By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — A spokesman for an environmentalist group says a ruling today that greenhouse gases threaten the public health is bad news for an energy company seeking a permit to build a new coal-fired power plant in Arkansas, but the company says the permitting process won’t be affected.
The ruling by the Environmental Protection Agency puts the nation a step closer to federal regulation of carbon dioxide emissions. The regulation could come through action of the EPA or Congress.
“I can’t think of any way that today’s news is anything but bad news for the coal industry,” said Glen Hooks, senior regional representative for the Sierra Club, which opposes the plant proposed by Southwestern Electric Power Co.
Shreveport, La.-based SWEPCO is seeking to build a $1.6 billion, 600-megawatt power plant in Hempstead County. A June ruling by the state Court of Appeals overturned the state Public Service Commission’s decision to approve a permit for the proposed John W. Turk Jr. Power Plant, and SWEPCO is now appealing that decision to the state Supreme Court.
The Court of Appeals said the commission was required to consider all matters related to SWEPCO’s application in a single proceeding, but instead it considered several related issues in separate proceedings.
Scott McCloud, spokesman for SWEPCO parent company American Electric Power of Columbus, Ohio, said today’s ruling by the EPA will have no immediate impact on the permitting process for the Turk plant because the ruling is only a step toward future regulation and does not trigger any immediate caps on emissions.
“EPA’s action isn’t a surprise. We’ve been expecting it,” McCloud said.
He said AEP would prefer to see new regulations come as a result of a comprehensive package by Congress rather than action by the EPA, “but AEP has allowed for the potential to retrofit carbon capture equipment at the plant if it is later required, either as a result of congressional action or EPA requirements.”
Hooks said that if the state Supreme Court upholds the Court of Appeals’ ruling and SWEPCO has to go back before the PSC for a new hearing, the commission will have to take into account the fact that regulation of greenhouse gas emissions will make coal power more costly — and possibly not a good deal for the company’s Arkansas customers.
“The coal industry for decades has enjoyed lower costs because they haven’t had to factor in the environmental and public health impact that their burning of coal has on the nation. This is a step today in the direction of making the coal companies pay the real cost of what their fuel source does to the environment and to public health,” Hooks said.
