California utility regulators will vote Thursday on a measure that would require new power plants and electricity supply contracts to meet a performance standard for greenhouse gas emissions. The plan essentially would bar California utilities and other power providers from making new plans to import any electricity from older coal-burning power plants and other generators that do not meet the performance standard. Existing contracts run for more than two decades in some cases.

The proposal, issued in December, is an interim step until California adopts a permanent program to cap greenhouse gas emissions and set up a market system to trade emissions credits. That could occur by 2012 under the state's landmark Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 passed in August and signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The interim step -- the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Performance Standard, or EPS -- mandates that new plants and contracts for "baseload generation" for more than five years produce gas emissions no higher than those from a combined cycle natural gas turbine, officials at the California Public Utilities Commission said Tuesday. The standard calls for an "emissions performance level" of 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour. It is aimed mainly at coal-fired power stations operating outside California and exporting electricity to the state. California has no large-scale coal-fired plants.

About 20 percent of the electricity used in California comes from out-of-state coal plants, and CPUC officials said it was unlikely existing coal plants would meet the EPS. An emissions performance standard, or EPS, is similar to an energy efficiency standard for an appliance such as a refrigerator, said Meg Gottstein, a CPUC administrative law judge who co-wrote the proposal with CPUC President Michael Peevey. At a news conference Tuesday, Gottstein said a consumer could have a choice of refrigerators, but at a minimum each must meet a threshold for energy efficiency set by the standard.

Peevey said the EPS is needed now to reduce California's exposure to financial risks from costs that may be linked to future state and federal programs to cap carbon emissions. California ratepayers could face high costs for environmental retrofits at coal-fired plants or supply problems if plants go off line to comply with future regulations, the CPUC said.
(Planet Ark, 26/01/2007)