S&P Global: "US EPA's Plan for Interstate Smog Might Force Even More Early Coal Retirements"
Senior Fellow Dallas Burtraw provides thoughts on EPA's pollution plan and how it may affect the US coal fleet.
The EPA's cross-state air pollution plan comes as the agency seeks to tackle pollution from existing fossil fuel-fired power plants through an array of air and water regulations, including a separate Clean Water Act rule targeting coal ash pollution.
"I do think there's a sizable portion of the coal fleet that's sitting in a pretty precarious position," Dallas Burtraw, a senior fellow at the independent research organization Resources for the Future, said in a recent interview...
The retirement picture could be muddied even further by a final coal ash rule that requires coal plants to have flue gas pollution controls installed by the end of 2025 or, alternatively, commit to retiring by the end of 2028.
"There are multiple shoes that are going to drop, and this isn't the first shoe," Burtraw of Resources for the Future said of the EPA's cross-state air pollution plan.
