POWER June 2015 - 64

ELECTRIC POWER
Clean Power Plan Is Achievable,
but Challenges Loom Large
Panelists at the ELECTRIC POWER 2015 general session on environmental issues
were frank about difficulties with the EPA's Clean Power Plan. But the
power sector can-and should-make it happen, they said.
Thomas W. Overton
T
he Environmental Protection Agency's
(EPA's) Clean Power Plan (CPP)
is feasible in its ultimate goals, but
getting there will take a lot of work and
some rethinking of how the targets are
achieved, according to speakers at the Environmental
Mega Session-Rebalancing
the Electric System for Environmental
Consideration at the ELECTRIC POWER
Conference & Exhibition on Apr. 21 in
Rosemont, Ill. (Figure 1).
Tony Licata of Licata Energy & Environmental
Consultants opened the session
by noting that in meeting these challenges,
" business as usual equals failure. "
Aditya Jayam Prabhakar, policy studies
engineer with the Midcontinent Independent
System Operator (MISO), noted that
much of what the CPP seeks to accomplish
is already under way. MISO, he said, has
saved its customers millions of dollars
though efficiency measures it has implemented.
Reliability
Concerns
That being said, " there are so many moving
parts here, " Prabhakar noted. The challenge
is in achieving the necessary reductions in
the CPP without threatening reliability. He
suggested that a regional approach would be
better than piecemeal, state-by-state goals
and projected that this could save $3 billion
in compliance costs.
While, Prabhakar said, " the EPA has
come up with an extreme amount of flexibility "
in meeting the goals, the timeline
is a concern. Boosting natural gas in the
dispatch order results in a " significant
shift toward gas-fired resources from coalfired
resources. " The problem is that there
isn't enough time to build new gas-fired
power plants-which require two to three
years' construction time-to meet the
2020 interim deadline. That presents a risk
of too-rapid shifts in the generation mix
before the resources are ready. " First and
64
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POWER | June 2015
foremost, " he said, " we have to maintain
reliability. "
Block Andrews, associate environmental
engineer with Burns & McDonnell, reviewed
some of the two million-plus comments the
CPP proposal received, with a focus on its
reception by environmental groups. Most, he
said, not only supported it but argued that it
was not ambitious enough.
The Natural Resources Defense Council
(NRDC), for example, suggested that the
reduction targets be raised to 36% by 2020
and 44% by 2030. NRDC and the Sierra Club
both argued that the projected heat rate improvements
were too low, with the NRDC
saying many plant owners are not motivated
to capture efficiencies because fuel costs are
paid by ratepayers. The Sierra Club argued
the heat rate goal should be 10% rather than
the proposed 6%.
The Death of " Business as Usual "
Steve Corneli, senior vice president for sustainability
strategy and policy for NRG Energy,
chided many in the power sector for
suggesting the solution was hoping for the
EPA to " just go away " and for arguing that
climate change concerns are a hoax (Figure
2). The problem with these arguments, he
said, is that pressure on these issues goes far
beyond the EPA.
The first issue is that the economics of
power generation have changed fundamentally
in the past few years as renewable
energy has become competitive. " Nothing
else in energy sector history has cut its
costs this fast, " he said. Battery costs are
also falling rapidly.
Second, carbon capture and sequestration
(CCS) is already being deployed in demonstration
projects, including one being built by NRG
(see " Commercial-Scale Carbon Capture Project
Starts Construction in Texas " in the September
2014 issue). If the economics are there, CCS
could be " a game changer, " he said.
Finally, beyond local renewable mandates,
" We're seeing many Fortune 500 companies,
and many other companies here and internationally,
saying they want to go to 100%
renewables " for their power needs. " This is
1. Panelists at the ELECTRIC POWER 2015 Environmental Mega Session.
Left to right, Tony Licata, Licata Energy & Environmental Consultants; Aditya Jayam Prabhakar,
MISO; Block Andrews, Burns & McDonnell; and Steve Corneli, NRG Energy. Source:
POWER/Tom Overton

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POWER June 2015

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