After nearly 200 years of burning coal as a major energy source in the United States — and about a half-century of knowing that it would cause damage to the earth’s climate — the end of the coal era may finally be in sight.
A new Environmental Protection Agency rule could dramatically accelerate the gradual tapering off of American coal-fired power.The rule, announced last week, marks the first time the federal government has regulated carbon emissions from existing power plants.
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The change is especially beneficial for residents of Black and brown communities, who are more likely to live in close proximity to coal-fired plants than their white counterparts.
A study published late last year found that there were 460,000 excess deaths attributable to fine-particulate matter pollution from burning coal. Considering how many Black people live close to such power plants, a high proportion of those deaths were also likely among Black communities.
While the numbers have shifted over the years as plants have either switched to natural gas or shut down, a 2013 NAACP study found that nearly 80 percent of Black people live within 30 miles of a coal-fired power plant. As such, Black people have suffered the public-health ills of coal’s non-carbon emissions at a disproportionately high level for decades.
The strict new rule change is meant to provide “regulatory certainty” to energy companies amidst the shift to “to a clean energy economy,” according to the EPA. The certainty provided would appear to be: no one is going to be able to burn coal anymore.
There are 217 coal-fired power plants that are still in operation, and they provided 16% of U.S. electricity last year (natural gas now provides 43%, with the remainder made up of a combination of nuclear and renewables, including hydropower).
If owners of those power plants want to continue to burn coal past 2039, they must plan on capturing 90% of smokestack carbon emissions by 2032, according to the rule. New power plants fueled with coal or gas will also have to meet that 90% threshold, part of the Biden administration’s goal of a carbon-free energy sector by 2035.
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Currently, the carbon capture-and-store technology that could conceivably meet those emissions reduction goals isn’t in use anywhere in the U.S., and it is very expensive, too.
As the New York Times put it, “Once implemented, the rules are widely expected to result in the shuttering of nearly all the nation’s remaining coal plants by 2040.”
Along with the drastic cut to carbon emissions the EPA also announced the other new regulations for power plants: one will cut mercury emissions, a second aims to reduce waste-water discharges from coal-fired plants and a third closes a regulatory loophole related to the storage of coal ash, the leftover waste from burning coal.
Coal ash contains an array of toxins, including mercury, cadmium, and arsenic. When improperly stored, as it often has been, those toxins can seep into aquifers used for drinking water.
Thanks to the new rule, old coal-ash ponds and landfills from power plants that closed before the first regulations were enacted in 2015, and were until now exempt from any monitoring or remediation programs, will now be subject to those programs.
The eventual end of coal, the dirtiest of fossil fuels, will have enormous climate benefits. According to EPA estimates, the new CO2 regulation will avoid 1.38 billion tons of carbon emissions through 2047, the equivalent of 328 million gas cars’ annual emission.
The regulations will certainly face legal challenges, or could be rolled back entirely if former President Donald Trump wins another term. But for now, coal is on deathwatch in the United States.