The Trump administration has taken several new actions in recent days, some with little public notification, to promote the generation of fossil fuel energy in the United States, in particular coal plants.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency waited until Saturday, May 24 to confirm in the media, only after a New York Times Report, which is drafting a proposed regulation to eliminate all current restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions from coal and gas electric power plants. The report is based on sources and review of internal documents.
“Many have expressed their concern that the replacement of the last administration with this rule is similarly,” said an EPA spokesman for Reuters. “As part of this reconsideration, the EPA is developing a proposed rule.” The proposal will be published in the Federal Register after the White House review and the federal agencies, possibly in June, said the spokesman. The EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin [EPA] It follows the rule of right at the same time providing all the North -Americans access to reliable and affordable energy. ”
The regulatory project states that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse greenhouse gases “do not make significant contribution to dangerous pollution” or climate change because they are a small and decline quota of world emissions, according to the Times report, and that the reduction of emissions would have no “significant effect” on public health. The United States emission share is only 3% of the overall pollution of energy generation, and the country has reduced its part of global emissions in the last twenty years, responsible for 5.5% of the world emissions in 2005, the EPA holds in the rule project.
But UN data has found that fossil fuels now represent more than 75% of world greenhouse gas emissions and almost 90% of CO2 emissions, with the United States second in China in the level of pollutant electric power plants.
The EPA did not publish more details of the rule project, said the Times, It can also be completed by the end of the year, “an extraordinarily fast rhythm”.
Supporters are optimistic, but other observers hope that the rule will face demands if it is definitive and worried, it could block future administrations of regulating CO2 emissions from electric plants and mines climate change regulation.
“It’s a good step forward in line with the rule of law,” said Thomas Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance group, Thomas Pyle, president of the oil and gas group, Washington Post.
But Vickie Patton, General Director of the Environmental Defense Fund, said that “fossil fuel energy power plants are the largest industrial source of carbon dioxide destabilizing climate [EPA] Responsibility under the law. … that flies in the face of common sense. “
“Emergency Order”
The EPA confirmation followed by a day, a “ emergency order ” of the U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, directed by the Midcontinent (MISO) and Michigan Utility Energy operator, to ensure that the JH Campbell coal electric power station 1.56 MW in West Olive, “ remains available for operation ” Planned on May 31, which said he said:
The three units of the plant were built in 1962, in 1967 and in 1980. The site of the plant, the last of the nuclear energy facilities of the utility, was erased.
Wright said the reversal of closing, which took place until August 21, is authorized by Power Federal Law and “fits the executive order of President Trump: to declare a national energy emergency”.
Michigan’s utility regulators called the “unnecessary” federal order and did not point out that there was no emergency of power in the state or in the Midwest region. Katie Carey, consumer energy spokesman, said in a statement that the utility “plans to fulfill the 90 -day break. We are reviewing the executive action and the general impact of our company.”
The utility had announced in February an agreement with ASHCOR USA INC., an ATCO LTD unit, to extract and reappear millions of tons of unponed coal ash from JH Campbell’s site to become a high-degree cement substitute.
In the meantime, the Trump administration moved on May 22 to support a lawsuit of Texas and 12 other states against large investors of private infrastructure Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street Global Advsors, who claim that they conspired to reduce competition in the coal sector of the United States that the federal risks harm the domestic energy independence. The United States Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Commission filed a statement of interest in the case State Street called “without foundation”.
President Donald Trump also signed four executive orders to promote a faster construction of North -American nuclear power plants, including a directive for energy and defense departments to build reactors in the military bases, in federal lands and near data centers.
The orders also seek strategies for the construction of reactors without the approval of the Federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission and establishes a goal of increasing the capacity for the generation of North -American nuclear energy to 400 GW by 2050, up to four times the current level of 100 GW, which is the laying of more than 90 operating reactors.
The Tennessee Valley Authority last month submitted to the agency the first part of a construction permit application to build a small Modular Reactor of GE Hitachi Bwrx-300 in its nuclear place on the Clinch River in Oak Ridge, Tenn. If built, the unit of the Clinch River will serve as a commercial US rollout of the SMR design,
“The application is essentially the model for plant design and safety systems and the NRC must approve the plans before the construction could begin,” said TVA, emphasizing that he would submit the complete construction permit application at the end of June.
TVA has hired Bechtel, Sargent and Lundy and GE Hitachi as a team to plan, design and potentially try, build and commission Unit 1 of River 1, according to companies. GE Hitachi is the designer of the BWRX-300 system.
