St. Louis Public Radio: Ameren Wants More Time To Meet New EPA Carbon Emission Goal
By STEPHANIE LECCI
Ameren is asking for more time and pitching an alternative plan to the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal to cut power plant carbon emissions by 30 percent by 2030.
The EPA’s Clean Power Plan would require states to meet incremental goals starting in 2020, to measure progress toward the final target reduction.
But in a white paper released Wednesday, Ameren said by expecting states “to comply with such stringent targets on such short notice,” that plan would impose “staggering costs” of some $4 billion on customers while “needlessly jeopardizing the supply of electricity that our customers use.”
Instead, the company is channeling its most recent Integrated Resource Plan, pushing a greenhouse gas goals strategy that would eliminate the incremental goals with more flexibility for states in determining how to arrive at the 2030 goal.
Joe Power, Ameren’s vice president of federal legislative and regulatory affairs, said states would be held to the plans they create and would have to submit interim progress reports to the EPA.
“So the states would set the glide path, that would be included in their filing with the EPA, it would then be enforceable target reductions that have to be hit but they would be mindful of cost and reliability,” Power said.
