Green Hell Blog writes: The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit refused late Friday to stop the EPA’s greenhouse gas rules from going into effect on January 2, 2011. The litigation over the rules will continue, but the court will allow them to go into effect pending the outcome of the litigation.
From WaPo
A U.S. appellate court Friday turned down a request from utilities, oil refiners and the state of Texas to delay the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions by the Environmental Protection Agency.
As a result, the EPA and state agencies can begin to insist that companies use the “best available control technologies” to restrict emissions of carbon dioxide to obtain air permits.
The companies and Texas had sought a court order blocking the EPA from moving ahead until the end of a lawsuit challenging the agency’s finding that greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. power plants and large industrial facilities endanger the health of Americans.
The companies contend in that lawsuit that the EPA regulations would be too costly.
But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said that the companies “have not shown that the harms they allege are ‘certain,’ rather than speculative.”
h/t to Green Hell Blog
full story at the WashingtonPost
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Russell Duke says:
February 1, 2011 at 9:55 am
Whether you like it or not, that is their Constitutionally mandated job, not the EPA’s. As I recall, there have been no Constitutional amendments authorizing the branches of government to legislate their authority away.
Mark
Mark T says:
February 1, 2011 at 10:08 am
Good point. I guess high quality public education is our last… aw, never mind.
Sucks, I agree, but it is what we are supposed to have (not really what we have, since they legislate away all of their responsibilities.)
Mark
Too bad the court didn’t take into consideration of WG III Co-Chair Ottmar Edenhofer’s statement
“But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole. ”
Makes the EPA a tool of the environmentalists.
CRS, Dr.P.H. says:
January 31, 2011 at 10:32 pm
USEPA is not the EA University CRU amateurs, they operate some of the best environmental labs on earth.
Which has lead to:
20x miscalulation of soot – http://www.freedomworks.org/press-releases/epa-overestimates-health-risk-by-factor-of-15
Second hand smoke – http://www.davehitt.com/facts/epa.html
Vermiculite Attic Insulation – http://www.schundler.com/atticinsulation.htm
NOx – http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:yy-JuWswGSEJ:www.nerc.com/files/NOxStudy.pdf+EPA+study+errors&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEEShuHh1QR8dSvPkV4gJ2SarCuu6fSaQCsLx9OZ5ks2jYqmPGpx8FCvMuZ9QR20_W8-C8m2ReBuo0cPNfJSqlRg2mZNZ_2aq8D8HT1JPduVnjONZOvZNDeEjcYcvexeCUrAgVBfqV&sig=AHIEtbQEs9EFoYUgsNKDa8dOYLTEzb5PIQ
ground-level ozone (smog) – http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/32250
Lead levels – http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2007/03/flip-flopping-headlines-part-two.html
Plus many more. What leads you to believe they are competent?
James Sexton and Kevin Quitberg,
I work for the largest power gen in the USA. I spent a few years at a lignite burner and now work at a 2 unit nat gas burner.
The lignite (flammable dirt) unit has ESP with ammonia inj. and natural oxidation FGD (recently converted the operation from inhibited oxidation due to fuel quality changes). The gas burner units are a contrast of technology. The old unit (50 YO) is a boiler type, still very profitable to operate due to simplicity and quality original construction especially when the fuel price is $4.35/MBtu. The new unit is cutting edge in technology and efficiency (~ 60% heat to electricity I’m told).
One of the most amazing things to me when I first entered that lignite unit was the fact that when looking at the overall superstructure – 2/3 of the unit was (to quote Moon Grafant) “a 30 pound tick on a 20 pound dog”. Two-thirds of the unit was pollution control. ESP – electrostatic precipitator: folks this is why you don’t get ash raining down all over the countryside anymore. NOX control: urea or ammonia injection (same principle) aids in controling nitrous oxide emissions. FGD: acid rain control with limestone, instead of sulfur dioxide, you get CO2 and calcium sulfate or calcium sulfite (and a maintenance nightmare).
Long story short: The lignite burner can generate a nominal 700 MW/h, but before it even hits distribution it sucks off about 43 to 47 MW to operate all equipment within the plant. In no way do I advocate removing or reducing the pollution controls in that plant, though the agrarian in me thinks the poor soil of the countryside would benefit from some ashfall. But, adding such additional equipment as mercury control (powdered activated carbon injection into the flue gas before the ESP), some sort of CO2 control (our current project up north takes ~50MW for the trial demo only), and who know’s what comes next? Before long you’re sucking 100+MW off your salable generation while increasing staffing or OT to the staff you have. Many generation units already have maintenance crews stretched by OT to the point that 20+ year veterans of the crews leave. It takes 5 years to get these men trained if they come to us out of tech school or college. Rarely, do we take a green high school grad anymore except to wax floors and empty trash cans, but if they are full time we’ll pay for them to get schooling to move up…
I lurk here day after day, gleaning info that is generally clear of the trolling. There are others that work for this company that enjoy this site as well. Your links to peer review data help.
