Commission’s vote puts NC on path to legal showdown with EPA

North Carolina could be headed for a prolonged courtroom dispute with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency by endorsing a greenhouse gas emissions strategy Thursday that the federal agency is almost sure to reject as inadequate.

In approving the state’s tactic, some members of the N.C. Environmental Management Commission said the sooner the dispute gets to the U.S. Supreme Court the better. To speed up the process, the EMC waived a routine 30-day review and voted on the matter Thursday rather than waiting another month.

The commission’s vote adopted a proposal from the state Department of Environmental Quality to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at Duke Energy power plants by a mere 0.4 percent, rather than the 12 percent required by the EPA by 2030. The expectation is that the EPA will reject the DEQ’s tactic, triggering a court fight.

“They want to accelerate getting the plan to court so they can get a judicial decision,” EMC chairman Gerald Carroll said. “The best thing is to let the courts settle this matter.”

DEQ officials say much of the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, which requires carbon dioxide reductions, is legally dubious and is doomed to fail in the court system, so it should largely be ignored. North Carolina is one of two dozen states joining a legal challenge to the EPA’s plan.

EMC member Charles Carter said the federal agency is essentially dictating which power plants can operate in North Carolina. DEQ Secretary Donald van der Vaart has denounced the EPA’s approach as a federal takeover of the state’s electricity generating system.

The state agency has said that the EPA’s approach would raise North Carolina’s household utility bills by $434 a year by shifting electrical generation to costlier renewables and by phasing out more coal-burning plants. Duke Energy Carolinas and Duke Energy Progress have already spent $3 billion on building new natural gas plants in recent years and mothballing aging coal plants.

In the interim, Thursday’s decision by the EMC sets up public hearings on the controversy, with a pair of mid-December sessions scheduled in Charlotte and in Raleigh, and a third in Wilmington in early January. The public will also be able to mail and email comments from mid-November to mid-January.

Sierra Club lobbyist Cassie Gavin said the public hearings are “pro forma,” since the EMC has endorsed DEQ’s strategy. But, she said, her organization and others will encourage members to reconsider and take a more aggressive approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

“The rule appears to be baked in,” Gavin said. But she said a public outcry would “hopefully educate the EMC as to what citizens of North Carolina really want.”

The state’s goal is to get the carbon dioxide proposal to the EPA by September. Before that can happen, DEQ’s proposal will have to come back to the Environmental Management Commission in February for another vote, followed by a March vote by the Rules Review Commission, and possible legislative review in May and June.

Meanwhile, DEQ will work on a “backup plan,” implementing the full range of options the EPA wants to see to cut emissions. That plan would be kept in reserve in case the federal courts side with the EPA. Other states are also developing a fallback strategy in case their legal defiance flops.

DEQ officials noted that no technology currently can feasibly trap carbon dioxide emissions the way modern equipment can trap other pollutants, such nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and particulate matter. Instead, the EPA’s approach to reducing greenhouse gases is to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

DEQ adopted just one of the EPA’s strategies as legitimate: equipment upgrades at power plants that would install intelligent soot blowers, draft fans and other measures. The state’s strategy calls for making the upgrades at 10 generating units at four Duke facilities: Belews Creek Steam Station in Stokes County, Cliffside Steam Station in Cleveland and Rutherford counties, Marshall Steam Station in Catawba County and Roxboro Steam Plant in Caswell County.

That approach would reduce annual carbon dioxide emissions by a 200,000 tons a year, not close to the 7 million tons a year the EPA is calling for by 2030.

This story was originally published November 5, 2015 at 5:48 PM with the headline "Commission’s vote puts NC on path to legal showdown with EPA."