By Charles Paullin, Inside Climate News
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.
Dominion Energy is one of several utilities that received an exemption from stricter federal coal pollution reduction technologies under an order from the Trump administration that environmental groups call “farcical.”
On April 8, President Trump announced several executive orders aimed at propping up the coal industry. The Trump orders gave 47 companies and a larger number of their plants and units a two-year exemption from rules to lower mercury and particulate matter emissions from coal-burning facilities. The stricter measures were approved by the Biden administration last year and were set to take effect on July 8, 2027. It is not clear how many companies had applied for the exemption.
On Monday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency published a list of the companies, known as “Annex 1,” that were given exemptions. The agency had allowed utilities to submit emails requesting an exemption, and Virginia’s regional grid operator, PJM Interconnection, wrote a letter in support of Dominion’s request.
Dominion received an exemption for its Mount Storm facility in West Virginia and, in a regulatory hearing this month on a separate October planning document, it indicated that none of its coal plants, including the Clover Power Station that supplies cooperatives in Virginia, would be retired before 2045.
Deborah Murray, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, said Trump’s executive order was part of an assault on some fundamental protections and “doesn’t meet the criteria for a presidential exemption.” Exemptions can only be granted if technology for pollution reduction is not available or its in the interests of national security, she said.
“President Trump just likes being able to presumably make things happen quickly, attempting to roll back as many bedrock environmental protections that we have,” Murray said. “It seems to be a full-scale, out-and-out assault on our really fundamental environmental protections. There’s just so many. How do you keep track of them all? It’s just really disturbing.”
The order is a “flat out violation of the Clean Air Act,” added John Walke, a senior attorney at the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The plants have been using technology to meet previous rules, he said, and “it’s simply farcical” to claim technology to meet the rule isn’t “available.”
In response to questions over Trump’s authority to grant exemptions, an EPA spokesperson said, “the Presidential Exemptions granted from the Rule will bolster coal-fired electricity generation, ensuring that our Nation’s grid is reliable, that electricity is affordable for the American people, and that EPA is helping to promote our Nation’s energy security.”
Mercury and Air Toxic Standard
The Mercury and Air Toxic Standard, or MATS, rules date back to 2012 as a national standard to limit mercury, airborne solids or liquids known as particulate matter 2.5, and other air pollutants. Last year, the Biden administration revised the MATS rules for the first time by requiring coal plants to adopt new emission control technology within three years.
The rules lowered the standard for PM 2.5, a fine toxin, from .03 pounds per million British thermal units to .01 pounds. The standard for mercury dropped from 4.0 pounds per trillion British thermal units of heat input to 1.2 pounds.
The EPA during the Biden administration, when announcing the change, said the new rule meant coal-fired and new natural gas-fired power plants would capture 90 percent of their carbon pollution and reduce about 1.38 billion metric tons of carbon pollution through 2047, the equivalent of annual emissions from 328 million cars.
By 2028, MATS would result in a reduction of 770 tons of PM 2.5 overall, with $300 million in health benefits over a 10-year period, including avoiding cases of asthma and premature deaths, according to the EPA then.
The rule aimed for a reduction of 1,000 pounds of mercury emissions, which trickle into waterways, affecting fish and people who regularly consume them.
The EPA estimated compliance costs under the new rule would be about $860 million, over the 10-year period.
Virginia has joined a legal challenge in the D.C. Circuit Court led by North Dakota and West Virginia involving the rule and in anticipation that the current EPA could rescind it.
Trump’s executive order “just puts off, that much longer, coal plants needing to come into compliance,” said Murray of the Southern Environmental Law Center.
The exemption will last for two years, meaning plants would need to comply starting July 8, 2029, and follow the rules in place prior to Biden’s rule. The exemption could be extended for one or more periods. “Taken together,” Murray said, the executive order and a decision to rescind the rules “could have lasting impacts.”
There is authority under the Clean Air Act that allows the president to provide an exemption to utilities in the event that technology is not “available” or there is a threat to the “national security interests of the United States.”
Trump’s order claims that the technology is not “commercially viable,” which Murray said “does not appear to be tracking the language of the statute for that exemption to apply.” Saying the technology is not available is wrong, Murray said. “That’s just not the case.”
When the EPA proposed updates to the rule, the Clean Air Task Force, an environmental group, said there had been developments in activated carbons, fabric filter materials, wet and dry scrubbing, and dry sorbent injection technology to “enable coal-fired power plants to reduce their emissions and achieve better performance than the current standards require.”
