Dear Editor:This week, the Environmental Protection Agency is holding hearings in Pittsburgh and three other cities across the United States to hear public comments on a proposed rule to curb emissions from coal-fired power plants. For Pennsylvania, the rule mandates a 32% cut in emissions by 2030.
The coal industry is likely to be at the hearings in full force. Meanwhile, in Harrisburg, the industry’s allies are busy at work. The Senate Environmental Resources and Energy committee is considering a bill that has already been passed by the House that would require approval by the state legislature of any plan to meet the EPA target.
It’s sad that our elected officials are so compromised, but it’s even sadder that all of their hyperventilation is over a measure that is so woefully inadequate. The Center for Biological Diversity compared the rule to fighting a wildfire with a garden hose. One can only imagine what the reaction would be if the Obama administration proposed a proportionate response to the climate crisis.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has called for economy-wide reductions in emissions that would get us to 15 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. Following the EPA rule that only pertains to one segment of the economy, we’d still be over 1990 levels by 2030. Even that unambitious goal is undermined by the use of cap and trade as a mechanism to help states meet the target. Cap and trade doesn’t end pollution; it simply puts a price on it. Dr. James Hansen, a NASA scientist and recognized leader in the climate movement, said, ‘It perpetuates the exact pollution it’s supposed to eliminate.’
The EPA’s own Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA) predicts that the rule would do almost nothing to increase the amount of power generated by renewables by 2030, not just because of cap and trade, but because of an anticipated surge in natural gas-fired power plants to replace coal-fired plants.
I’ll be in Pittsburgh to comment on what a mistake it would be to allow that surge to take place. Methane is the main ingredient of natural gas. Last fall, the IPCC increased methane’s Global Warming Potential (GWP) to 86 times that of carbon dioxide in a 20-year time scale. That means it’s 86 times more efficient at warming the atmosphere over the span of the next 20 years, about the same number of years we have left to avert an all-out climate disaster. This is not the time to be increasing our reliance on methane.
Methane leaks or is deliberately released into the atmosphere at every point in its production, transmission, distribution, and processing. Recent studies have turned up astonishingly high leak rates at well pads in Pennsylvania, 100 to 1,000 times EPA estimates. Just last week, the EPA’s Office of the Inspector General issued a report criticizing the agency for its failure to manage methane leaks from natural gas pipelines. To make matters much worse, wells deteriorate over time allowing methane to leak into our air and, in some cases, our water. Before the first unconventional well was drilled in Pennsylvania, we were already saddled with a legacy of roughly 350,000 orphaned and abandoned wells in varying states of disrepair. By the DEP’s own estimates at the time, it would take the agency 160 years to cap all those wells. We don’t have 160 years.
I’m going to make all of those points and others when I comment to the EPA, but I’ll conclude with this one. Natural gas-fired power plants are not cheap. Natural gas stops sounding like the bridge fuel the Obama administration has taken to calling it when we start hearing about a likely surge in expensive natural gas-fired power plants. With a handful of years left to address climate change, wouldn’t we do better to make huge investments in your grandchildren’s energy options, not your grandfather’s?
Karen Feridun, a resident of Kutztown, is founder of Berks Gas Truth, president of the Kutztown Area Democratic Club and holds membership in numerous other groups.