I like to think the reason many of the power companies, as stated earlier, get into the green side is 1) keeping the enemies closer than their friends 2) it is simply a wiser business choice to not get blindsided by what comes from a very dynamic regulatory climate.
Politics is driving this. Politics will end it.
Senators vow to strip Obama climate power
Eleven Republican senators introduced a bill that would stop the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases, which scientists blame for global warming, without explicit approval by Congress.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.ddc0305146893ec9e9e6796d743e6af7.d91&show_article=1
George E. Smith says:
February 1, 2011 at 8:34 am
We the People, have never authorized the Congress to reassign the legislative powers we gave them; to unelectred third parties; aka the EPA.
——
REPLY: Bullcr*p!
From Wikipedia:
“On July 9, 1970, citing rising concerns over environmental protection and conservation, President Richard Nixon transmitted Reorganization Plan No. 3 to the United States Congress by executive order, creating the EPA as a single, independent agency from a number of smaller arms of different federal agencies. Prior to the establishment of the EPA, the federal government was not structured to comprehensively regulate environmental pollutants.”
—————–
Summary: We the People did EXACTLY that, through our elected officials!!
The USEPA is why we can drink tap water anyplace in the USA vs. places like China, where you cannot. The value of the EPA cannot be disputed, they have done marvelous things.
Regarding the GHG stuff, all I’m saying is that the EPA have been assembling scientific data & applying their powers. It’s political, the EPA under Pres. George W. Bush was not pushing enforcement to the extent they are now, but W. still did some good things with his “Clear Skies” initiative. See: http://www.epa.gov/clearskies/
Interestingly, the big power utilities are more or less “OK” with carbon dioxide mitigation, and auto companies aren’t complaining too much since folks are gravitating towards higher-efficiency autos (not necessarily hybrid/electric, but better engines with Direct Fuel Injection etc.).
Utilities get credit for all sorts of efficiency upgrades & switching over to natural gas, so the coal industry & their politicos are crying foul. Follow the money (and union jobs). As the US power industry switches to abundant natural gas, the Clear Sky objectives become met (especially mercury), coal consumption falls, and carbon dioxide emissions slip downwards towards the 17% reduction Obama promised at COP 15 in Copenhagen.
Unfortunately, those 11 senators cannot even get past their own body (the Senate) with a positive outcome, let alone the President himself. Right now such measures are nothing more than sabre rattling. It will take voting the dictator in chief out of office before anything can be done about the EPA.
Mark
The EPA was always meant to rule America…
Yes they started small, PROGRESSIVELY building precedents…
The EPA was never run by the American Government… you just think they are..
In China, families are charged for the cost of the bullet used to execute their fathers, brothers or wtahever. Sounds a bit like being asked to pay for the hangman’s rope, as somebody remarked earlier.
Hello PRD:
The utility just East of us was planning another generating unit, a big one at 750 Megawatts, and then canceled it in favor of windmills. They have now installed a 450 Megawatt series of fields. They said that as long as that is what people want and they get their 12% annual return (via higher rates and taxpayer subsidies) they will continue to install wind turbines. This infuriates me, as we get a double hit: increased utility bills and increased taxes. My brother is the AO of one of the 4 existing 550 Megawatt units and he has told me that it is very difficult for them to cycle their boilers and gen. sets up and down to match the vagaries of the wind. It is also introducing a lot of inefficiencies into the boiler firing as they have to leave their most efficient pressures.
In an unrelated but still related area, we are having trouble with the state at the mine where I am employed. We have massive out-gassing of methane from the UG mine, and have devised a way to put a pump on a borehole and pull gas (~2 million cubic feet/day) from the mine and use the methane to generate heat in our process. For 28 years we have vented the methane to atmosphere with the mine ventilation system. It has been a nightmare to get this permitted through the BLM and the state. Anadarko owns some of the gas in a ‘split-estate’ lease and we will pay them royalties for their share of the gas. The 40% of the gas which has been determined to come from state leases, however, is another story altogether. We offered to pay the state the going rate for the BTU value of the gas but no deal! They said we are only permitted to vent the gas and we are not allowed to burn it! So, here it is: state…we would like to give you some money and burn this gas. State to us: no you can’t burn it, you can only throw it away and we don’t want your money. We have retained legal counsel to try to find a way to pay the state some more money.
This explains one of the many rationales I have which makes my distaste for gov’t. palpable. It is why I am a contrarian and why I approach almost every dilemma with a ‘correlation is not necessarily causation’ attitude. It drives my wife a little nuts as she has a much more benevolent attitude toward people than do I. I have just been in industry/gov’t. relationships too long. Must be time to hang up my spurs and go fishing.