A new bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives would place a moratorium on either the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or states issuing permits to new coal-fired power plants without state-of-the-art control technology to capture and permanently sequester the plant’s carbon dioxide emissions.
Representative Edward J. Markey (D-Mass), Chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming and Representative Henry A. Waxman (D-CA), Chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee introduced the "Moratorium on Uncontrolled Power Plants Act of 2008."
The moratorium would extend until a comprehensive federal regulatory program for global warming pollution is in place, thus immediately addressing the largest new source of global warming pollution–new coal-fired power plants that are being built without any controls on their global warming emissions.
The bill also bars a new coal-fired power plant without state-of-the-art control technology from receiving any free or reduced cost emissions allowances under a future federal program to address global warming.
"If we lose control of coal, we will have lost control of the climate," said Markey. "This bill will make companies prepare for the future and prevent them from building low-tech coal-fired power plants before a global warming bill is passed that will necessitate the use of the newest, most climate-friendly technology."
Without emissions controls, a new coal-fired power plant will emit hundreds of millions of tons of global warming pollution over its fifty-year lifetime. Over 100 new plants have been proposed, and even if just a portion of these are built, they will emit over a hundred million tons of carbon dioxide a year, according to a statement by the two representatives. One of these plants alone could offset the reductions that will be achieved through the Northeastern states’ Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
"Comprehensive economy-wide regulation to address global warming is coming soon," said Waxman. "But new uncontrolled coal-fired power plants are being built today. My legislation says: ‘No new plants without emissions controls.’ The alternative is senseless–locking in decades of additional global warming emissions and requiring greater emissions reductions across the U.S. economy to compensate."
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