The Pennsylvania Environmental Quality Board, an independent regulatory review panel, this week approved a plan that will cut mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants in the state by 90 percent by 2015. The state plan would supersede a federal government plan that would reduce fewer mercury emissions, and by a later date. In a release, the state said the 20-member board voted 17-3 to approve the plan.

Before the state plan can go into effect, approval must be granted by the state Independent Regulatory Review Commission and the US Environmental Protection Agency. The state commission must decide before Nov. 17 when the state must submit plans to the EPA describing how they will implement and enforce their own mercury reduction plans. Kurt Knaus, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, said Thursday the state commission would likely consider the plan by Nov. 16 and the federal EPA would probably make a decision by early 2007.

In 2005, the EPA proposed a cap-and-trade program, called the Clean Air Mercury Rule (CARM), to reduce mercury similar to the Clean Air Acts sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions reduction programs. Cap-and-trade programs allow power companies that do not meet emissions standards to buy credits from generators that already meet the standards. But the EPA allowed states to opt out of the federal program so long as they adopted their own reduction plans.

More than 20 states have decided to pursue their own plans, and Pennsylvania and 15 other states have challenged the EPAs approach as inadequate in federal court. If too many states opt out of the federal program, power traders said there would not be much mercury left to trade. Mercury is a neurotoxin that can cause brain and nervous system damage in children and heart and immune system damage in adults since it accumulates in water and is absorbed by fish.

The EPAs Office of Wetlands, Oceans and Watersheds has found that a 30 percent to 100 percent reduction of mercury emissions nationally would translate into a US$600 million to US$2 billion cost savings due to reduced health risks.

PENNSYLVANIA COAL PLANTS
Pennsylvania has 36 coal-fired power plants with 78 units that represent 20,000 megawatts of capacity - enough to power about 16 million homes. The state is second, behind Texas, both in terms of total mercury emissions from all sources and the amount of mercury coming from power plants. Nearly 80 percent of the five tons of mercury emitted in Pennsylvania comes from power plants.

The two-step state plan requires an 80 percent reduction in mercury by 2010, and a 90 percent reduction by 2015. The state will prohibit the trading of mercury allowances. Knaus, at the state DEP, said Pennsylvania does not expect any units to shut due to its plan since the technology to reduce mercury emissions is already available and affordable.

It costs about US$500,000 to US$1 million per unit to install the equipment to remove mercury, Knaus said, but it would cost about US$300 million to US$500 million per unit to install equipment to reduce sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide to meet the federal Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) of 2005. "If some plants in Pennsylvania shut, it would be because of the federal CAIR, not the state mercury plan," Knaus said.

The electric industry has said it will spend billions of dollars to clean up most of the big coal plants in the eastern half of the country over the next decade, and shut several of the older, small plants to meet the new emissions rules.
(Planet Ark, 20/10/2006)
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