EPA Prepares to Update 'Outdated' Emissions Exemption for Power Plants

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is preparing to update its 20-year-old toxic emissions standards for oil refineries as well as finalize new regulations by Dec. 2014 after a wave of public outcry has focused attention on little-known exemptions having to do with limiting emissions when power plants are shutting down, starting up or malfunctioning.

Such emissions had previously been deemed outside of normal operations, and thus subject to exceptions. However, according to The Hill, the EPA is now admitting that this practice is "outdated."

Groups including the Sierra Club were especially active in promoting the change, holding rallies at facilities and even sitting down with Obama administration officials from the EPA and Council on Environmental Quality in multiple states, The Hill further reported.

"We just want to keep the pressure on EPA and the White House," Eitan Bencuya, a Sierra Club Spokesman, said. "It's an important rule -- a critical rule," Bencuya said in regards to the exemptions, "and we haven't forgotten about it."

In the opposite corner of the ring are both business and industry groups.

"If you're making it more difficult for the utilities to work within the Clean Air Act rules and make it more expensive to deal with these things, that's not good for energy consumers," Michael Whatley, executive vice president for the Consumer Energy Alliance, said.

However, in a statement the EPA said the air pollution currently allowed during these periods previously exempted "may adversely impact the health of people nearby and contribute to smog and other problems in communities that are further downwind."

According to the Edison Electric Institute, the proposal is too strict and doesn't take into account the fact that technologies designed to control pollution do not work effectively when a plant is being started up or shut down due to changes in, for example, temperature.

"For many reasons, achieving such standards would not only be technically infeasible, but also would be inconsistent with manufacturers' recommendations and safe operating procedures for control equipment," Quinlan Shea, EEI vice president for the environment, said back in May, according to The Hill.