WASHINGTON (CN) — Two coal and natural gas utility providers who implored the Supreme Court to rescue a Montana power plant from updated federal emissions guidelines are misrepresenting the gravity of the situation, the Justice Department told the high court Friday.
Rather than easing a burden on the coal industry, striking down the revised pollution standards would run counter to federal law requiring the Environmental Protection Agency to seek expeditious reductions in power plant emissions, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told the justices.
The high court is weighing a request from Talen Montana and NorthWestern Energy to place a hold on the Biden administration’s April update to the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards or MATS. The utilities argued last month that the new standards, which slap tighter restrictions on emissions of non-mercury metals from coal plants, would create massive new costs for the coal industry and force some plants to close.
The companies pointed to Colstrip Power Plant, located in southeastern Montana and operated by Talen, as a potential victim of the EPA policy. The plant would need as much as $350 million in upgrades to meet the new standards, they argued, adding that those costs could force the facility to close as soon as three years from now.
The utility companies also argue that public health benefits from the tighter air pollution restrictions would be marginal.
But the Justice Department fired back Friday, saying the EPA had properly analyzed the effects of its revised rule on the coal industry. Any problems facing the Colstrip plant were of the utilities’ own making, it said.
The EPA’s review of its new MATS standards found that roughly 90% of existing coal-fired power plants can already meet the new limits set in April’s update, Prelogar told the justices. The agency also relied on peer-reviewed methodologies to ensure that no coal plants would be forced to retire as a result of the rulemaking.
She added that the new rule requires plants that use lignite, the most harmful type of coal, to meet the same mercury emissions standards as other facilities — but that most lignite plants already have systems in place to met those updated standards.
Because the necessary infrastructure is already in place at most coal plants, it’s unlikely that they will be saddled with any large costs related to the EPA’s revised rule, Prelogar said. She pointed out that under the framework, plants will have three or even four years to adjust their operations.
The only coal units that will need substantial upgrades to comply with the updated MATS framework are located at the Colstrip plant, Prelogar wrote.
“Colstrip’s outlier compliance costs result from its own refusal over the last decade to invest in the same modern pollution-control technologies that its peers already use,” she told the court. “That sort of self-inflicted harm cannot justify a stay.”
Prelogar also argued that Talen and NorthWestern Energy have failed to properly demonstrate to the justices how the coal industry would be economically harmed if they were forced to litigate the EPA rule while it remained in effect, rather than having the justices place a stay on the measure.
Further, the solicitor general took issue with the utilities’ contention that the costs of the revised MATS rule outweigh the benefits.
Talen and NorthWestern had previously argued that the 1970 Clean Air Act requires the EPA to provide an “ample margin of safety” for the public and that current emissions levels fall within such a margin — rendering further reductions unnecessary. But Prelogar pointed out that lawmakers later amended federal law to direct the agency to “require the maximum degree of reduction in emissions” as a separate mandate.
“In adopting the rule at issue here, EPA correctly determined that it had discretion (if not an obligation) to revise the applicable standards even if emissions from coal-fired power plants did not currently pose a public health risk sufficient to trigger EPA’s separate duty to act,” she said.
A stay on the revised MATS standards would trample on the Clean Air Act and lawmakers’ intent to ensure expeditious compliance with emissions standards, Prelogar told the justices.
Coal utilities and other power plant operators have long argued that federal law clamping down on air pollution has forced them to incur unfair costs, which they say outweigh the benefit of new regulations.
The Supreme Court in 2015 concurred, ruling in the case Michigan v. EPA that the agency had to consider the potential costs of new regulation before issuing new rules, rather than after the fact.