St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Missouri faces steeper carbon cuts under Obama rules
Revised federal rules will require steeper cuts to Missouri’s heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions, putting greater pressure on the state and its utilities to begin shifting away from coal.
The final carbon rules released by the Obama administration last month, known as the Clean Power Plan, made several changes from the initial proposal released in 2014. There are two extra years, until 2022, to begin hitting carbon reduction targets, but the final 2030 goals also changed.
“While there’s an additional two years, the final target in my mind is disproportionately harder on Missourians than other states,” said Ajay Arora, vice president for environmental services and generation resource planning at St. Louis-based Ameren Corp.
In the proposed rule, the Environmental Protection Agency called for a 21 percent cut in Missouri’s carbon emissions. The final rule calls for a 37 percent reduction from the state’s 2012 levels. That number could vary depending on how the state calculates the reductions.
Many other coal-reliant states have similar percentage reductions in their rate of carbon emissions, and so do most of Missouri’s neighbors. Illinois and Iowa, for instance, require cuts of 42 percent, while Kansas needs 44 percent.
Complying with the rules is likely to mean cutting back on coal and boosting wind and solar electricity generation. While a final plan could look far different, a potential compliance scenario put together by Missouri Department of Natural Resources staff shows coal falling from some 80 percent of the state’s electricity generation to around 50 percent by 2030.
“Coal’s still a big part of the energy mix even with the Clean Power Plan, but it is going to have to be reduced in order to meet our goals,” Mark Leath, a DNR air program staffer, told a gathering of utility representatives, environmental groups and other interested parties Wednesday in Jefferson City.
It was the first meeting hosted by the DNR since the final rules were released, and the department emphasized it’s still very much in listening mode. During a meeting Thursday at its St. Louis area office, DNR staff also discussed the rule with the Missouri Air Conservation Commission.
The EPA calculated the state targets differently in the final rules, meaning it’s not quite an apples to apples comparison, Leath told the commission. But even so, he acknowledged that “it has become more stringent for Missouri.”
