The District of Columbia Public Service Commission successfully has used two little known provisions in the Federal Power Act (FPA) to prevent an aging generating plant crucial to the national capital region’s reliability from being abruptly shut down by Virginia’s environmental regulators. In the end, the immediate threat to the region’s reliability was obviated while the environmental concerns associated with the plant were not ignored. The action resulted in a model for how federal energy regulators and environmental regulators can address similar problems in the future.

Why doesn’t its interpretation of the Clean Air Act consider the most low-emission coal plant technologies?

A major objective of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPACT) is to counter the worsened conditions in the natural-gas market that began in 2000 and are expected to continue over the next several years—namely, tight natural-gas supplies and high, volatile gas prices caused by a distinct shift in the supply-demand balance. Any noticeable reductions in gas prices that might be effectuated by the act will have little impact on natural-gas prices for a number of years.

Power Measurement

Clean Air by 2015:

Which utilities and states will be most affected by the new rules?

The May issue of included a lengthy discussion by EPA officials of the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR), explaining the details behind the landmark regulations in terms of benefits and costs (). But which states, companies, and generating units will be most affected by the new rules?

Power Measurement

How the Clean Air Mercury Rule will affect coal prices.

In March 2005, Acting Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Steve Johnson, signed into law the Clean Air Mercury Rule (CAMR), the first regulation to reduce mercury emissions from power plants in the United States. When fully implemented, CAMR will reduce electric utility mercury emissions by almost 70 percent from the 48 tons that were emitted in 1999.

Environmental Emissions:

The cost to power markets of the Clean Air Interstate Rule depends on the ability to trade mercury.

Billions of dollars of ratepayer money will be spent in the next decade on pollution-control equipment to meet new rules that amount to an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) bet that mercury can be traded like soybeans, oil, and more pertinent, SO2 and NOx.

THE EPA SPEAKS OUT:

The Environmental Protection Agency reviews how the multi-pollutant control concept is to work.

Frontlines

Utilities will face stark tradeoffs in meeting the next round of emissions controls.

Some utility execs gasp at the shear breadth of environmental proposals being bandied about during the past few weeks. Even the environmentalists are calling "historical" the extent to which different kinds of emissions will be regulated.

The technology works, but public policy will dictate its future.

A distant train whistle breaks the silence of a mid-winter evening on Minnesota's Iron Range. The melancholy sound echoes across the expanse of a frozen lake that now fills a long-disused LTV Steel pit near the town of Hoyt Lakes.

ROUNDTABLE

Meeting tomorrow's power needs will pose tough choices

"I have seen the future, and it doesn't work."

Journalist Robert Fulford wasn't thinking about the power-generation industry when he coined this oft-quoted expression. But he almost could have been.