The US Environmental Protection Agency has announced a suite of final rules to reduce pollution from thermal power plants to protect all communities from pollution and improve public health without disrupting the delivery of reliable electricity. The rules are expected to significantly reduce climate, air, water, and land pollution from the power sector by working with the power sector’s planning processes, providing compliance timelines that enable power companies to plan to meet electricity demand while reducing dangerous pollution.
The set of rules include the requirement to control 90% of carbon pollution of all existing coal-fired power plants and new baseload gas-fired power plants that plan to run in the long-term, the updating of the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) for coal-fired power plants (tightening the emissions standard for toxic metals by 67% and finalizing a 70% reduction in the emissions standard for mercury from existing lignite-fired sources), a reduction in pollutants discharged through wastewater from coal-fired power plants, and the safe management of coal ash that is placed in areas that were unregulated at the federal level (including previously used disposal areas that may leak and contaminate groundwater).
The US federal government aims to eliminate carbon pollution from the electricity sector by 2035, and economy-wide by 2050.
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