants -- including its feasibility, economic impact, and effect on energy reliability -- can only be sufficiently gauged in tandem with the multiple effects of the NSPS rule and the layers of other related rules already promulgated and expected. Given that the basis of the NSPS proposal for future plants is so badly flawed, the EPA cannot conceivably weigh, with any degree of accuracy, the costs and benefits of a proposal to cut GHG emissions at existing plants.

The EPA has used circuitous logic to issue its rule. Take, for instance, the conclusion by EPA that its rule will have little to no effect on the emissions levels of CO2. It bases this conclusion on its observation that the new rule would be unlikely to stop construction of new coal capacity because few, if any, coal-fired plants are currently being planned. In doing so, it contorts reason, conveniently ignoring the ways in which its own continual bombardment of anti-coal regulatory missiles has created an atmosphere rife with economic uncertainty that has dissuaded power generators from investing in coal projects. Intensifying that atmosphere of uncertainty is the Administration's own budget cuts for fossil fuel research and development while it is simultaneously pressing ahead with regulations requiring technologies that will only come to fruition with substantial Federal investment.

All of this comes, admittedly, at a time when natural gas development is booming, making the price of that fuel particularly competitive. But the agency simply cannot be allowed to paper over the fact that its own actions amount to a big, fat anti-coal thumb on the scale of economic competitiveness. This is a blatant instance of picking winners and losers in the marketplace.

Clearly there are good reasons to question the agency's economic analysis with respect to the NSPS rule, but, equally, there are glaring reasons to doubt it on the science. When, last September, the EPA re-proposed its NSPS rule for electric generating units, it did so based on the requirement that future plants incorporate partial carbon capture and storage (CCS). The agency has repeatedly defended that basis, claiming that CCS is, in essence, proven enough. Yet, today, technologies to capture and store carbon emissions from electric power plants are neither sufficiently tested and demonstrated nor deployable on a widespread basis to the energy-generating sector.

The claim that CCS is ready is hokum, and, as such, it not only undercuts the EPA's whole argument for its NSPS rule, but it also undermines the public's trust in an agency that justifies its actions as being driven by science.

And, in the context of the public's trust, I take further issue with these rules. In its race to regulate, the EPA is turning a deaf ear to the People. Its schedule of hearings for the New Source rule, for example, completely skipped over vast areas of the country, including my own coal-producing, coal-powered State, where, without a doubt, the consequences of this rule will be keenly felt.

Americans have grave concerns about what these rules will mean to them. They worry about how the regulations will affect their jobs and their businesses. They worry about their ability to afford energy to heat their homes. They worry about reliability, and rightly so, particularly after a winter that saw electric generators having to rely substantially on coal-fired generation that is set to be retired in the coming months. They worry about national security and about international competitiveness. In our government by the People, no program, no law, no regulation can long last without the support of the public. But in its headlong rush to push through these two regulations by its own self-imposed deadline, this Administration is cutting out the fundamental step of garnering the support of the American People.

For all of these reasons, I call on the Administration not to issue its draft rule on GHG emissions from existing plants, and I, again, urge you to return the NSPS regulation for future power plants back to the EPA. It's a rule that needs to go back to the drawing board.

With kind regards, I am

Sincerely yours,

Nick J. Rahall

Member of Congress

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