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Environmental

The CO2 Opportunity

Converting emissions from coal-fired plants to gasoline, diesel, or jet fuel.

An economical commercial process is needed to provide an incentive for the utility industries to engender win-win support for governmental regulations on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The current approach is carbon capture and sequestration. Recently, however, an alternative has emerged: a proprietary process that converts CO2 into syngas (CO & H2). Thereafter, the syngas can be converted to fuels such as gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, methanol, and/or ethanol with the use of established mature technologies.
Byline: 

Gary C. Young, Ph.D., P.E.

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EPA's Clean Power Plan

Charting a Path Forward

With respect to the Clean Power Plan, the question is whether EPA will address the major issues and reinforce its positions in advance of the anticipated legal challenges.
Byline: 

Steven A. Weiler

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Constitutional Controversy

Can EPA’s Clean Power Plan Pass Muster?

The Clean Power Plan’s fate may hinge on whether the federal government is seen as usurping states’ rights under the Fifth and Tenth Amendments. Harvard’s Law School professors debate the issue.
Byline: 

Ken Silverstein

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EPA, NERC and Reliability

Expect more analysis – more scenarios, more detail – as state compliance plans become better known.

As things stand today, even without the Clean Power Plan, we expect to see the retirement of more than 6 percent of North America’s generation capacity by 2030.
Byline: 

Thomas Burgess

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Splitting the Difference on Coal Ash

Industry wins exemption for ‘beneficial use’ but faces tighter rules on impoundments and landfills.

The EPA only has limited authority to implement and enforce a Subtitle D nonhazardous waste rule, like the coal combustion residuals rule. As a result, EPA had to promulgate the standards as “minimum federal criteria” that states are encouraged to adopt as part of their Subtitle D programs (but EPA cannot actually require states to adopt or implement these requirements.) Nonetheless, the new minimum criteria do indeed serve as legal standards that an owner or operator of a coal combustion residuals disposal unit must meet.
Byline: 

Kenneth Kastner

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Commenting on Carbon

State PUCs take on EPA and its Clean Power Plan.

Everything about the Clean Power Plan seems surreal. States complain of unfair treatment. Regulators read the proposed rule and sound warnings of a coming apocalypse.
Byline: 

Bruce W. Radford

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Early Clean Power Planning

A hedging strategy for sec. 111(d).

While the public comment period on EPA’s Clean Power Plan proposed rule has closed, there are still opportunities to engage in the federal policymaking process before the summer 2015 release of the final rule.
Byline: 

Kyle Danish, Doug Smith & Avi Zevin

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2014 Utility Regulators' Forum

Diversifying Utility Regulation: State regulators voice opinions as mixed as the nation’s geography.

Interviews with public utility commissioners from key states – New York, California, Maryland, and Georgia – on coal carbon, climate, and the revolution in retail. What they’re thinking. What they’re planning.
Byline: 

Ken Silverstein

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Unleashing Energy Efficiency

The Best Way to Comply with EPA’s Clean Power Plan

A framework for measuring the resource value of energy efficiency – touted as the best way for states to comply with the EPA’s Clean Power Plan.
Byline: 

Tim Woolf, Erin Malone, Chris Neme, and Robin LeBaron

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EPA's Clean Power Plan: An Unequal Burden

The Clean Power Plan's largest obstacle is how its cost is distributed disproportionately among the states.

How the Clean Power Plan introduced in June by the Environmental Protection Agency will produce widely differing compliance obligations among the states, in terms of emissions targets, likely carbon prices, and effects on wholesale power prices.
Byline: 

David Bellman

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