EPA: Power plants main global warming culprits

DINA CAPPIELLO

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — The most detailed data yet on emis­sions of heat-trapping gases show that U.S. power plants are respon­si­ble for the bulk of the pol­lu­tion blamed for global warming.

Power plants released 72 per­cent of the green­house gases reported to the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency for 2010, accord­ing to infor­ma­tion released Wednes­day that was the first cat­a­log of global warm­ing pol­lu­tion by facil­ity. The data include more than 6,700 of the largest indus­trial sources of green­house gases, or about 80 per­cent of total U.S. emissions.

Accord­ing to an Asso­ci­ated Press analy­sis of the data, 20 mostly coal-fired power plants in 15 states account for the top-releasing facilities.

Gina McCarthy, the top air offi­cial at the EPA, said the data­base marked “a major mile­stone” in the agency’s work to address cli­mate change. She said it would help indus­try, states and the fed­eral gov­ern­ment iden­tify ways to reduce green­house gases.

The Obama admin­is­tra­tion plans to reg­u­late emis­sions of heat-trapping gases under exist­ing law. A pro­posed reg­u­la­tion to address pol­lu­tion from new power plants could be released as early as this month. Even­tu­ally, the EPA will have to tackle facil­i­ties already in oper­a­tion. The largest emit­ters will be the first in line.

The largest green­house gas pol­luter in the nation in 2010, accord­ing to the EPA’s data, was the Scherer power plant in Juli­ette, Ga., owned by South­ern Com­pany. That coal-fired power plant reported releas­ing nearly 23 mil­lion met­ric tons of car­bon diox­ide, the chief green­house gas, in 2010.

Two other power plants owned by South­ern were the sec­ond– and third-largest pol­luters nation­ally: the Bowen plant in Cartersville, Ga., and the James H. Miller Jr. power plant in Quin­ton, Ala. The plants are some of the largest coal-fired power plants in the country.

Amer­i­can Elec­tric Power, another large coal-fired power pro­ducer, has three power plants in the top 20. They are in Rock­port, Ind., Cheshire, Ohio, and St. Albans, W. Va.

“This is just another way to iden­tify the largest coal-fired power plants in the coun­try,” said AEP spokesman Pat Hem­lepp. “We always assumed we would be No. 1 in green­house gas emis­sions or No. 2 behind South­ern Co. AEP and South­ern are the two largest con­sumers of coal.”

Both com­pa­nies are test­ing tech­nol­ogy to cap­ture car­bon diox­ide from power plants and pump it under­ground for stor­age. But to date, no one has proven that is pos­si­ble for a commercial-sized power plant.

The other states with high-polluting power plants are Texas, Michi­gan, Mis­souri, Mon­tana, Penn­syl­va­nia, Ari­zona, Wyoming, North Car­olina, Kansas and Kentucky.

Refiner­ies were the second-largest source of green­house gas emis­sions, with 5.7 per­cent of the reported total. The top states in green­house gas emis­sions from power plants and from refiner­ies were Texas, Penn­syl­va­nia, Florida, Ohio, and Indiana.

Con­gress required indus­tries to report their green­house gas emis­sions as part of a 2008 spend­ing bill. Until now, the agency has esti­mated green­house gas emis­sions by indus­try sector.

“The infor­ma­tion is sure to make com­pa­nies, local­i­ties and spe­cific plants more con­scious of their emis­sions pro­file and may lead some to lower emis­sions them­selves,” said Paul Bled­soe, senior advi­sor at the Bipar­ti­san Pol­icy Cen­ter, a Wash­ing­ton think tank that works on energy and envi­ron­men­tal issues.

Envi­ron­men­tal groups wel­comed the release of the infor­ma­tion Wednesday.

“EPA has scored a touch­down for the public’s right to know about the nation’s largest indus­trial cli­mate pol­lu­tion sources,” said Paul Zalzal, staff attor­ney at Envi­ron­men­tal Defense Fund.

Posted by AP News on Jan 11 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.