Ruling: Coal Plants Must Limit C02

In a move that signals the start of a clean energy future, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) ruled that the EPA had no valid reason for refusing to limit the carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming from new coal-fired power plants (Sierra Club Press Release, EAB decision). The decision raises the likelihood that pending proposals for new coal plants will have to be reconsidered nationwide, with the EAB stipulating that the EPA must come up with a national greenhouse gas regulatory plan. The ruling follows a 2007 Supreme Court decision that CO2 could be listed as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.

What the most recent decision means for the Cliffside unit - already permitted - is not immediately clear. In light of widespread expectations that Congress will soon act to limit carbon emissions with some kind of cap-and-trade legislation, there is already a very real possibility that the Cliffside unit would be obsolete before construction finished. James Hansen, NASA's world-renowned climate expert, has called Cliffside, "a terrible, foreseeable waste of money." Stay tuned via our Cliffside page and in Footnotes Online for the fate of coal in North Carolina.