There also is a requirement for a continuous emission monitoring system to ensure compliance.
As for the national security threat and a less reliable energy grid, Trump’s order states the MATS rule could “force widespread coal plant shutdowns, risking thousands of jobs and the stability of our electrical grid.”
Coal proponents say the retirement of fossil fuel power resources would make it more difficult to meet growing demands from data center development, vehicle electrification and an increasingly digital society. They also argue that renewable energy isn’t effective during peak demand periods in the early mornings and evenings.
But, Murray notes, the rule “doesn’t require any plants to close. It would require them to invest in technology to reduce emissions.”
Walke of the NRDC said many plants are already meeting higher standards. When the Biden EPA finalized its rule, 93 percent of coal plants were already in compliance. Another 38 units needed to upgrade their fabric filters to achieve the PM 2.5 standard and just 13 needed to install fabric filters, he said.
Compared to plants burning bituminous coal and subbituminous coal already complying with the new mercury standard, Walke said, there were also 22 plants burning lignite coal that needed to improve performance to meet the lower mercury standard. The technology those plants usedwas not only available, but already installed.
“They have been operating it since 2016,” Walke said.
Several of the facilities needing to upgrade or install fabric filters are not listed on the Annex 1. Some lignite plants with the technology installed are included in the list as are several plants under federal consent decrees to close by 2028, Walke said.
“Those plants aren’t going to follow the president’s coal renaissance desires,” said Walke, referencing those under federal orders to close. “They appear to be trying to buy a few years without doing anything (before needing) to retire. Did the White House know this? Is the White House trying to somehow override legally binding consent decrees with an unenforceable executive order that’s not legally viable?”
What Is Dominion’s Deal?
Trump’s executive order grants an exemption to Dominion’s Mount Storm facility in West Virginia, which began producing in 1965, and has three coal-fired units and one combustion turbine using jet fuel.
Dominion also owns the Virginia City Hybrid Energy Center, or VCHEC, and the Clover Power Station, in a co-owner partnership with Old Dominion Electric Cooperative that supplies the electricity for Virginia’s cooperatives. VCHEC and Clover did not receive exemptions.
According to the Biden EPA’s assessment, Mount Storm has two units that were able to achieve reductions below the new standard for PM 2.5, with its average emissions rate slightly above, said Amanda Levin, NRDC director of policy analysis. The EPA determined “that the plant would need to operate and maintain its existing technology slightly more to meet the new standard,” she said.
The operating and maintenance changes wouldn’t require a capital investment or upgrades to their existing technology, and would be recovered by the utilities rate payers through rates, Levin said. If the utility decides to invest in capital upgrades to modernize the plant, it could earn a return on its investment. Dominion is currently seeking in its latest rate review to increase its profit margin from 9.7 percent to 10.4 percent.
Rescinding or postponing the Biden rules may allow for Dominion’s coal electricity to be generated cheaper with less operating and maintenance costs, said William Shobe, emeritus research professor of public policy at the University of Virginia. But coal is still “dirty,” he said, and “the whole problem here is they’re not doing the benefit-cost analysis” on climate change damage to crops, forests and more.
“It is surprising to me,” Shobe said. The exemption means operators are “essentially saying we want to pollute more.”
Dominion spokesperson Aaron Ruby did not respond to requests for comment or to discuss how the exemption for Mount Storm could affect the utilities’ long-term planning. But, upgrades for the plant to comply with the MATS came up during a day-long hearing Tuesday on Dominion’s Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), a 15-year non-binding regulatory plan for meeting electricity needs and investments.
As part of its modeling, the utility incorporated the MATS rules and estimated $1.5 billion in capital costs for Mount Storm to be compliant. The IRP also references federal rules that require coal plants to convert to gas generation by Jan. 1, 2030.
Shane Compton, Dominion’s director of strategic planning, said “no final decision has been made” on how the utility would comply with the EPA’s conversion requirement. He said the Virginia City Hybrid Energy Center and the Clover Power Plant are “with current equipment installed….within compliance,” and wouldn’t need “significant” investments.
While previous IRPs indicated that the Clover plant would be retired this year, Compton said that Dominion sees coal as being available for electricity production—and its latest plan envisions no plants will be retired for another 20 years. According to this latest IRP, the company “ has not made any decision regarding the retirement of any current generating unit and does not anticipate any such retirements before 2045.”