NRECA is urging the Environmental Protection Agency to move quickly on its proposed repeal of the Biden administration’s greenhouse gas rule for power plants, citing the steep costs and reliability risks that electric cooperatives face under the regulation.
NRECA filed comments Aug. 7 with the EPA supporting the agency’s June proposal to roll back the 2024 power plant rule as well as all previous greenhouse gas standards for fossil fuel power plants.
“Repealing the unlawful power plant rule is an essential step to ensure the reliability of the electric grid and meet skyrocketing energy demands,” said NRECA CEO Jim Matheson. “Always-available generation is critical to keeping the lights on at a cost local families and businesses can afford. And until the Biden rule is repealed, it remains in effect and is a source of severe uncertainty for electric cooperatives.”
He urged the Trump administration “to move swiftly to finalize this proposed repeal.”
The Biden-era standards require existing coal-fired plants and many new natural gas plants to eventually capture 90% of carbon emissions. The 2024 rule also requires certain existing coal plants to be 40% co-fired with natural gas by 2030.
Those requirements are unachievable and unlawful and will force the early retirement of needed generation while limiting new natural gas capacity at a time of climbing electricity demand, NRECA says.
Swiftly finalizing the proposed repeal “would help alleviate the substantial challenges electric cooperatives continue to encounter as they attempt to navigate [the 2024 rule’s] compliance requirements while reliably and affordably meeting skyrocketing demand growth,” NRECA’s comments stated.
“If [the rule] is allowed to remain in effect, the result would be significant curtailment of reliable, dispatchable resources” and “significant hurdles to the financing and permitting of much-needed new natural gas generation,” NRECA said. “The sooner the administration can alleviate these hurdles, the sooner more generation can be added to the system to preserve affordable and reliable electricity.”
The Trump administration’s June proposal included an alternative plan for regulating greenhouse gas emissions that would repeal most of the Biden rule, including the 90% carbon capture and storage requirements, which NRECA supports. But it would maintain non-CCS-based emissions limits for new natural gas plants, which NRECA opposes.
“These emissions standards are not achievable in real world operation and will only become less achievable as natural gas plants increasingly cycle with greater frequency to support intermittent generation and support data centers and other large loads,” NRECA said. “Retaining these standards is diametrically opposed to the administration’s vision of unleashing American energy, as the unachievable emissions standards would arbitrarily cap how often new natural gas plants can operate.”
NRECA staff writer Erin Kelly contributed to this report.