The Coronado Generating Station in St. Johns, in eastern Arizona, is a coal-fired power plant owned by Salt River Project, a Phoenix-area utility. (File photo courtesy of SRP)
WASHINGTON – By 2032, operators of coal-fired power plants and new gas-fired plants will be required to install equipment that cuts 90% of greenhouse emissions, under a rule issued in April by the Biden administration.
As soon as he is inaugurated Jan. 20, President-elect Donald Trump could revoke that rule and others aimed at slowing climate change, fulfilling a campaign promise to end what he called a “regulatory jihad to shut down power plants.”
“When I return to the White House, I will end this anti-American-energy crusade,” he said at an August rally in Pennsylvania.
Only China produces more greenhouse emissions than the U.S., according to a 2023 report from the Global Carbon Atlas.
Data released in April by the Environmental Protection Agency showed U.S. emissions equivalent to 6,343 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2022. Emissions in Maricopa County alone amounted to 46.8 million metric tons in 2020, according to a report last year from the county’s Air Quality Department.
Electricity generation accounts for 30% of U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
President Joe Biden took a number of steps intended to reduce emissions that contribute to global warming, including the EPA’s power plant regulations. The new rules also affect disposal of toxic coal waste known as ash and contamination of air and water from mercury and other toxic substances produced by coal plants.
The administration claimed authority under the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.
Trump plans to repeal the coal-fired power plant rules and encourage construction of more such plants.
That has alarmed some critics.
“The Trump administration’s intent to repeal these rules is a bad idea, and it is going to lock in higher levels of emissions and higher temperatures that will exacerbate the climate crisis,” said Jason Rylander, legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute.
“Our air will be dirtier, and communities around those facilities will suffer ill health effects,” he added.
He holds out little hope that Trump will relent on his promise to repeal those rules.
In 2019, during Trump’s first term as president, the EPA repealed a policy from predecessor Barack Obama called the Clean Power Plan and replaced it with the Affordable Clean Energy rule, which experts said was weaker.
Obama’s policy required states to meet targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and aimed to reduce power sector emissions by 32% by 2030 compared to 2005 levels.
Less than five months after taking office in 2017, Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the 2015 Paris Agreement aimed at reducing greenhouse emissions, in part by phasing out coal-fired plants over a period of decades. Only three nations never signed on: Libya, Iran and Yemen.
Under Biden, the U.S. rejoined the treaty in 2021.
“This endless cycle of regulation and deregulation must stop if we are going to address the climate crisis,” Rylander said.
In October, the Supreme Court rejected efforts by Republican-led states to block the Biden regulations on power plants, though litigation continues in lower courts.
“We are one step further away from meeting our obligations under the Paris Agreement” if Trump scraps the Biden-era regulations, Rylander said. “These rules would help to address remaining pollution from coal plants and help accelerate the shift to cleaner energy sources.”
Arizona State University engineering professor Klaus Lackner said cheaper and cleaner natural gas is squeezing out coal. So repealing the rules won’t make much difference.
“It won’t matter all that much because coal-fired power plants are going away,” said Lackner, founding director of the ASU Center for Negative Carbon Emissions, which is designing technologies to capture CO2 from outdoor air. “Coal-fired power plants are not competitive and are shutting down.”
Even with looser regulation under Trump, that won’t change, Lackner said, adding that it would be economically difficult for any coal-fired power plants to survive beyond 2039.
“They are fighting the last war,” he said.
Still, he said, “We need to address greenhouse gasses across the board. We need to get to zero emissions.”
The combination of relatively high costs and tighter regulation has taken a toll on coal-fired plants across the country.
Coal accounted for 10% of electricity produced in Arizona in 2023, according to the federal Energy Information Administration – down from 38% in 2013.
Natural gas was the biggest source of power in Arizona last year (46%), followed by nuclear (27%) and solar (10%). Hydroelectric accounted for just 5%, lower than usual due to ongoing drought, according to EIA. Wind power provided 1% of the state’s power.
In 2019, the Salt River Project shut down the Navajo Generating Station near Page – one of the largest coal-fired plants in the Southwest – after deeming it no longer economically viable.
The state’s largest utility company, Arizona Public Service, plans to shut down the Cholla Power Plant next year.
Tucson Electric Power announced in mid-2020 that it will stop using coal by 2032, replacing that with wind and solar, though gas-fired resources would still account for more than a third of its portfolio.
The regulations from April offer a sliding scale of mandates depending on how long a plant is expected to operate.
Coal plants slated to be closed by 2039 must reduce carbon emissions by 16% by 2030. For plants intended to remain online beyond 2039, operators must cut emissions by 90% by 2032 compared to 2022 levels, using carbon capture technologies or other means.
The EPA estimated the rule will reduce carbon emissions through 2047 by 1.38 billion tons and that in 2035 alone, it will prevent up to 1,200 premature deaths, 870 hospital visits and 360,000 asthma attacks.
EPA spokesperson Timothy Carroll said the agency analyzed the combined effects of the new rules and determined that utilities will still be able to generate as much power as needed after taking coal plants offline.
“The projections showed the sector can meet growing demand for electricity and provide reliable, affordable electricity while reducing pollution in accordance with these rules to protect health and the planet,” he said.
Environmental groups acknowledge that natural gas burns cleaner than coal but warn that it’s not exactly a “clean” fuel. It also produces CO2, though far less than coal. And production and transportation often entails leaks of methane – a potent greenhouse gas that somewhat offsets the advantages of gas over other fossil fuels.
One way to prolong the life of coal plants is to install carbon scrubbers that reduce emissions, but these are costly, and carbon storage technology is still a work in progress.
Canada has the first coal-fired plant retrofitted with carbon capture and storage technology – at the Boundary Dam Power Station in Saskatchewan. Owner SaskPower says carbon emissions have dropped 90% since the technology was installed in 2014.
The second commercial-scale retrofit opened in 2016 near Houston – a $1 billion project at NRG Energy’s Petra Nova plant – though that went offline for more than three years, restarting in September 2023.
EPA has been evaluating the technology.
Reducing greenhouse gas emission “is a critical step to combat the growing climate crisis,” Carroll said.
Rylander agrees, which is why he views Trump’s intended repeal of Biden’s restrictions on coal plants as a major setback.
“We’re just headed in the wrong direction,” he said. “We need to phase out all dirty fossil fuel projects, including natural gas.”