
EPA Finalizes Its Plan to Replace Obama-Era Climate Rules - pseudolus
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/19/climate/epa-coal-emissions.html
======
slg
>The new rule, which is expected to come into effect within 30 days, assumes
that the forces of the market will guide the country to a future of cleaner
energy by naturally phasing out coal over time. It imposes only modest
requirements on coal plants.

If you want to argue for small government, fine, I can't really argue against
that, just own that as your position. However framing the policy this way is
just dishonest. We know for a fact that free markets do not provide an answer
for externalities like pollution and climate change and the only reason to say
this is to buy political cover for the real motivation.

>While it instructs states to reduce emissions, the new measure sets no
targets. Instead, it gives states broad latitude to decide how much carbon
reduction they consider reasonable and suggests ways to improve efficiency at
individual power plants.

That is always a great way to get things done, just leave everything up to
what others think is "reasonable".

~~~
ausbah
>We know for a fact that free markets do not provide an answer for
externalities like pollution and climate change and the only reason to say
this is to buy political cover for the real motivation.

Would it be fair to say that free markets answer externalities, but only when
they become so severe that the market producing the externatlities itself
becomes degraded? Not really an exception to your statement, more of a
ludicrous technicality.

~~~
rayiner
No. The idea of the market is that local, free transactions will produce a
globally optimal outcome. But even within idealized models, free transactions
only lead to optimal outcomes where the cost of externalities is charged to
the activities that produce them. Otherwise, the economy will produce more of
the activity than the efficient level.

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SEJeff
This isn't going to get around the simple economics of coal being more
expensive. Natural gas is what is killing coal, but the cost of wind and solar
continues to decrease.

The Tennessee Valley Authority is closing 2 coal plants:

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-coal-tva/tva-votes-
to...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-coal-tva/tva-votes-to-close-two-
coal-power-plants-in-blow-to-trump-idUSKCN1Q32CD)

And is looking to go solar:

[https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/business/aroundregion/st...](https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/business/aroundregion/story/2019/mar/20/tva-
solar-coal-plan/490997/)

Also an interesting read:

[https://energyinnovation.org/publication/the-coal-cost-
cross...](https://energyinnovation.org/publication/the-coal-cost-crossover/)

""" Constructing new wind and solar projects would be less expensive than
continuing to run 74 percent of existing U.S. coal plants, according to a new
study. That number jumps to 86 percent of coal plants by 2025. """

~~~
southern_cross
Those two coal plants are only being run sporadically now, which probably
means that they're being run as "peaking" plants, which is a very expensive
mode of operation. A year or so ago TVA closed our local coal plant after
replacing it with a natural gas one, and while they were at it they also built
a one megawatt solar plant nearby. Which is all well and good, but that solar
plant, even under ideal conditions, can only produce 1/1000th of the power
that the natural gas plant can!

And just a couple of months ago TVA opened a 53-megawatt solar plant in my
area, and they are promising that it will produce enough power to run
thousands of homes plus some industrial-scale stuff. I haven't yet been able
to find output stats for the two newest installations which I've already
mentioned, but I have been monitoring a third local solar installation of
basically identical design. And even under "ideal" conditions it's only
producing 60% of its promised one megawatt output, and on average only a small
fraction of it. (I don't know if it's always been that way or if the situation
has deteriorated in the five years it's been in operation.) If TVA keeps
building out solar plants which on average only produce a small fraction of
their promised output, then before long they're going to be in trouble.

This is a general problem with wind and solar; they only produce a fraction
(on average) of their "nameplate" (full capacity under ideal conditions)
output, yet "nameplate" is what gets quoted in press releases and such. But
actual average capacity may be only 25% of that (to use a ballpark number),
meaning that you have to divide the quoted capacity by four to get a far more
realistic capacity. Meaning that the 1/1000th number that I quoted above is
probably actually more like 1/4000th!

~~~
SEJeff
Thanks for the comment, I think it massively depends on the specific panels
and their makeup. You also add a lot of excellent context to the stories I
found. There is a ton of cutting edge research going into solar panels and
there are many different ways to achieve higher efficiency and/or longer
lifespans.

