Exporting Our Carbon Problems: Op-Ed by Meredith Angwin

Exporting our carbon problems
The EPA takes a flawed state-by-state approach to greenhouse-gas policy

The Environmental Protection Agency recently issued a proposed plan for greenhouse gas mitigation: the electricity sector must cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2030. The rules are set on a state-by-state basis.

I am in favor of cutting carbon emissions, but the EPA plan is arbitrary, ineffective, and political. The abatement standards are plain backwards: states that already have a clean-energy mix have to do a higher percent of abatement than states that burn large amounts of coal.

EPA’s criteria for reduction goals are, frankly, opaque, including complex “building blocks” for reduction. To decide on the level of reduction required, the EPA looked at various issues, such as coal plants that might be already slated for retirement, and whether a state has natural gas available.

Per kilowatt hour of electricity produced, burning coal produces twice the carbon dioxide as burning natural gas. Logically, the EPA would require greater cutbacks in coal-burning states.

That did not happen.

For example, West Virginia generates 90 percent of its electricity from coal — and it must cut its carbon dioxide emissions by 19 percent.

In contrast, New York state has a pretty clean energy mix and, according to state profiles compiled by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, gets less than 10 percent of its electricity from burning coal — and it must cut its carbon emissions by 44 percent.

With this sort of regulation, it is no surprise that New Hampshire, which gets less than 10 percent of its electricity from coal, must cut carbon emissions by 46 percent.

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Flag of Vermont

VERMONT, on the other hand, is a poster child for a low-carbon state. Vermont and the District of Columbia use very little fossil fuel to make electricity, so they are the only two states (well, state and district) that don’t have to submit a plan for carbon abatement in the electricity sector.

However, more than 70 percent of the electricity generated within Vermont comes from Vermont Yankee, a very low-carbon electricity supplier. When Vermont Yankee shuts down at the end of the year, Vermont will be importing energy from states with more carbon-heavy profiles.

Will it cease to be a shining example of a low-carbon state?

No. According to the EPA, Vermont will still be a low-carbon state as long as it doesn’t generate high-carbon electricity in state.

EPA regulates carbon according to power actually generated within the state, not by power purchase contracts. If other states are burning more fossil fuels to supply Vermont, the carbon mitigation rules will be their problem, not Vermont’s problem. Vermont will have exported any possible compliance problems.

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That brings us to New Hampshire, which has to cut back 46 percent of its carbon emissions. With more than half of its electricity coming from nuclear and less than 10 percent from coal, cutting back to that degree might be hard.

However, the state is in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) with Vermont and other states. New Hampshire is already cutting back its carbon emissions to meet RGGI requirements, and it hopes these cuts will be enough to meet the EPA requirements also.

Flag of New Hampshire

In case New Hampshire’s RGGI cutbacks are not enough, a Concord Monitor story reported, the state is looking at whether the EPA emission caps could be set as a combined target for all the RGGI states, thereby possibly involving Vermont in the cutbacks, in a manner that has yet to be determined.

However New Hampshire meets its requirements, it won’t have to do so very quickly. Starting now, there’s a one-year period for public comment on the EPA plan, followed by another year (or more) for the states to design their mitigation plans.

According to a Bloomberg New Energy Finance white paper, state plans are due by June 2017 and multi-state plans are due by 2018. It sounds as if New Hampshire might choose to participate in a multi-state plan. In such a scenario, New Hampshire’s choices might also affect Vermont’s status. Maybe.

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The whole thing is unreasonably complicated. It is no wonder that many commentators expect a raft of lawsuits.

You can also think satire: The Onion (a humor website) describes the situation with this headline: “New EPA Regulations Would Force Power Plants to Find 30% More Loopholes by 2030.”

Or you can think confusing: The Bloomberg New Energy Finance white paper is entitled “EPA’s Clean Power Plan: 50 Chefs Stir the Pot.”

Or you can think political: The EPA clearly made major concessions to the coal states in the state-by-state requirements.

At any rate, when rules require a state that doesn’t produce much carbon to cut its production drastically while allowing comparatively minor cutbacks to a state that produces a lot, it’s hard to justify this policy as “carbon mitigation.”

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In the early part of my career, I worked on finding abatement methods for nitrogen oxide pollution:
reducing these emissions was required under the Clean Air Act.

Brownish NOx smog at the Golden Gate Bridge
Credit to Aaron Logan at Wikipedia

Nitrogen oxide emissions are the cause of the dirty brown color of photochemical smog, and they are caused by high-temperature combustion. At a high-enough flame temperature, the air burns itself, uniting nitrogen and oxygen in the air to make nitrogen oxides. This happens in cars and in almost all fossil-fired power plants.

If an area had particularly dirty air, it had to make more drastic cutbacks on pollution. For example, California cars eventually had to have more pollution controls on nitrogen oxide emissions.

Comparing these new carbon rules to my experience regarding nitrogen oxide pollution, I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea that an area that produces lots of carbon dioxide has to do less abatement than areas that produce little.

I do not mean to imply that in those good old days, back when I worked on nitrogen oxide pollution, nothing was political. Of course things were political. States and utilities sued one another, they sued the EPA, and so forth and so on.

However, the nitrogen regulations did not start as political: they started as general rules, and then various interest groups attempted to get changes made. In contrast, the recently issued carbon rules are strongly political from the start.

