Coal utilities, vehicle emissions, in EPA's regulatory sights
By Staff -- Purchasing, 10/7/1999
New EPA enforcement and regulatory initiatives will affect purchasing sourcing decisions. Among the major ones are a possible crackdown on coal-fired utilities for allegedly exceeding their pollution limits and a mandate for lower-sulfur fuel and less tailpipe emissions for light trucks.Utilities. EPA is investigating what officials term huge amounts of illegal emissions from coal-fired utility plants. Violations, they say, are occurring from plants that have increased kilowatt output through an exemption in the Clean Air Act that allows them to perform routine maintenance of plants without obtaining new permits. If the EPA investigation establishes that pollution limits have been exceeded, utilities could face multimillion dollars in fines and possible slowing down of their maintenance work. Industrial customers served by coal-fired utilities in areas where power consumption is approaching generating capacity could face higher power costs or the need to book reserve capacity from other power sources, industry officials say.
Tal Wright, spokesman for Georgia Power, which relies heavily on coal, confirms that EPA has been looking into its emission pattern. "We have been working with EPA to review more than 20 years of operating history and that review is still under way. We believe a fair reading of that history will show that the company has obeyed the law and maintained its plants properly and legally."
Lower-sulfur fuel. Rising tailpipe emissions and booming sales of light trucks, minivans, and sport-utility vehicles have prompted EPA to propose tougher fuel standards. EPA is pressing to lower the standards for sulfur in gasoline, which it claims is coating catalytic converters and making them run dirtier. At the same time, the agency wants to remove special treatment for light trucks and larger passenger vehicles, which have not had to meet the same tailpipe emission standards as automobiles. EPA Administrator Carol Browner says the lower-sulfur fuel and better auto pollution controls will cut emissions from cars and trucks over the next decade by about 80%. The tougher standards would be phased in between 2004 and 2009,but refiners could earn credits for later reductions by cutting sulfur content before 2004.
The standards have been largely accepted by the automobile industry. Petroleum refiners and oil companies claim, however, that major technology changes in refineries cannot be implemented so quickly and therefore there will be shortages that drive up prices at the pump.
EPA's proposal "comes dangerously close to playing a game of 'Russian roulette' with America's gasoline supply," says National Petrochemical Refiners Association President Urvan Sternfels. Together with new restrictions EPA plans on diesel fuel and use of mtbe in refining, Sternfels warns of possible gasoline shortages similar to those now being experienced in California, where fuel standards already are tighter. Outages at refineries there have driven prices at the pump up to $1.75 in some areas, Sternfels says. npra wrote EPA that "the continuing high utilization rates of U.S. refining capacity is already causing signs of strain, even in the absence of the far-reaching initiatives such as (lower-sulfur fuel) now being considered by EPA.
"Reducing sulfur is a good idea, but it ought be done to adapt to realities of what is needed to make it cheaper," says Sternfels.
npra and the American Petroleum Institute have proposed a regional fuel plan as an alternative in which higher-sulfur fuel would be supplied to most areas between California and the Mississippi River, while cleaner fuel would be supplied to the areas that have dirtier air, such as the Northeast, Texas, and some parts of the Southeast. "Test programs have demonstrated that vehicles can be designed with emission systems that are less sensitive to sulfur and the effects of sulfur on emissions can be reversed," API says.
EPA claims, however, that the regulation will be flexible, allowing refiners to average sulfur content nationally and that gas prices would only rise between one and two cents per gallon.
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