My comment wasn't intended to say solar/wind is killing Coal because it isn't.
Natural Gas is what is killing coal. I'm from Kentucky originally and the
economy is feeling the squeeze from coal just not being really economically
viable for some use cases compared to natgas. As the tech improves and mass
production makes it cheaper, solar / wind will continue to make more economic
sense. The currently "top of the line" most efficient solar panels as of 2019
come from SunPower and only are a paltry 22.2% efficient so there is a lot of
room for improvement. Regarding renewables being a fraction of their
"nameplate" capacity it really just depends on too many factors to generalize.

~~~
southern_cross
Well, "nameplate" capacity is always the maximum theoretical output under
ideal conditions, and how often does that happen? And with solar you have to
deal with nighttime, so there goes fully half of it right off the bat!

As to that local installation, I drove by it the other day and saw no obvious
tracking issues or anything like that. When I took a tour of it about a year
after it opened, they said that it had already become obvious that the
inverter system was going to be finicky and that it was going to an ongoing
challenge to keep that in tip-top shape, given the expense involved. So after
five years I could easily envision a situation where the panels and tracking
system are still going strong, but the inverter system has degraded to the
point where it can only spit out 60% max.

------
bcheung
> The move largely gives states the authority to decide how far to scale back
> emissions, or not to do it all, and significantly reduces the federal
> government’s role in setting standards.

> immediately drew a flurry of challenges, with attorneys general in
> California, Oregon, Washington State, Iowa, Colorado and New York saying
> they intended to sue to block the measure.

I'm a bit confused here by these 2 statements. Why would states sue, or even
have the authority to, when the Federal government is delegating control to
the states?

~~~
ethbro
There are multiple grounds.

A popular approach so far has been to argue the proper process for rule
changes hasn't been followed. I'm not sure that applies here, but in many
cases there are legal steps to changing regulation. You can't just wake up
Tuesday and say "I think stop signs are going to be green."

Separately and more applicable in this case, states can argue they're being
harmed by this particular set of federal rules. This can further be tied to
already-existing law, essentially arguing that a new regulation is
incompatible with a law passed by Congress. As an example, the EPA can't
simply approve dumping industrial waste chemicals into waterways, because the
Clean Water Act says otherwise.

------
mjcohen
Another battle in Trump's War on America.

------
microcolonel
Seems like the main points are that they are not going to propose again the
same rules which were ruled unconstitutional, and adjust how aggressive the
targets are.

> _“It could foreclose a new administration from doing something more
> ambitious,” she said._

I think I get what they're trying to say here, but there's nothing the Supreme
Court can do during a moderate administration to "foreclose" more aggressive
targets in the future. They can only answer specific questions. Just because
the last 1A case was on a relatively uncontroversial form of speech or
petition, doesn't mean that 1A is restricted in scope, it just means that it's
not particularly harshly tested by the present case.

The argument they're making is frankly ridiculous. The Supreme Court _not
finding a moderate policy to be unconstitutional does not preclude you from
trying more aggressive policy in the future in any way_.

~~~
magicalist
> _Seems like the main points are that they are not going to propose again the
> same rules which were ruled unconstitutional_

It wasn't ruled unconstitutional, it was stayed by the Supreme Court while a
lower court decided if the rule was within the EPA's regulatory power under
the Clean Air Act. Then the Trump administration came into power and asked the
court to put the case on hold while they rewrote the regulations.

Maybe that's causing the confusion within the rest of your post, because it
isn't a question of constitutionality.

If the Supreme Court rules that the EPA "only has authority over environmental
infractions at individual plants, like chemical spills and improper handling
of hazardous materials", a rule from the EPA like this might not be possible
again.

~~~
microcolonel
> _It wasn 't ruled unconstitutional, it was stayed by the Supreme Court..._

My misunderstanding from all the words going around.

> _If the Supreme Court rules that the EPA "only has authority over
> environmental infractions at individual plants, like chemical spills and
> improper handling of hazardous materials", a rule from the EPA like this
> might not be possible again._

AFAIK the Supreme Court does not tend to rule on whether you "only" have the
authority to do something, they're more likely to rule that a given thing is
something that you _don 't_ have the authority to do. Maybe it's different
when it comes to federal agencies, on that I'm ignorant. It seems more likely
that the Supreme Court simply takes no issue with the new policy, rather than
making a broad pronouncement about what future policy could be.

