Davis Eases Power Plant Pollution Rules

Tuesday, June 12, 2001
Davis Eases Power Plant Pollution Rules
Electricity: Order will allow more production from heavily polluting
'peaker' facilities.

By DAN MORAIN, Times Staff Writer

SACRAMENTO--Gov. Gray Davis agreed Monday to lift air emission limits on
heavily polluting power plants and allow them to run at capacity this summer
as long as the electricity they produce is sold in the state.
State officials said the plants must be pressed into use to avoid
blackouts.
Davis' executive order lets the generators build the cost of air
pollution fines into the price the state pays for electricity produced by
natural gas-fired power plants, said Catherine Witherspoon of the California
Air Resources Board.
Municipal utility districts--including the Los Angeles Department of
Water and Power--and independent power companies could supply as much as
1,200 megawatts from so-called peaker plants, facilities that generally are
permitted to operate for only a few hundred hours a year because they pollute
so heavily. That is enough power for more than 1 million homes.
Other gas-fired power plants that have been shut down because of air
pollution restrictions also could be started up as a result of the order.
In a news conference Monday, state officials said the order will have
the effect of lowering air pollution by limiting the use of far dirtier
diesel generators, which industry could use if power supplies are threatened.
"If we don't get every last megawatt we can [from natural gas-fired
plants]," said Witherspoon of the air board, "we will see people turning to
diesel more frequently."
Added Kellan Fluckiger, a top energy advisor to Davis: "If you don't run
these, you're either going to have outages or you're going to run something
dirtier."
Fluckiger said the order expands "the number of hours these things can
run and the amount of energy they can produce."
New natural gas-fired power plants emit about half a pound per
megawatt-hour of operation of ozone-producing pollutants. The plants affected
by the order emit between two and five pounds of oxides of nitrogen per
megawatt-hour.
If the plants are pressed into operation for 200,000 megawatt-hours this
summer, there will be between 400,000 and 1 million additional pounds of
oxides of nitrogen emitted into the air.
The state probably will end up paying the fees associated with the extra
pollution through higher electricity prices. The fees amount to $7.50 per
pound of oxides of nitrogen--or $7.5 million if the plants operate for
200,000 hours--and $1.10 per pound of carbon monoxide emissions. The money
would be used to reduce air pollution from other sources.
"Under this order, dirty power plants can run as long as they want and
pollute as much as they want so long as they pay into a fund," said Gail
Ruderman Feuer, senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
"Our concern is that there's no guarantee that the fund will result in
emission reductions any time soon."
A Ventura County air pollution control official said that running one
peaking power plant operated by Reliant Energy for one hour is the equivalent
of adding 20,000 new cars to Ventura County highways for an hour. Reliant
Energy could not be reached for comment Monday night.
"To the extent that they run when not needed for an emergency, it's
going to put more air pollution into Ventura County skies and it's going to
make our air dirtier," said Dick Baldwin, air pollution control officer for
Ventura County.
Los Angeles DWP Director David Wiggs hailed the order, saying it was
needed so the city can sell the state as much as 1,000 megawatts of power
this summer.
"This was the issue we had to have solved or we could not offer any of
our excess capacity to the state," Wiggs said.
He added, however, that the city and state have not yet agreed on a
price for the power. Wiggs said the city is "negotiating to get our cost as
low as we can legally charge" so that customers of the city utility district
are not subsidizing consumers in the rest of the state. Municipal utility
districts elsewhere in the state also are expected to benefit from the order.
Though the order was aimed at spurring municipal utilities to sell power
to the state, it also applies to independent power producers such as Reliant
Energy of Houston and Duke of North Carolina--both of which have called on
Davis to ease air pollution restrictions on their old natural gas-fired
facilities.
"This puts more money in the Texans' pockets and more air pollution in
Ventura County residents' lungs," said Baldwin of Ventura County.
Doug Allard, a Santa Barbara County air pollution control officer, also
said it seems as if the governor is giving private power generators much of
what they had sought.
"We have serious concerns about the order," said Feuer of the Natural
Resources Defense Council. "It's taking the discretion away from local air
districts to regulate power plants in their region."

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Times staff writer Nancy Vogel contributed to this story.
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