US says Obama climate plan won’t kill coal

United States environment and energy chiefs say new rules limiting emissions from US power plants, expected to be proposed tomorrow, will “provide certainty” to the coal industry.

The head of the Environment Protection Agency and the Secretary of Energy were seeking to reassure politicians anxious about the fuel’s future.

“We believe coal will continue to represent a significant portion of the energy supply in the decades to come,” EPA administrator Gina McCarthy told the House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce.

Reuters Newsagency reports Ms McCarthy’s testimony, her first since being confirmed to the EPA post in July, came as the agency was due to unveil the first major rule of President Barack Obama’s new climate change action plan.

The EPA is expected to release a new version of a proposal it was due to finalise in April to set greenhouse gas emissions limits for future fossil fuel power plants.

Reuters reports Republicans, who control the House, and some Democrats in energy producing states, say President Obama has launched a war on coal with a new climate plan.

President Obama outlined his climate plan in June, saying the US would target its largest source of emissions, power plants, which account for nearly 40 per cent of greenhouse gases.

Ms McCarthy and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz testified before the House panel, which in calling the hearing said it wanted examine the administration’s previous and future climate regulations that it says have cost $22 billion this year.

Reuters reports several other federal agencies were invited to the hearing, but declined to provide a witness, including the Department of Agriculture and the Department of the Interior.

Ms McCarthy parried several politicians who questioned whether the EPA has the authority to propose rules that could effectively prevent the construction of new coal plants in the US by making compliance with tighter emissions standards impossible.

She said technology that is being developed to capture carbon from power plants and store the emissions or use them to recover oil was “feasible.”

“On the basis of information that we see out in the market and what is being contemplated, that CCS (carbon capture and storage) is technically feasible and it is available today,” Ms McCarthy said.

Four CCS projects now in development that are moving closer to operating at commercial scale, Ms McCarthy said.

Mr Moniz, a long-time advocate of developing cleaner coal technology, said several types of carbon capture projects, in power production and industrial processes, were adding to the economy.

Reuters reports the current viability of CCS technology is likely to be central to the debate around the upcoming rule.

Opponents of EPA regulation of carbon dioxide emissions argue that until the technology is truly available on a commercial scale, the EPA cannot justify setting strict emission limits for new coal-fired power plants.