The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has outlined measures it intends to implement to cut the emission of nitrogen oxides from coal-burning plants in the Ohio River Valley, the Great Lakes area and the south of the USA. The emissions from these regions drift into the northeastern states, preventing them from meeting EPA emission targets.
The measures are intended to cut the level of NOx emissions from these areas by 85 per cent by 2003. Twenty-two US states will be affected by the proposed legislation.
Predictably, utilities and state governments from affected states have expressed disappointment at the plans. Some had fought for less stringent targets that would have led to a cut in emissions of 65 per cent by 2005. The Alliance for Constructive Air Policy, a coalition of businesses and utilities that had lobbied for more lenient measures, has predicted that the plan would be challenged in the US courts.
Another grouping, the Utility Air Regulatory Group commissioned a study which claimed that implementing the proposed measures would lead to the reserve margin in the East Central Area Reliability Coordination Agreement would drop to -1.7 per cent, even without a forced outage rate or around 8 per cent. It claims this will lead to rolling blackouts of close to 500 hours in each year that power plant retrofits are being carried out.
However supporters of the move, which was welcomed by the environmental lobby, point out that old coal-burning plants have been exempt for 20 years from the Clean Air Act, and can emit at levels outlawed for new plants during the 1970s. The new measures are aimed at meeting a 2007 deadline of cutting nitrogen oxide emissions from all sources by 28 per cent, or 1.1 million t.
The states that are affected by the EPA proposals are: Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin and the District of Colombia.
