Bloomberg: "EPA Isn't 'Knocked Out,' But Doing Its Job Just Got Much Harder"
This story cites an RFF statistic about the effectiveness of "cofiring," a regulatory option still open to EPA after the Supreme Court's ruling on West Virginia v EPA.
Options now available to the agency could include demanding efficiency upgrades at plants or the addition of carbon-capture technology and even changes in the fuel used at the plants. For instance, a coal power plant’s greenhouse gas emissions would go down if the facility were compelled to burn some natural gas at the same time, an approach called co-firing. And carbon dioxide emissions tied to a gas plant also could shrink if the facility swapped some of its fuel for cleaner-burning options such as hydrogen or biogas collected from landfills, farms and wastewater facilities.
Even a modest co-firing standard for coal plants could rapidly and significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions, according to Resources for the Future research. That analysis found that if the EPA sets a performance standard requiring 20% co-firing at individual coal plants, cumulative emissions would be 16% lower between 2022 and 2030.