In my overview of the EPA plan, I sadly admit that I think The Onion is right: there will be 30 percent more loopholes by 2030.

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My op-ed was first published in the Valley News on June 29.  It also was published in several other newspapers and websites, including in The Commons on July 23.  I liked the headline in The Commons, so I have used the version published there. (Every time the column appeared, it was slightly different, due to different editors.)

After Vermont Yankee: A Poor Area Will Become Poorer

Last week, The Commons newspaper held a forum on the future of the area around Vermont Yankee.  The forum was titled: Toward a Post-Nuclear Economy.  Life after Vermont Yankee: What is Next? My previous blog post on this subject is Yankee Rowe and the Soul of a Nuclear Worker. 

A friend of mine attended the panel, and told me that the panelists were divided between two sets of people:

• Opponents of Vermont Yankee wanted to talk about how to force Entergy to do prompt decommissioning, how to force Entergy to greenfield the plant site. Their main topic was: “Let’s get Entergy!”
• Local people and groups know that Entergy is a major employer, tax-payer, and source of funds and volunteers for local not-for-profits. This employer is about to leave. For local groups, the main topic was: "How will this area cope with VY's departure?"

How can the area move forward?  How can it even begin to replace Vermont Yankee? That is the big question for most people in Vermont.

Economics 101: We Are All Part of A Community

When the community becomes poorer, most of the people in the community become poorer in one way or another.   “Too bad about the plant workers but I’ll be okay” isn't really going to work for the neighboring area.  Other communities have faced these types of problems when a major employer leaves the area:

• Hospitals, doctors and nurses are affected by the sudden local loss of hundreds of people with high-paying private health insurance. 
• Schools will see tax revenues decline: they may drop some of their sports teams, some teachers may be laid off, others may teach bigger classes. 
• Restaurants may keep shorter hours and some may fold.  
• Auto dealerships may sell fewer cars.  

The local community will become poorer.

And Southern Vermont is not that rich right now.  The median annual income for workers in Brattleboro is around $41,000 while the state-wide median is $53,000.  (From the recent Olga Peters article in The Commons.)  According to the United Way report (page 21) between 22% and 60% of Windham County children get free or reduced-price lunches.  The reduced-price-lunch percentage can be considered a proxy for estimating child poverty.

Windham county is not rich now, and it is about to get poorer.  How could the county turn this around?

Economics 102: Creating Prosperity

A community becomes prosperous by making a product or providing a service that other people will spend money to buy.  No community can stand on its own, importing nothing.  Every community has to “export” something, at least to neighboring areas, to get money to buy what it needs.  What can the Brattleboro area export?

I thought of two ways that the Brattleboro area can attempt to revitalize itself after the plant leaves.  Unfortunately, I don’t think either of these two ways will work.

The Tourist Magnet

Brattleboro can attempt to become a tourist magnet. This would not be strictly export, but it is a way of attracting money from outside the area.

While all of Vermont is a tourist magnet of some type, Brattleboro will have a hard time moving up the ladder of “destinations.” Brattleboro is trying to revitalize its downtown, and is very aware of where its downtown visitors come from. (Commons article: Brattleboro's Potential for Greatness)

In my opinion, though, Brattleboro is going to be a hard sell as a tourist destination.  The area is pretty, but doesn't have the high local income and interesting history (Privateers! Clipper ships!) that helped a place like Newburyport re-invent itself.   Brattleboro can’t start a music festival--it’s only twenty miles from the famous Marlboro Music Festival, and could hardly compete.  The area could try to be a theater or film mecca, but that would be a slow build-up.  The places that succeed at that sort of thing (Ashland Oregon for example) generally have multiple stages and have been growing their influence for many years.  The successful arts center of Santa Fe New Mexico has been an artistic center for over a century, and was near the home of the very famous artist Georgia O’Keefe.

“We don’t need Vermont Yankee, we will be an arts center” doesn’t seem to me to be a winning solution.

The Industrial Hub

The Brattleboro area can attempt to get another manufacturing facility into the town, either at the Vermont Yankee site or elsewhere.

Frankly, I think they have shot themselves in the foot about this one.  Given the “protesting” spirit of Brattleboro, most manufacturers would be hesitant to locate there.  Every factory has raw materials: many raw materials are poisonous if spilled.  If I were a manufacturer, I wouldn’t locate in a place where people are likely to begin tying themselves to the gate of  my plant if they heard I had a spill of toxic paints within the plant premises.

The people of Brattleboro might think....oh no, we ONLY protest nuclear plants! We'd love other types of factories!  However,  most manufacturers will NOT want to locate in an area where protesting so-called "environmental issues" at factory gates is a way of life.

In short, I think Brattleboro has messed itself up big-time by its attitude to Vermont Yankee.  In this WPTZ video, you can see Arnie Gundersen suggesting that a new power plant be built on the Vermont Yankee site. He doesn’t say what kind of plant, however!  Can you imagine the local protests if they attempted to run a gas pipeline to the site, build a coal plant, or build a biomass plant? Heavens!

Not an easy future

I wish the Southern Vermont area the very best, if only because many Vermont Yankee workers would like to stay in the area. However,  I don't think it is going to be a very upbeat future around there.  At least, not for many years.



I include a video from WCAX on the future of the area.


 WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-